In 1868 Mr. Meeker made a trip to the West for the "Tribune," writing a series of valuable letters embodying his observations of the country. It was during this journey that the night came which lends itself to imaginative picturing with dramatic vividness when, just after Christmas, he stood in the Garden of the Gods near the foot of Pike's Peak, while the stars of the Colorado skies blazed above him, and, as if by a flash of vision saw a town arise in the desert. The vision fell upon him like an inspiration. Founding towns seemed, indeed, to run in the family, as one of his ancestors had founded the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, naming it after his wife.
Mr. Meeker returned to the Tribune office with his dream of a beautiful city to arise out of the sand and sage-brush of the desert. An idealist himself, Mr. Meeker had also the good fortune of having married a woman capable of sharing ideal dreams and of rising to the heights of sacrifice, and she, too, embraced his new enthusiasm.
"Go ahead," replied Mr. Greeley, when Mr. Meeker mentioned his new project, "the 'Tribune' will back you."
A meeting was then called in Cooper Institute, as before stated, Horace Greeley presiding, and John Russell Young entering into the idea with sympathy. Mr. Meeker presented his project of a Union colony to establish itself in Colorado. Of the conditions he said:--
"The persons with whom I would be willing to associate must be temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among as many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars each, or twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while others may have from two thousand to one thousand dollars and upward. For many to go so far without means could only result in disaster."
The members were to each contribute one hundred and fifty-five dollars to a fund to purchase and prepare the land. It was in April of 1869 that the committee made the purchase of forty thousand acres, located between the Cache la Poudre and the South Platte rivers, twenty-five miles from the Rocky Mountains and in full sight of Long's Peak. Greeley has a beautiful situation, and a perfection of climate that perhaps exists hardly anywhere else in all Colorado. Whatever the heat of the day, the nights are cool. The days are so bright, so beautiful, that they seem a very foretaste of paradise.