Pike's Peak Gold Rush in the context of "Golden, Colorado"

Colorado is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, and Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas to the east, and Oklahoma to the southeast. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers, and desert lands. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is the eighth-largest U.S. state by area and the 21st by population. The United States Census Bureau estimated the population of Colorado to be 5,957,493 as of July 1, 2024, a 3.2% increase from the 2020 United States census.

The region has been inhabited by Native Americans and their Paleo-Indian ancestors for at least 13,500 years and possibly much longer. The eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains was a major migration route for early peoples who spread throughout the Americas. In 1848, much of the Nuevo México region was annexed to the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1858–1862 created an influx of settlers. On February 28, 1861, U.S. President James Buchanan signed an act creating the Territory of Colorado, and on August 1, 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant signed Proclamation 230, admitting Colorado to the Union as the 38th state. The Spanish adjective "colorado" means "colored red" or "ruddy". Colorado is nicknamed the "Centennial State" because it became a state 100 years (and four weeks) after the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence.

Silverton is a statutory town that is the county seat of, the most populous community in, and the only incorporated municipality in San Juan County, Colorado, United States. The town is located in a remote part of the western San Juan Mountains, a range of the Rocky Mountains. The first mining claims were made in mountains above the Silverton in 1860, near the end of the Colorado Gold Rush and when the land was still controlled by the Utes. Silverton was established shortly after the Utes ceded the region in the 1873 Brunot Agreement, and the town boomed from silver mining until the Panic of 1893 led to a collapse of the silver market, and boomed again from gold mining until the recession caused by the Panic of 1907. The entire town is included as a federally designated National Historic Landmark District, the Silverton Historic District.

Originally called "Bakers Park", Silverton sits in a flat area of the Animas River valley and is surrounded by steep peaks. Most of the peaks surrounding Silverton are thirteeners. The highest being Storm Peak, at 13,487 feet. The town is less than 15 miles from 7 of Colorado's 53 fourteeners, and is known as one of the premier gateways into the Colorado backcountry.

The Provisional Government of the Territory of Jefferson was an extralegal and unrecognized United States territory that existed in the Pike's Peak mining region from October 24, 1859, until it yielded to the new Territory of Colorado on June 6, 1861. The Jefferson Territory, named for Founding Father and third United States president Thomas Jefferson, included land officially part of the Kansas Territory, the Nebraska Territory, the New Mexico Territory, the Utah Territory, and the Washington Territory, but the region was remote from the governments of those five territories.

The government of the Jefferson Territory, while democratically elected, was never legally recognized by the United States government, although it managed the territory with relatively free rein for 19 months. Many of the laws enacted by the General Assembly of the Territory of Jefferson were reenacted and given official sanction by the new Colorado General Assembly in 1861.

Black Hawk is a home rule city located in Gilpin County, Colorado, United States. The population was 127 at the 2020 United States census, making it the least populous city (but not town) in Colorado. It was a mining settlement founded in 1859 during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush and is now a part of the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range Urban Corridor.

Black Hawk is located adjacent to Central City, another historic mining settlement in Gregory Gulch. The two cities form the federally designated Central City/Black Hawk National Historic District. The area flourished during the mining boom of the late 19th century following the construction of mills and a railroad link to Golden.

The Territory of Colorado was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 28, 1861, until August 1, 1876, when it was admitted to the Union as the 38th State of Colorado.

The territory was organized in the wake of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1858–1862, which brought the first large concentration of white settlement to the region. The organic legislative act creating the free Territory of Colorado was passed by the United States Congress and signed by 15th President James Buchanan into law on February 28, 1861. This was during the onset of the American Civil War of April 1861 to June 1865. The boundaries of the newly designated Colorado Territory were essentially identical with those of the modern State of Colorado, with lands taken from the four surrounding previous Federal territories of Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, and Utah established during the 1850s. The organization of the new territory helped solidify Union control over the mineral-rich area of the western Rocky Mountains. Statehood was regarded as fairly imminent with the expected growth in the constantly westward moving population, but the local territorial ambitions for full statehood were thwarted at the end of the war in 1865 by a constitutional veto by newly sworn in 17th President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875, served 1865–1869), who was a War Democrat who succeeded to the office after briefly only serving one month as Vice President after Lincoln's assassination that April. Statehood for the territory was a recurring issue during the subsequent Ulysses S. Grant presidential administration, with Republican 18th President Grant advocating statehood against a less willing Congress during the following post-war Reconstruction era (1865–1877). After a long constant lobbying campaign, the old Colorado Territory finally ceased to exist after only 15 years when the State of Colorado was admitted to the Union as the 38th state during the American Centennial celebration in August 1876.