Ute Chief Ouray was important in early Colorado history, working to moderate the inevitable conflicts between the Utes, original "owners" of much of Colorado, and the flood of incoming white miners, ranchers and settlers. The Colorado Historical Society appropriately has a museum honoring Ouray; the county, city and mountain in Colorado named for Ouray further demonstrate his importance. This book depicts the Chief as seen by the Indian agents, Territorial Governors, and others who actually knew and wrote about him. The activities of Porter Nelson in Colorado, particularly of a business nature, are spelled out here more fully than in Houston's bare-bones chronology, The Battle Over Silver: Porter Nelson in Aspen, published by the Professional Press in 1997. Porter Nelson came to Colorado only after Ouray's death, but Nelson's activities were constrained by what had happened to Ouray and his Utes. Linking, as this book does, the story of a Colorado Indian leader with that of a not atypical white settler arguably results in a broader, double-barreled portrayal of Colorado in the late 1800's and early 1900's. This book is the result of years of Houston research into primary sources, at the National Archives in Washington and at local courthouses.

River Odyssey is a collection of essays and poems, but it is one story - an intimate story about human time and the Colorado Plateau. This is a story about time alone and time on foot in the American West.

Colorado history is filled with maverick men and women who shaped the state's identity and culture. Trailblazers Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long laid groundwork for the miners, farmers and statesmen who helped the area evolve into a territory and a state. Father of Rocky Mountain National Park Enos Mills and writer Isabella Bird praised the surrounding natural splendor and championed its preservation. Entrepreneurs Otto Mears and William Jackson Palmer linked mines with towns such as Colorado Springs and Telluride, while the innovations of F.O. Stanley and Nikola Tesla energized the state. Author Phyllis J. Perry chronicles the lives of thirty men and women who left their indelible marks on Colorado.

In 1875, a team of cartographers, geologists, and scientists under the direction of Ferdinand V. Hayden entered the Four Corners area for what they thought would be a calm summer’s work completing a previous survey. Their accomplishments would go down in history as one of the great American surveying expeditions of the nineteenth century. By skillfully weaving the surveyors’ diary entries, field notes, and correspondence with newspaper accounts, historians Robert S. McPherson and Susan Rhoades Neel bring the Hayden Survey to life. Mapping the Four Corners provides an entertaining, engaging narrative of the team’s experiences, contextualized with a thoughtful introduction and conclusion. Accompanied by the great photographer William Henry Jackson, Hayden’s team quickly found their trip to be more challenging than expected. The travelers describe wrangling half-wild pack mules, trying to sleep in rain-soaked blankets, and making tea from muddy, alkaline water. Along the way, they encountered diverse peoples, evidence of prehistoric civilizations, and spectacular scenery—Hispanic villages in Colorado and New Mexico; Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, and other Anasazi sites; and the Hopi mesas. Not everyone they met was glad to see them: in southeastern Utah surveyors fought and escaped a band of Utes and Paiutes who recognized that the survey meant dispossession from their homeland. Hayden saw his expedition as a scientific endeavor focused on geology, geographic description, cartographic accuracy, and even ethnography, but the search for economic potential was a significant underlying motive. As this book shows, these pragmatic scientists were on the lookout for gold beneath every rock, grazing lands in every valley, and economic opportunity around each bend in the trail. The Hayden Survey ultimately shaped the American imagination in contradictory ways, solidifying the idea of “progress”—and government funding of its pursuit—while also revealing, via Jackson’s photographs, a landscape with a beauty hitherto unknown and unimagined.

Narrative biography of Clyde Whistler, his adventures, his exploits, his successes and his failures, ranging from Depression-era America to the turbulent 1960s.