A Compendium of Curious Colorado Place Names

Author

PREFACE

As I was driving into the Colorado high country not long ago in pursuit of late season/hungry/throw-caution-to-the-wind trout, it occurred to me that although I had lived in this beautiful state more than forty years, I knew very little about the origin of its place names. I decided it was time to remedy that situation, and I began tracking down information about these names.

I quickly discovered that every name came with a story, and those stories were interesting and entertaining. Taken together, they told much of the history of Colorado. I also quickly discovered I wasn’t the only longtime Colorado resident (to say nothing of visitors to our state) who knew little about this state’s place names and where they came from. By way of example, in the course of writing this book, after many inquiries, I never found anyone who knew how Denver got its name. Additionally, Siri, although polite and apologetic, was of only occasional help.

Initially, my thought was to put the information I had gathered into something like a travel guide—just an alphabetical list of names with a snippet of name origin information attached to each. But the good folks at The History Press, the publisher of this book, had a better idea—organize the material into chapters grouping names together that had a common source of inspiration, like Native Americans, explorers, geologic and geographic landmarks and so on, and include brief background material for each of these organizational categories. So, that’s what I have done. (If you’re looking for a particular name, the index at the end of the book will take you there.)

You won’t, of course, find all Colorado names here. There are too many. I’ve focused on names that have piqued my curiosity like, say, Slumgullion, or that come with an unusual story attached like, say, Breckenridge. Most names with an obvious derivation—eagle, beaver, coyote, Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan, Harvard, Yale, Democrat, Republican, Elway, Manning, Helton and so on—have largely been excluded.

I also need to add that this book is not, for the most part, a work of original scholarship. Rather, I have relied on information gathered by others, and some of what you find here may be as much legend as fact. But the legends, if that’s what they are, are intriguing.

I would be remiss in not recognizing the digging and sifting accomplishments of others who have worked diligently to uncover the origin of Colorado place names, notably George R. Eichler and his successor, William Bright, who carried on Eichler’s scholarship after his death (Colorado Place Names, third edition, Johnson Books, Boulder), as well as Maxine Benson, who added to the list of names addressed by Eichler and Bright and sometimes found competing theories of name origin (1001 Colorado Place Names, University Press of Kansas). I’m also indebted to Carl Abbott, Steven J. Leonard and Thomas J. Noel, authors of Colorado: A History of the Centennial State, fifth edition (University Press of Colorado). This book helped me understand what was happening in Colorado during the times most of the place names referenced in my book were being created.

If you find a name that isn’t in this book and you think it should be (and you know where the name came from), let me know and I’ll include it in the next edition.

INTRODUCTION

As you would expect, Colorado place names come from a multitude of sources. This includes the Spanish empire and its North American successor, Mexico, and their fondness for saints and other religious references. It includes Native Americans, who can trace their roots back many thousands of years to the days of wooly mammoths and primitive tools and who had most of Colorado to themselves until the 1800s. But then the great European-American western migration began, and Native American populations were decimated by warfare, white man’s diseases, shrinking animal herds due to overhunting and, some would argue, genocide.

Also in the mix of place name originators are the explorers who endured incredible hardship and danger to explore and map what is now Colorado and to climb its highest mountains on their day off. (All of this took place before REI and Gore-Tex.) North American mountain men are part of this group, although their objective was not so much to explore and map as it was to kill beavers and send their pelts back to Europe, where beaver hats were held in high esteem as a men’s fashion item. If it hadn’t been for a change in European fashion preference from beaver hats to silk hats, the beaver population in Colorado might have been exterminated. These poor critters—busy building dams, lodges and ponds and paying no attention to their safety—didn’t seem to realize that they were on their way to regional extinction. Soldiers also belong in this group since their military assignments often included exploration. In addition, a substantial military presence was necessary in Colorado during its formative years to support the western European-American migration, and a substantial military presence has continued ever since, now to protect against (or be prepared to engage in) space and cyber warfare.

Then we have the prospectors, lured to Colorado by an 1859 gold rush, a silver boom in the 1870s, another gold rush in the 1890s and a realization that coal and other mineral deposits in Colorado could be exploited for profit. Although Colorado was—and continues to be—famous for refining the concept of boom and bust, prospectors and miners were the most prolific at this enterprise. After the 1859 gold rush flamed out, there were as many people trudging across the Great American Desert from west to east as there were from east to west.

Next we have the railroads. Despite the immense capital needed to build a rail line, there were dozens of railroad companies trying to lay tracks and gain shipping monopolies throughout the Colorado Territory (and, starting in 1876, the state of Colorado). Most went broke, but a few survived. The competition was fierce, including at one point armed conflict between two railroad companies vying to establish a rail line from Pueblo to Leadville along the Arkansas River. Until the arrival of rail service, reaching Colorado from take-off points along the Missouri River corridor required a miserable multi-day/multi-week stagecoach or ox cart trip across the prairies. In addition to wholly uncomfortable transportation devices (shock absorber technology was in its infancy), travelers had to endure blizzards, dust storms, rain, hail, tornados, rattlesnakes, swarming insects, bandits and hostile Indians if they wanted to get to Colorado. Railroads changed all that and made the journey to Colorado almost pleasant (probably more so than today’s air travel). The railroads established new towns along their routes and gave them names, with the names, in most cases, lasting far longer than the railroads.

