Colorado at 150: The State That Arrived Late and Picked a President

Colorado turns 150 on Saturday. Its admission came three months before a presidential election, and its new constitution handed the choice of the state’s three electors to the legislature rather than the voters. Monument, then a village of 100 with a post office older than the state, watched from the Divide.

Colorado turns 150 on Saturday, and the anniversary is worth marking for a reason that has nothing to do with cake.

President Ulysses S. Grant proclaimed Colorado the nation’s 38th state on Aug. 1, 1876, in the country’s centennial year — a coincidence Colorado newspapers had been exploiting well before admission, claiming the nickname “Centennial State” before anyone knew whether the territory would make it. It very nearly did not. Statehood took 17 years and five attempts, and President Andrew Johnson vetoed it twice, in May 1866 and January 1867, arguing chiefly that the territory’s population was too small to carry the representation and obligations of a state.

Then the timing turned. Admission came three months before the presidential election of 1876, and the constitution Colorado had just ratified made its own arrangements. Section 19 of the constitution’s Schedule ordered the first General Assembly, “immediately after the organization of the two houses … and before proceeding to other business,” to provide for the appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the legislature itself. Section 20 then required that after 1876 the electors “shall be chosen by direct vote of the people.” The exception was written for one election only.

The first General Assembly convened Nov. 1, 1876 and, within days, chose three electors by 50 votes to 24. All three went to Rutherford B. Hayes, who lost the popular vote nationally and took the Electoral College 185 to 184.

Twenty other electoral votes were disputed that year and settled by a federal commission the following winter, so Colorado did not decide the election single-handedly. But its three votes were part of the one-vote margin, and they were cast without Coloradans ever voting for president. It remains the last time a state’s electors were appointed without a popular vote.

An El Paso County Man Held the Gavel

The constitution that made those arrangements had been written a few months earlier, and the man presiding over the convention was local. Joseph C. Wilson, a Republican delegate from El Paso County, served as president of the 1876 constitutional convention, which adjourned on March 15 after thirty-nine delegates signed the document the night before. Voters ratified it on July 1 by 15,443 to 4,062. The delegates gave Wilson a Webster’s dictionary and went home.

El Paso County is older than the state it helped write. It was created on Nov. 1, 1861 as one of Colorado Territory’s original seventeen counties, and its seat was Colorado City — today’s Old Colorado City — until 1873. It turns 165 this November.

What Was Here in 1876

Monument at statehood was a village of about 100 people, and it already had a post office seven years older than the state. David McShane had come through in 1861 on his way to prospect for gold in Summit County; in the spring of 1865 he took up a 160-acre homestead three miles east of Palmer Lake, later doubling it. He was the first postmaster, in 1869.

By 1876 the settlement had a hotel, three churches founded two years earlier, a doctor, a drug store and telegraph service. The Methodist pulpit that year was filled by Father John L. Dyer, the itinerant preacher who delivered mail over the mountain passes on homemade snowshoes, later became the state Senate’s first chaplain, and is now one of the sixteen figures in the Capitol dome’s Circle of Fame, the stained-glass portraits installed in 1900.

The railroad had arrived just ahead of the state. The Denver & Rio Grande laid track through the Divide in 1871 and opened for business on Jan. 1, 1872, which is what turned a scatter of homesteads into a shipping point. Henry Limbach — the German saloon and store keeper known as Dutch Henry, for whom the place had been called Henry’s Station — platted the town site in 1874, the year the name changed to Monument. The town held its first meeting on July 3, 1879 and elected Limbach mayor. It is not quite three years younger than the state.

The pattern held up and down the Palmer Divide. Fred Salomon platted the Greenland town site in 1875, a year before statehood, as a railroad shipping point — the land the Independent wrote about in July, now the eight-mile gap that keeps Denver and Colorado Springs from touching.

Seven Things the Centennial State Has Been Up To Since

The border is not a rectangle, and the reason is arithmetic before it is incompetence. Colorado is defined as a spherical trapezoid, so its northern boundary runs about 22 miles shorter than its southern one. Early surveys then compounded the geometry with markers set off the intended line. When New Mexico sued in 1919 over the southern boundary, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in New Mexico v. Colorado, 267 U.S. 30 (1925) that the line Ehud Darling had run in 1868 governed, because for “a period of more than half a century” both governments had recognized and acquiesced in it. The Court declined to say whether it was accurate. The widely repeated figure of 697 sides comes from a count of vertices on a digital map, not from any survey.

The lowest place in Colorado is higher than the highest place in eighteen states. The U.S. Geological Survey puts the state’s low point at 3,315 feet, where the Arikaree River crosses into Kansas in Yuma County. Pennsylvania’s summit, Mount Davis, reaches 3,213. Colorado’s floor clears it by 102 feet.

Colorado was the first state where men voted to give women the vote. On Nov. 7, 1893, the referendum carried 35,798 to 29,551. Wyoming granted women’s suffrage earlier by legislative act; Colorado was the first to put it to the electorate and win. An earlier attempt in 1877 had lost better than two to one.

The state briefly had three governors inside about twenty-four hours. The 1904 election was corrupt enough that a legislative committee found fraud on both sides. On March 16, 1905, it seated Republican James Peabody on the express condition that he resign the next day, displacing Democrat Alva Adams. On March 17, Peabody resigned and Lt. Gov. Jesse McDonald took over. Colorado politics has rarely lacked ambition; for one afternoon it lacked chairs.

