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3B <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 1989a: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 1987b). <br />2.9.2 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 />