Colorado almost wasn’t the 'Centennial State'
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DENVER — Since Colorado became a state in 1876 — 100 years after the United States declared independence from Great Britain — Coloradans have celebrated its unique identity as the Centennial State.
But that almost wasn’t the case. It took 17 years and five attempts for Colorado to join the Union. To learn more about Colorado’s long road to statehood, Rocky Mountain PBS spoke with Katherine Mercier, exhibition developer and historian at History Colorado.
“The Centennial State is a huge part of Colorado's identity. That was readily apparent in 1875…the newspapers immediately start publishing, ‘We can be the Centennial State. We have this chance to be the Centennial State.’ This is definitely something that people latch on to really early on,” Mercier said.
The first attempt
Coloradans first organized attempt at statehood took place in 1859, before Colorado was even a U.S. territory. Powerful elites in Denver were among the loudest voices advocating for statehood throughout the next two decades. Historians call this influential group of business owners the “Denver Ring of Power,” Mercier said.
One of these men, William Byers, used his platform as editor of the Rocky Mountain News to heavily promote statehood. Byers is also responsible for publishing articles that incited violence and hatred against Indigenous people in Colorado.
Before statehood, the federal government selected a governor from outside the territory to represent people in Colorado. Becoming a state would give men over 21 years old in Colorado the right to elect their own representatives. It would also give powerful men like Byers the opportunity to be elected, which is one reason why the Denver Ring of Power pushed so hard for statehood.
The need for roads and railroads was another reason some people supported joining the Union. Coloradans wanted more roads to transport gold out of the mountains, and statehood could mean federal funding to build more roads. Similarly, people realized that federal lobbying support could make it possible to finally get a railroad destination in Colorado.
“In the 1860s, whether or not you had a railroad coming to you meant whether or not you would survive as a place. There was a real concern over getting the railroad here,” Mercier said.
In order to become a state, people living in the area must decide they want to be a state — through a referendum or approving a state constitution, for example — then bring their statehood request to Congress.
The U.S. Constitution says that a potential state can’t steal land from another state in order to join the Union. That’s the only requirement about statehood; the rest are guidelines. For instance, one guideline suggested a territory’s population be at least 60,000 before statehood.
Representatives in Congress would debate the political and economic benefits and downsides to adding a state. If Congress approved statehood, it could still be vetoed by the President.
But Colorado’s first attempt at statehood didn’t make it to the federal level. Denver elites couldn’t swing the votes of miners, who didn’t want to pay the taxes that statehood would require.
The second attempt
In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln and a Republican-controlled Congress wanted Colorado to become a state so Lincoln could secure more Republican electoral votes for his re-election. Lincoln passed an act enabling Colorado to become a state if it could approve a state constitution by September.
When the Colorado territory lines were drawn in 1861, which are the same state lines used today, the southern border cut through New Mexico’s territory.
The people living above this line had familial and cultural ties to New Mexico but found themselves placed in an entirely new territory without a say in the matter. This population was largely Latino and Spanish-speaking, but the Colorado territorial legislature would not pay to translate its laws into Spanish.
“Southern Colorado is largely against statehood because it's like, ‘These people don't represent us. Why would we vote to become part of this nation when we're struggling to even maintain our rights here in southern Colorado?’” Mercier said.
Opposition from miners and voters in southern Colorado helped tank the second attempt at statehood, which failed by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. Voters were also concerned about federal conscription laws, which would force men to enlist in the ongoing Civil War.
The third and fourth attempts
The 1864 proposed constitution disenfranchised Black men, who previously had the right to vote in the Colorado territory.
In 1865, Colorado voters — this time only white men over 21 years old — approved statehood by a narrow margin.
“The Black community here in Colorado at the time gets together and says we can't let statehood happen because we don't want to be part of a state that doesn't allow us this basic human right of voting,” Mercier said.
Black men in Denver, including William Jefferson Hardin and Barney Ford, collected signatures calling for Black men’s suffrage in the state of Colorado. They asked Colorado’s territorial governor Alexander Cummings to forward the petition to Congress.
“There are many debates that are held in Congress over this issue, and it actually ends up delaying the statehood vote for Colorado to the effect of essentially we don't become a state in 1865,” Mercier said.
By the time Colorado’s appeal for statehood reached the White House, Lincoln had been assassinated and Andrew Johnson was president. Johnson didn’t share Lincoln’s desire to make Colorado a state, and he vetoed Colorado’s statehood because it didn’t have a large enough population.
The same thing happened in Colorado’s fourth statehood attempt in 1866.
The activism of the disenfranchised Black voters in Colorado had nationwide impacts. In 1867, Congress passed the Territorial Suffrage Act, which gave any man older than 21, regardless of race, the right to vote in a territory.
The fifth — and final — attempt
In 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant took a trip to Colorado, and he liked what he saw.
The Denver Pacific Railway, completed in 1870, connected the territory’s capital with the rest of the continent. Colorado had a larger population after the end of the Civil War, and its territorial government had used violence and treaties to remove Indigenous people from their homelands, freeing up more land for settlement.
The Indigenous people living on the land that became Colorado were among the first to feel the impacts of the road to statehood, as white settlers forcefully took over Native lands.
“The Cheyenne and the Arapaho and the Ute people are still alive and still living in Colorado today. But statehood had a huge and immense change on their lives with the people that were bringing here and disrupting the resources on the land that these people were depending on,” Mercier said.
President Grant returned to Congress and advocated for Colorado’s statehood in 1873. But political arguments at the federal level delayed statehood for a few more years — just enough time for Colorado to claim statehood, and its iconic nickname, in 1876.
Colorado voters approved the state constitution July 1, 1876 and President Grant proclaimed Colorado the 38th state August 1.
The 1876 Colorado Constitution addressed some of the concerns held by anti-statehood voters. It gave Black men the right to vote and mandated the publication of laws in Spanish and German. The constitution posited that the state legislature could extend the right to vote to women in Colorado, which it did almost 20 years later, in 1893.
More people moved to Colorado after it became a state. Statehood also gave Colorado access to more federal funds, which led to a boom of state institutions — like universities, hospitals and a historical society — throughout the 1870s and 80s.
The Colorado State Historical Society founded in 1879 is now known as History Colorado. In preparation for Colorado’s 150th year anniversary next August, the History Colorado Center will open a new exhibit, called “38th Star: Colorado Becomes the Centennial State,” on September 26. The exhibition, developed by Mercier, will explore Colorado’s road to statehood. It will run through September 6, 2026.
Type of story: Explainer
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