Before the Gold Rush - South Platte River

South Platte River 

I have been reading, very slowly, Elliott West's The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado about the history of Colorado and the western Great Plains from the prehistoric human period through the later 19th Century. Watching the weekly establishment of new oil and natural gas wells along the Interstate 25 corridor north of Denver on the way to Wyoming, and the rolling hills covered with green wheat fields, I have wondered what the landscape looked like before the settlement period with its expansion of farms and ranches. West describes how the native tribes would cycle between the summer grasslands and river lowlands for winter - the riparian areas being protected and providing wood and grass for the long cold period along the Front Range of the Rockie Mountains. The natural resources in these areas were already being over-utilized when the gold seekers and accompanying settlers poured into the region, and helped push the tightly coupled producers and consumers over the edge.

The photograph above is an interpretation by my son of the South Platte River taken along the east side of the river just after going under West Mineral Avenue and over the foot bridge. The best place to park is by the Carson Nature Center behind Aspen Grove Shopping Center. The image looks a little like what things may have appeared before the gold rush - before nature was on the run After the Gold Rush.
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After the Gold Rush by Neil Young

Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor come
Sayin' somethin' about me
There were children singin' and drummers drummin'
The archer split the tree
There was a fanfare blowin' to the sun
That floated on the breeze
We got mother nature on the run, in the nineteen seventies
Look at mother nature on the run, in the nineteen seventies

I was lyin' in a burnt out basement
With the full moon in my eye
I was hopin' for a replacement
When the sun burst through the sky
There was a band playin' in my head
And I felt like getting high
Thinkin' about what a friend had said, I was hopin' it was a lie
Thinkin' about what a friend had said, I was hopin' it was a lie

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flyin'
In the yellow haze of the sun
There were children cryin' and colors flyin'
All around the chosen ones
All in a dream, all in a dream the loadin' had begun
We were flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home