Laserfiche WebLink
• Although White men, including the Dominguez-Escalante Ex- <br />pedition, had penetrated into western Colorado in the post- <br />contact period, the region was formally closed *.o settle- <br />ment until the Utes had been removed from the region by <br />the Federal Government in 1881.... <br />The first White man to settle in the Paonia vicinity is <br />said to have been Samuel Wade from the Gunnison area. He <br />purportedly examined the newly abandoned reservation in <br />the early fall of 1881 and subsequently took up land near <br />an abandoned Indian village about ten miles east of the <br />parcel claimed by Enos Hotchkiss. Another individual, <br />• Will Clarke, took up land next to Wade, and these two in- <br />dividuals established a line between their properties <br />__ which eventually became Grand Avenue in Paonia. The Wade <br />-- property extended one-half mile west from this point, and <br />Clarke's extended the same distance to the east. Together <br />these two parcels included most of the present area of <br />Paonia (Figure 1). <br />r , <br />The first settlers in the North Fork Valley were stockmen, <br />I~~ <br />and by the middle 1880s more and more individuals were pre- <br />empting land and running cattle in the Paonia area. Cattle <br />remained the mainstay of the local economy, and the basic <br />• <br />9 <br />