Uniting mountain and plain: Urbanization, law, and environmental change in the Denver region, 1858-1903

This is a new story about the struggle for control in the latter half of the nineteenth century---cities' control over diverse hinterlands local entrepreneurial control over a regional economy dependent upon outside capital a regulated society's control over laissez-faire capitalism and humans' control over nature. The geographic focus is Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, which stood at the intersection of the Rockies and the plains and dominated a new economy. The questions raised, however, resonated throughout the nation and still have meaning today. Recent developments in urban history, legal history, environmental history, and the new western history open new avenues to explore the gradual, contested transformation of the United States from a nation of disparate traditional agrarian communities to a modern, integrated industrial society, and considers the consequences of this for the disparate ecosystems drawn into the new regional economy.These cities and their entrepreneurs were more than conduits for outside capital. They recruited, organized, and applied capital throughout the region. Struggling to become autonomous and competitive, regional decisionmakers were often guided by market values which increasingly dominated American society. However, in the Denver region, on the periphery of the national and international economy, the modern capitalist society did not emerge as early, as smoothly, or as completely as many legal historians suggest it did in the nation. Tenets of a regulated society were sometimes adopted by ranchers, miners, and courts when necessary to protect local interests vis-a-vis outsiders. They regularly formed quasi-legal institutions which regulated commerce and advanced the interests of the community ahead of those who seemingly put resources to more productive uses.At times, the persistence of tenets of a regulated society could be more devastating to the environment than the singular application of market principles. Whatever underlying ideology influenced regional activity, there was one constant. Regional decisionmakers assumed nature existed to benefit the new human population. They rapidly, profoundly, and permanently altered the relations which diverse social groups---Native Americans, Hispanos, and European Americans---shared with each other and with the land.