Denver is the only city ever to be awarded the Olympics and then vote them away. The International Olympic Committee gave Denver the 1976 Winter Games in May 1970. In November 1972, Colorado voters passed Amendment 8 — banning state funding for the Games — by 514,228 to 350,964. Note which way the ballot ran: a yes vote was a vote against the Olympics. Denver withdrew within days. Sion and Whistler declined to take over and a Salt Lake City effort went nowhere; the IOC settled on Innsbruck in February 1973.

The cheeseburger’s Denver paperwork was never finished. Louis Ballast of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In filed an application to register “cheeseburger” as a food trademark on March 5, 1935 — with the Colorado Secretary of State, not the federal patent office — and never completed the process. The commemorative marker at 2776 N. Speer Blvd. says “registered,” which is where the legend comes from. Earlier claims exist in Pasadena and Louisville. Colorado’s contribution to the cheeseburger was not the cheese. It was the filing fee.

The state fossil was chosen by a governor because the legislature would not. A fourth-grade class at McElwain Elementary in Thornton, taught by Ruth Sawdo, spent roughly two years lobbying for the Stegosaurus — drafting a proposal, touring the state with displays, working legislators. The General Assembly declined to act. Gov. Richard Lamm designated it by Executive Order D 0002 82 on April 28, 1982, declaring that the Stegosaurus would hold the title “until such time as the General Assembly takes action to establish a State Fossil by statute.” Lawmakers have since referred to it in statute as “the Colorado state fossil” — in a 2023 license-plate bill — but forty-four years on they still have not passed the law the order was waiting for.

Also on the books: pack burro racing, in which competitors run alongside a burro carrying mining gear rather than riding it, became the official summer heritage sport in 2012 — by joint resolution, not statute. And the town of Artesia renamed itself Dinosaur in 1966 to trade on its proximity to Dinosaur National Monument, then named its streets after the animals and put Town Hall at 317 Stegosaurus Freeway. Subtlety was not the objective.

The Statutory Holiday That Misses the Birthday

There is one last piece of administrative comedy, and it lands this weekend.

Colorado Day is on the books at C.R.S. 24-11-111, which provides that “on the first Monday of August in each year, commonly called ‘Colorado Day’, appropriate observance may be held by the public.” The statute is permissive rather than mandatory, it does not appear in the list of legal holidays at C.R.S. 24-11-101, and state offices do not close for it. This year it falls on Monday, Aug. 3 — two days after the anniversary it commemorates.

The state is celebrating on the birthday anyway, at the Capitol and at museums across Colorado. But the statutory date still governs where money is involved. Colorado Parks and Wildlife is waiving entrance fees at all 43 state parks on Monday, Aug. 3 — not Saturday, a distinction several event listings have gotten wrong. Turning up at a park gate on the 150th birthday itself still costs money.

Colorado’s first 150 years produced mining booms and water wars, suffrage and scandal, a town called Dinosaur and a border that will not hold still. Monument’s share of it began as a post office on a homestead, seven years before there was a state to put it in.

The town has spent the century and a half since arguing about what it ought to become next. On that, at least, the record is unbroken.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: Palmer Divide History Day — the Palmer Lake Historical Society’s own contribution to the 250/150 commemoration, held July 18 · The Last Line of Defense — Greenland, platted in 1875, a year before statehood, and what became of the land

Statehood and the 1876 election: Colorado Constitution, Schedule §§ 19–20 (CRS front matter) · Colorado General Assembly overview · Colorado Virtual Library on the 1876 presidential election · History Colorado, “Seventeen Years to Statehood” · U.S. Senate record of Johnson’s vetoes · Colorado State Archives, chronology of the constitution · Colorado Newsline on the 1876 convention · Colorado Encyclopedia on the state name and nickname

Local record: Palmer Lake Historical Society, Monument history and timeline · David McShane · Henry Limbach · Town of Monument history · Colorado Encyclopedia on El Paso County · Colorado LegiSource on Father Dyer · The Colorado State Capitol at a Glance

The oddities: New Mexico v. Colorado, 267 U.S. 30 (1925) · USGS elevations table · History Colorado on the road to the vote · Colorado Virtual Library on the three-governor day · Colorado Encyclopedia on the 1976 Winter Olympics · Colorado State Archives, symbols and emblems · Executive Order D 0002 82, full text · Senate Bill 23-145 · Town of Dinosaur

Saturday’s events: Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum · United We Rock at Rock Ledge Ranch · Tri-Lakes Smokin’ Showdown · History Colorado, Colorado Day statewide · General Assembly, Colorado Day at the Capitol · Colorado Parks and Wildlife on free park entry Aug. 3 · C.R.S. 24-11-111

Methodology

Figures here are taken from primary and archival sources rather than from the compilations that circulate each August, several of which repeat errors. The elector account is drawn from the text of the constitution’s Schedule as published by the General Assembly, not from secondary summaries: sections 19 and 20 together show the 1876 appointment was a deliberate one-time constitutional design rather than an accident of the calendar. The date the electors were chosen is given as “within days” of the Nov. 1 convening because no primary journal establishing the exact day was available.

Three widely published claims were corrected. The “697 sides” figure for the border originates in a count of vertices on an OpenStreetMap rendering, not in any survey. The three-governor episode is usually compressed into one calendar day; Peabody was seated March 16, 1905 and resigned March 17. Louis Ballast’s cheeseburger filing is routinely called a trademark; the application went to the Colorado Secretary of State on March 5, 1935 and was never completed, and no federal registration has been located. Elevations are from the USGS table of state high and low points.

Event details were taken from organizers’ own listings as of July 31 and are subject to change. Where the Town of Palmer Lake and the Smokin’ Showdown organizers give different finish times, both are noted. A ticket cap reported elsewhere for United We Rock is omitted because no organizer or city source states one.