By John Hickenlooper, Mayor, City & County of Denver
When asked to describe a trip to Colorado, President Teddy Roosevelt said, “The scenery bankrupts the English language.”
It was that statement that helped inspire Doug Freed to write this book. If the story of Colorado could not be told in words, perhaps it could be told in numbers. And so Doug collected an unprecedented amount of facts, figures and statistics that together paint a new look at Colorado and the people who have called this state home.
But this is no mere collection of dry stats. Through the accumulation of data emerges a picture of Colorado that captures the vast resources and spectacular beauty of the state, while also telling of the ambition and courage of the Coloradans who helped tame the wilderness.
Colorado began with some strokes of a pen on February 28, 1861, when a group of Washington politicians decided that the new Colorado territory should be a symmetrical, 4-degree Latitude by 7-degree Longitude quadrangle. It was to be one of three politically created states where the borders are straight lines, chosen arbitrarily rather than following natural landmarks.
Ah, but what wonderful natural landmarks were included within Colorado’s lucky borders. Here was to be the highest and largest inland sand dunes in North America, the steepest sheer rock canyon wall in the nation at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, the most beautiful of the ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, and the towering red sandstone pinnacles of Colorado National Monument.
And then, of course, there were mountains. America’s highest state was to get all 54 of the Rocky Mountain peaks that soar to 14,000 feet with a bonus of 584 additional ranked mountains that climb to13,000 feet.
While the mountains made Colorado beautiful, they did present a formidable barrier to travelers in the 19th century. Lewis and Clark took the easy way west, bypassing Colorado, as did the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail and the first transcontinental railroad. By all reasoning, the dominant cities and growth of the Rocky Mountain region should have sprung up along these early routes.
Instead, it was Colorado that grew. Today, Colorado’s population is greater than neighboring Utah’s and New Mexico’s combined; the City & County of Denver alone has more residents than all of Wyoming.
How this growth occurred is the story of human contributions to Colorado, and Doug Freed tells it with descriptions of both the people who came here and the engineering marvels they created.
For the railroads to head west from Denver, men had to dig the longest railroad tunnel in North America – the great Moffat Tunnel. For cars to go over the mountains, Coloradans built the highest auto tunnel in the world, the Eisenhower Tunnel, slicing through the Continental Divide at 11,000 feet. Today, 72,699 miles of roads criss-cross Colorado’s mountains and plains.
When man could fly over the mountains, Denver built the world’s second largest airport – a facility so huge it is twice the size of New York’s Manhattan Island.
To make Colorado habitable, men not only had to move mountains, they also had to move water uphill. Only one-half of one percent of Colorado is covered with water, making it the state’s most precious commodity. Even more challenging, 80 percent of Colorado’s population lives in the arid Front Range, which is home to only 25 percent of the state’s water.
The solution has been to build nearly 2,000 reservoirs and 40 water diversion projects, including the little known Roberts Tunnel – the longest major underground water tunnel in the world, which at 23.3 miles is nearly as long as the Chunnel between England and France.
From weather to wildlife, from people to places, Doug Freed has used numbers to create a vivid description of Colorado. Throughout this book are hundreds of gems that make the wonders of Colorado more accessible, while adding a valuable resource to the literature of the state.
John Hickenlooper
Mayor, City & County of Denver
