Feb. 28, 1861
Congress establishes the Territory of Colorado. The main reason: gold. For many years after the United States obtained the area now known as Colorado, it was populated largely by Native Americans. This changed in 1858, when Anglo prospectors panned pieces of the precious mineral out of area streams. The news spread quickly. Within a year about 50,000 more fortune hunters joined them, settled in the area, and tried to set up some system of land ownership and basic laws. The informal system they came up with could not keep up with the growing number of settlers, an the government—which was about to start fighting the Civil War—was forced to intervene. Congress took pieces of the Nebraska, Utah, Kansas and New Mexico territories and designated them the Colorado Territory. William Gilpin became the territory's first governor. In August 1876 Colorado became a state, with the same boundaries it had had as a territory.
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