History & Celebrations Today – August 1

Celebrations Today – August 1

Holidays and observances

Celebrations Today – USA: August 1

National Raspberry Cream Pie Day
National Girlfriends Day
National Minority Donor Awareness Day
Respect for Parents Day
National Night Out Day – First Tuesday in August
National Homemade Pie Day
National Lammas
National Lughnasadh
National Play Ball Day
National Rounds Resounding Day
National Spiderman Day
National Woman Astronomers Day
World Wide Web Day
National Yorkshire Day

Today in US History: August 1

Colorado

After its first bid for statehood was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson, Colorado entered the Union on August 1, 1876, the year the United States celebrated its centennial. Thus, the thirty-eighth state is known as the Centennial State.

Ute Indian Camp
Ute Indian Camp, Garden of the Gods, Shan Kive,
Colorado, 1913.
Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991

Among the early inhabitants of the land encompassed by Colorado were the Anasazi cliff dwellers. They were forced by drought and other factors to abandon their Mesa Verde homes in the late 1200s. At the time of European exploration and settlement Colorado’s population was made up of Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. Their territory was explored by the Spanish who, after Napoleon’s conquest of Spain, turned over its title to the French.

The United States acquired the eastern part of Colorado in 1803 through the Louisiana Purchase and the western portion in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In 1850, the federal government also purchased a Texas claim in Colorado. This combined property eventually became the Colorado Territory in 1861.

Stream along Million Dollar Highway
Rocks and stream along the Million Dollar Highway,
Ouray County, Colorado,
Russell Lee, photographer,
October, 1940.
America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945

The 1858 discovery of gold caused a population influx in Colorado, just as it had in California in 1849. After Horace Greeley notified readers of the New-York Tribune of this news, as many as 5,000 miners per week poured into the territory. By 1900 gold production had reached over $20,000,000 annually at Cripple Creek, one of the world’s richest gold camps.

Colorado proved rich in other minerals as well, and smelting ores to separate gold and other valuable metals became commercially profitable. As late as the 1940s, mountain streams in Ouray County, Colorado, ran yellow because of the tailings from the gold mills, as seen in this photo by Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee.

Railroad lines with names such as the Denver, Cripple Creek and Southwestern Railroad brought even more travelers and settlers to Colorado. Railroad traveler Sue A. Pike Sanders recorded the following impressions in her journal of an overnight stay in Denver in the summer of 1886:

Denver is a beautiful city of some 75,000 inhabitants, built mostly of stone and brick. It contains the usual amount of fine buildings. One in particular we are lead to observe, and that, Tabor’s Opera House, the largest in the world, excepting one in Paris, France. This building cost $850,000. The County Court House occupies an entire block, with buildings and ground. There are two large smelting works here…Sue A. Sanders, A Journey to, on and from the “Golden Shore,”, 1887.
“California as I Saw It”: First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849-1900

Mine American Memory to find a mother lode of information on Colorado:

Today in History – August 1-External Links

Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia