Spurred by the Gold Rush of 1859, settlers of diverse backgrounds and nationalities trekked to Colorado and began building towns. Existing accounts of their struggles and those of townbuilders throughout the American West focus on boom-or-bust economics, rampant boosterism, and bitter social conflicts. This, according to sociologist Richard Hogan, is not the whole story. In Class and Community in Frontier ColoradoHogan offers a fresh perspective on the frontier townbuilding experience. He argues that townbuilding in Colorado was not, as some have suggested, monopolized by local boosters or national business interests. It was, instead, a complex, dynamic process that reflected competition, cooperation, and conflict among various socioeconomic classes, and between local and national business interests as well. Hogan shows how farmers, ranchers, miners, tradesmen, merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs, land speculators, and eastern investors all vied for control in six of Colorado’s emerging urban centers: Denver, Central City, Greeley, Golden, Pueblo, and Canon City. Meticulously he traces the conflicts and coalitions that arose in and among these groups. By combining historical sociology with local history, Hogan’s study challenges current thinking about economic development, class structure and conflict, political partisanship, collective action, and social change in the American West.

Because some classes of people may not have been considered worthy of notice by dominant social groups in the past, they may be less visible to us today in historical and archaeological records; consequently, they remain less studied. This volume attempts to redress this oversight by presenting case studies of historical and archaeological research on various ethnic, racial, gender, and socioeconomic groups in colonial and post-colonial North America. These contributions illustrate how historical archaeologists and ethnohistorians have used documentary and archaeological evidence to retrieve information on neglected aspects of American history. They explore ways of making more visible Native Americans, African Americans, and Euro-Americans of differing ethnic groups and economic classes, and also shed new light on such groups as celibate religious communities, women in predominantly male communities, and working-class and middle-class women in urban communities. Material evidence on "those of little note" provides not only fresh insight into our understanding of daily life in the past, but also a refreshing counterpoint to the male- and Euro-centered analysis that has characterized much of historical archaeology since its inception. Readers will find many chapters rewarding in their application of sophisticated feminist theory to archaeological data, or in their probing of complex relational issues concerning the construction of gender identity and gender relationships. As the first archeaeologically-focused collection to examine the interconnectedness of gender, class, race, and ethnicity in past societies, Those of Little Note sets new standards for future research. CONTENTS I--Introduction 1. Through the Lens of Gender: Archaeology, Inequality, and Those "Of Little Note" / Elizabeth M. Scott II--Native American and African American Communities 2. Cloth, Clothing, and Related Paraphernalia: A Key to Gender Visibility in the Archaeological Record of Russian America / Louise M. Jackson 3. "We Took Care of Each Other Like Families Were Meant To": Gender, Social Organization, and Wage Labor Among the Apache at Roosevelt / Everett Bassett 4. The House of the Black Burghardts: An Investigation of Race, Gender, and Class at the W. E. B. DuBois Boyhood Homesite / Nancy Ladd Muller III--All Male and Predominantly Male Communities 5. "With Manly Courage": Reading the Construction of Gender in a 19th-Century Religious Community / Elizabeth Kryder-Reid 6. The Identification of Gender at Northern Military Sites of the Late 18th Century / David R. Starbuck 7. Class, Gender Strategies, and Material Culture in the Mining West / Donald L. Hardesty IV--Working Women in Urban Communities 8. Mrs. Starr's Profession / Donna J. Seifert 9. Diversity and 19th-Century Domestic Reform: Relationships Among Classes and Ethnic Groups / Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood

Sprawling Piedmont cities, ghost towns on the plains, earth-toned placitas set against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, mining camps transformed into ski resorts--these are some of the diverse regions in Colorado explored in this fascinating book. Historical geographer William Wyckoff traces the evolution of the state during its formative years from 1860 to 1940, chronicling its changing cultural landscapes, social communities, and connections to a larger America and showing that Colorado has exemplified the unfolding of a complex western environment. Wyckoff discusses how nature, capitalism, a growing federal political presence, and national cultural influences came together to produce a new human geography in Colorado. He explains the ways in which the state's distinctive settlement geographies each took on a special character that persists to the present. He leads the reader through the transformation of the state from wilderness to a distinct region capable of accommodating the diverse needs of ranchers, miners, merchants, farmers, and city dwellers. And he describes how a state created out of cartographic necessity has been given uniqueness and meaning by the people who live there.