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38 <br /> watercourse, entered the mountains along the route of modern U.S . <br /> 36 West from Lyons. In 1836 A. Pike Vasquez stripped the <br /> Vasquez's Clear Creek post of all usable materials, leaving the <br /> cottonwood and adobe structure to molder back into the earth. <br /> Within a few years of the fort's abandonment the fur trade <br /> declined as fashion changed. Silk, not beaver, became "the" <br /> material for hats coincidental to exhaustion of the beaver supply <br /> from over-trapping. During and after the halcyon days of the <br /> mountain man, the U.S. Army continued to show an interest in the <br /> South Platte region, sending out patrols to maintain peace among <br /> the Indians and further explorers, seeking new routes to and from <br /> the Far West . By the 1850s the Army patrols had become more <br /> frequent, reflecting increased American presence in the Southwest <br /> after the region was ceded to the United States at the end of the <br /> Mexican war in 1848 (Mehls 1984a:26, 28-9) . The era of exploration <br /> and the fur trade added much useful information to the body of <br /> knowledge about the American West and Colorado by the time early <br /> federal exploration ended in the late 1850s. The other, more <br /> important, contribution for development of the Dowe Flats area <br /> came with the government explorers and mountain men, who <br /> discovered and mapped travel routes, including the South Platte <br /> Trail and routes into the mountains, so that when gold was <br /> discovered in 1858 Americans already knew how to get to the <br /> Cherry Creek gold - fields (Meier 1981b) . <br /> i <br /> 2. 4.2 The Gold Rush and Early Settlement, 1858-1870 <br /> In 1857-1858 residents of the American Middle-west found <br /> themselves caught in the midst of an economic depression, with <br /> hundreds of young men eager for the chance at a new start. <br /> Coinciding with that, William Green Russell and a small party of <br /> prospectors announced that they had discovered gold in the area <br /> that became modern Denver. News of the finds spread, conjuring <br /> up pictures of a new California Gold Rush. The discoveries in <br /> Colorado led to the Rush of 1859 and the resultant beginnings of <br /> permanent settlement along the Front Range from Colorado City <br /> (Colorado Springs) north to Ft. Collins. Many prospectors found <br /> they arrived too late and discouraged, they returned to the <br />