When Denver was booming but was still the Old West...
Item # 707859
September 07, 1881
DAILY DENVER TIMES, Colorado, Sept. 7, 1881
* Rare Old West publication
* Was a Western outpost
The Denver area, part of the Territory of Kansas, was sparsely settled until the late 1850s. In July, 1858, a small placer deposit yielded about 20 troy ounces of gold, the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountain region.
News spread rapidly and by spring of 1859 teams of thousands of gold seekers arrived and the Pike's Peak Gold Rush was under way. In the following two years about 100,000 gold seekers flocked to the region.
The population of Denver increased from 4700 in 1870 to 35,000 in 1880, and ten years later swelled to 106,700.
This issue was published during the height of Denver's rapid growth & the content and advertisements are reflective of this. The front page includes: "The Apaches--Official Reports From General McDowell" and: "Raiding and Killing--Further From the Roving Apaches in Arizona".
Four pages, a bit irregular at the blank spine, good condition.
background: In the early 1880s, Denver was a city caught in a feverish transition from a dusty frontier outpost to a gilded Victorian metropolis, fueled by the staggering wealth of the Leadville Silver Boom. The air was a thick cocktail of coal smoke from the ever-expanding rail yards and the high-altitude dust of unpaved streets, where horse-drawn streetcars rattled past opulent new landmarks like the Tabor Grand Opera House. While the elite "Silver Kings" constructed red sandstone mansions on Capitol Hill and marveled at the city's pioneering electric streetlights, just blocks away in the "Bottoms" and along Market Street, a grit-strewn underworld of saloons and gambling dens thrived. It was a place of radical reinvention where a prospector could arrive with nothing but a pickaxe and, through luck or leverage, find himself dining on oysters and fine champagne within the year.
* Rare Old West publication
* Was a Western outpost
The Denver area, part of the Territory of Kansas, was sparsely settled until the late 1850s. In July, 1858, a small placer deposit yielded about 20 troy ounces of gold, the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountain region.
News spread rapidly and by spring of 1859 teams of thousands of gold seekers arrived and the Pike's Peak Gold Rush was under way. In the following two years about 100,000 gold seekers flocked to the region.
The population of Denver increased from 4700 in 1870 to 35,000 in 1880, and ten years later swelled to 106,700.
This issue was published during the height of Denver's rapid growth & the content and advertisements are reflective of this. The front page includes: "The Apaches--Official Reports From General McDowell" and: "Raiding and Killing--Further From the Roving Apaches in Arizona".
Four pages, a bit irregular at the blank spine, good condition.
background: In the early 1880s, Denver was a city caught in a feverish transition from a dusty frontier outpost to a gilded Victorian metropolis, fueled by the staggering wealth of the Leadville Silver Boom. The air was a thick cocktail of coal smoke from the ever-expanding rail yards and the high-altitude dust of unpaved streets, where horse-drawn streetcars rattled past opulent new landmarks like the Tabor Grand Opera House. While the elite "Silver Kings" constructed red sandstone mansions on Capitol Hill and marveled at the city's pioneering electric streetlights, just blocks away in the "Bottoms" and along Market Street, a grit-strewn underworld of saloons and gambling dens thrived. It was a place of radical reinvention where a prospector could arrive with nothing but a pickaxe and, through luck or leverage, find himself dining on oysters and fine champagne within the year.
Category: The Old West
