Then there came a party of twenty persons from Lawrence, Kansas. All of Colorado was then Kansas. These new-comers went three miles farther up the river, and washed the sand for gold at a village of their own, which they called Montana. That was in midsummer. In September of the same year, 1858, some of the Georgia men--or perhaps some outsiders--organized a town where East Denver is now, and called it St. Charles. They drew up formal organization papers, and then, not knowing what to do with them, _filed them with themselves_. A month later the Georgians established at Indian Row, now West Denver, formally turned that queer little pin-point on the map into a town, which they called Auraria. A store was added to the village very quickly, and one of the merchants who opened it is alive in Denver to-day. Remember that all this was only a little more than thirty years ago, when some of my readers would have called Mr. Gladstone an old man. Prince Bismarck was fifty years old when this happened.
St. Charles village was a failure, and the founders of Montana soon moved away and joined Auraria. Then came some men, such as are called "hustlers" in the West, and they went to work in mighty earnest to make a city of St. Charles. They agreed that each should build a house, and in less than fifty days (by January, 1859) there were twenty houses standing. They named the place Denver, using the name of an ex-Governor of Kansas Territory, and they gave the town a full set of officials. Then began a great rivalry between Denver and Auraria. Auraria seemed to get the business places. The merchants went there, and there Mr. William N. Byers established the first newspaper--the _Rocky Mountain News_. He and the paper are both active to-day. But little Denver captured the express company when it came, and that ended the rivalry, for all communication with civilization was had through the express company. In 1860 the two towns became one, and were called Denver.
It was in 1859 that the prairie-schooners going to Denver most nearly resembled great swarms of moths. There had been a money panic in the United States, and hard times followed. This led to a rush for the new gold-fields. The truth was that there was not gold enough to pay the crowds for coming, but two remarkable events happened. In the first place, a miner named Gregory, who had been drifting about in the West, happened just then to come upon rich "diggings" not far away. The people came from the East as in a stampede. Some heard that the finding of gold was a hoax, and turned back to go home, meeting other thousands on their way to the diggings. In the East no one knew what to believe; but just then three newspaper men--Horace Greeley, the great editor, Henry Villard, and A. D. Richardson--arrived in this region, investigated the new diggings, and wrote an account of them for all the world to read. They told how a great many miners were making a great deal of money, and how a much greater number were not finding any gold at all. Then they warned the public not to come in such great numbers. I will repeat in substance what they wrote, as it makes a picture of the surroundings of Denver when it was a tiny baby city.