As a regular source of place names, we also have politicians, entrepreneurs and promoters, many of whom overlapped. They saw the potential for income enhancement that Colorado had to offer and were willing to take huge risks and exaggerate to others (to the point of outright fraud) the chances for entrepreneurial success in pursuit of personal gain. Fortunes were made and often lost again. But along the way, these individuals built infrastructure, created a system of laws and the means to enforce them and established a (mostly) democratic form of government that allowed the state, albeit in fits and starts, to grow and prosper. Many Colorado places were named after these players to honor their accomplishments (and feed their egos).

Agriculturalists—farmers and ranchers—were also responsible for many Colorado place names. These were often ordinary (and sometimes desperate) folks, including many immigrants, who packed up their belongings and came to Colorado to try their hand at farming and ranching in the arid West, in pursuit of a better life for themselves and their families. (In some cases, they came for the gold and stayed for the sugar beets.) However, there were also large amounts of agriculture-related capital imported into Colorado when times were good and the fruit hung low. Many farmers and ranchers failed, some held on by their fingertips but survived and some (in particular those who learned how to use free resources provided by the federal government) accomplished great things and achieved significant wealth.

In this category, we also have other pioneers and settlers who may have given agriculture a try and, when that didn’t work out, moved on to other activities in pursuit of an income. Some people came to Colorado with the intent to carry on with an existing profession or occupation, thinking there might be a better market out west for their skills. These pioneers and settlers, in addition to the agriculturalists, were often responsible for naming a town or other location where they found themselves.

As part of the naming of places in Colorado by transplants to the area, the United States Post Office, predecessor to our current United States Postal Service, played an important role. That’s because a goal of every new community was to obtain an official U.S. Post Office designation, and the postal service had the final say on the names assigned to the new post offices it approved. U.S. Post Office officials in charge of name assignments were apparently not selected based on spelling skills, and this resulted in frequent name mutations that have nonetheless survived.

Also on our list of inspirational sources for place names are geographic and geologic phenomena—for example, unusual rock formations—and flora and fauna. On the flora and fauna side of things, the result has been considerable duplication of effort. For example, Colorado has seventy-two Willow Creeks, forty-nine Bear Creeks and forty-eight Dry Creeks. It has forty-nine streams and a luxury ski resort named Beaver Creek, and there are ten Beaver Lakes and four Beaver Mountains.

The last organizational category I have created is for the misfits. Although many place names referenced in this book could appropriately be placed into more than one category, there are a few that didn’t seem to fit any of the categories. These are the misfits.

Since there are frequent references in this book to the counties of Colorado, I’ve started you off with a map showing the state’s sixty-four counties. When Colorado first became a territory in 1861, there were only seventeen counties. But after that, there was a regular, and often contentious, shuffling of county borders, resulting in gives and takes that produced the current configuration.

Colorado’s sixty-four counties. There may be logic here, but it doesn’t leap out at you. David Benbennick via Wikimedia Commons.

CHAPTER 1

THE SPANISH EMPIRE AND ITS PROGENY

The Spanish empire, notwithstanding its collapse in the 1800s, had a great deal of influence on Colorado place names. Although trying to explain in a few paragraphs Spain’s colonization efforts in North America is like trying to explain in a few paragraphs the origin of the universe, here is generally how it went.

The Spanish empire got going big time after Christopher Columbus’s famous visit to the New World in 1492. Over the next century, Spain expanded its reach to the point where the sun never set on its areas of conquest and control.

From 1519 to 1521, through brutal warfare (and help from deadly European diseases), Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés managed to wipe out the Aztec civilization in Central America and establish a substantial Spanish presence in what is now Mexico. Spanish colonization then began moving north. In 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, another of Spain’s marquee conquistadores, led a 1,300-member expedition from central Mexico into New Mexico. Although Coronado’s expedition didn’t make it to what would eventually become Colorado, it came close.

In further pursuit of northward (and eastward) expansion, in 1598, Juan de Oñate, a Spanish provincial governor, led an expedition of five hundred men and soldiers into northern New Mexico and established a settlement there. A half century later, Juan de Archuleta took an expedition from that location into Colorado.

Spain, however, what with trying to control the entire world and all, didn’t have the resources to maintain a firm grip on its most northerly North American territories. In 1680, a bloody Indian revolt chased Spanish settlers and military personnel out of the area. Between 1692 and 1696, Spain managed to reconquer New Mexico, but Indian raids on Spanish settlements continued, creating a notable deterrent to civilian relocation. The Indians, it seems, were introduced to horses by the Spanish, and not too long after that, they became masters at using horses to disrupt Spanish attempts at colonization in New Mexico and Colorado.

