"This region, according to the best intelligence that can be had, is thoroughly uninhabitable by a people depending on agriculture for their subsistence, but, viewed as a frontier, may prove of infinite importance to the United States, inasmuch as it is calculated to serve as a barrier to prevent too great an extension of our population westward and secure us against the machinations or incursions of an enemy that might otherwise be disposed to annoy us in that quarter."
Less than sixty-five years have passed since the region of which Denver is the great centre was thus pronounced useless except as a frontier to serve as protection from an enemy, and this judgment reminds one of a keen insight into the evolutionary progress of life expressed by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe when she remarked that "Every generation makes a fool of the one that went before it." Colorado, pronounced "thoroughly uninhabitable" in 1842, was organized as a territory in 1861 and in 1876 admitted as a state.
Darwin, who regarded "climate and the affections" as the only absolute necessities of terrestrial existence, should have lived in Denver, for of all the beautiful climates is that in which revels the capital of Colorado. The air is all liquid gold from sunrise till sunset; the mountains swim in a sea of azure blue; the ground is bare and dry in winter, affording the best of walking, and there are few cities where the general municipal management exceeds or is, perhaps, even as good as that of Denver. The electric street-car service is on schedule time, and the two hundred and twenty-five miles of its extent already, with increase in the near future, is certainly an achievement for a young city. Nature is a potent factor in this excellent service, as there is no blocking by heavy snowstorms and blizzards, as in the Middle West and the East.
The gazer in the magic mirror of the future requires little aid from the imagination to see, in the growth and development of Denver, an impressive illustration of the significance of the name of the state of which it is the capital and the keynote. With what felicitous destiny is the name invested in the old Castilian phrase, "_A Dios con le Colorado_" (Go thou merrily with God),--a parting salutation and benediction. Denver is, indeed, more than a state capital; it is the epitome of the great onward march of civilization, and it must always be considered in its wide relations to all the great Southwest as well as in respect to its own municipal individuality.