Spain then ran into another problem. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, French traders and settlers from St. Louis and Louisiana began working their way west into what is now southeastern Colorado and northeastern New Mexico. The French found it productive to create alliances with various Indian tribes and used those alliances to restrict Spanish influence in the area. This activity peaked in the mid-1700s.

However, in 1763 and as a consequence of other world events, France ceded its claim to land in the North American heartland to Spain. This turned on the green lights for a man named Juan Bautista de Anza to lead a large expedition from New Mexico into Colorado. Anza was the governor of New Mexico, having been given that position in appreciation for his helping Spain establish San Francisco as an important port and settlement. Anza’s objective on his expedition was to shut down disruptive Comanche Indians, and his travels took him north across the Rio Grande, along the west side of the Sangre de Cristo Range, around the north side of Pikes Peak and into what is now Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs. But any attempt by the Spanish to colonize this area fizzled when Napoleon, in 1800, took back the land France had previously given to Spain. Three years after that, the United States acquired this land as part of the Louisiana Purchase, which included much of Colorado.

In the early 1800s and notwithstanding Napoleon’s meddling and the Louisiana Purchase, Spain still laid claim to a substantial part of Colorado. In 1819, when the United States and Spain couldn’t agree on the location of the line separating their respective territories, they, in order to avoid warfare (or worse, litigation), entered into a treaty known as the Adams-Onis Treaty. This treaty left intact Spain’s claim to a sizeable chunk of Colorado.

But the world continued to turn, and in 1821, Mexico achieved independence from Spain. After three hundred years or so of colonialism, Spain was gone, and the Mexican revolutionary government, ragged though it was, found itself in control of much of what is now the Southwest United States, including the land in Colorado assigned to Spain in the Adams-Onis Treaty.

Then, in 1846, the United States and Mexico got crosswise over the ownership of Texas, which had been annexed into the United States as a new state in 1845. This led to the Mexican-American War. To the extent anyone actually wins wars, the United States came out on top in this affair, and as part of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States acquired most of Mexico’s claim to what are now the southwestern states, including Colorado. Finally, in 1853, the United States purchased some additional land from Mexico, which became a part of the south end of Arizona and New Mexico.

To round out the picture of Colorado’s territorial evolution, in 1850, Texas—now a state after its 1845 annexation into the United States—gave up some of its land as part of a complex politically brokered rearrangement of state and territorial borders called the Compromise of 1850. This deal was driven by the issue of slavery—that is, which states would be slave states and which would not. Texas wanted to be a slave state, and it had to agree to give up some of its land to achieve that objective. A part of the land relinquished by Texas ended up being included in the Colorado Territory when it was formed in 1861, as well as a part of the state of Colorado when it was formed in 1876.

In brief summary of this dash through Spain in North America history, as of 1848 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States finally had ownership of all of what is now Colorado. However, the legacy of the Spanish empire—as a matter of language, religion, agricultural practices, art, architecture, music, food, drink, law and, yes, place names—has lived on.

ACASCOSA. This name (pronounced ah-kahs-kos-uh) is likely a mutation of the Spanish words agua ascosa, meaning stagnant water. A lake, at 10,984 feet in south-central Colorado (Conejos County), has this name. The lake is sometimes referred to by another unflattering name: Bog Lake.

ALAMEDA. Alameda is a Spanish word meaning something like cottonwood grove and has frequently been used as a name for streets, schools, light-rail stations and so on in and around Denver and other parts of the state.

ALAMOSA. Alamosa is another Spanish word that, in one way or another, refers to groves of cottonwood trees. And there are lots of these in Colorado, especially along the banks of the Rio Grande as it crosses through the San Luis Valley in south-central Colorado, where the city and the county of Alamosa are located. The name Alamosa was given to the city by the Denver and Rio Grande Railway when it established a major operation there in 1878. Alamosa County came into being quite a bit later, in 1913. The San Luis Valley is an important agricultural area, rich in history going back long before Colorado was first visited by people of European descent. The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is partly in Alamosa County. As an oh-by-the-way, the other national parks in Colorado are Rocky Mountain, Mesa Verde and Black Canyon of the Gunnison River.

ANIMAS. The Animas River, which runs through Durango on its way to a downstream confluence with the San Juan River, was given the name Río de las Ánimas—River of the Souls—a long time ago by a Spanish explorer. Which one, however, is a matter of controversy. It was possibly Juan María de Rivera, who was wandering around this part of the world in 1765 at the request of the governor of what was then New Mexico. Or it might have been the Franciscan monks Dominguez and Escalante, who passed through the area in the 1770s while on their (unsuccessful) search for a land route from the Spanish mission in Santa Fe to the Spanish missions in central California. The name morphed into just the Animas River at some later time, and that’s now the river’s official name.

ANTONITO. Antonito means Little Anthony in Spanish and derives from the Spanish name for Saint Anthony: San Antonio. In south-central Colorado (Conejos County), we have the San Antonio River and the San Antonio Mountains. Those names, in turn, led to the Antonito name being given to a town