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1 <br /> <br />' Settlement, 1858-1870; 3) Early Agricultural and Ranching <br />Development, 1870-1695; 9) Quarrying and Urban Growth and <br />' Development, 1870-1900; 5) Ranching and Farming After 1900; and 6) <br />The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945. All of these <br />themes except Exploration and the Fur Trade are directly associated <br />with the dominant rural-agricultural lifestyle of the Study Area. <br />3.2.1 Exploration and the Fur Trade 1700-1895 <br />Spain, the original European claimant of all of Colorado, held <br />tenuous control throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and <br />eighteenth centuries by virtue of Coronado's wanderings of <br />1 1590-91. From that time until 1720 Spanish explorers, military <br />parties and traders ventured north out of Mexico, eventually <br />' settled New Mexico, and continued north into Colorado, travelling <br />both east and west of the mountains. The first documented Spanish <br />' incursions to reach the area of modern Denver and beyond came in <br />1719-20. In those years Pedro de Villasur, leading a small <br />military detachment, moved as far north as the Platte River before <br />falling victim to Pawnee Indians(Long 1943:117-116). His <br />' expedition had been prompted by reports of French traders moving <br />into the Platte-South Platte Valley and posing a threat to Spanish <br />control of the region. <br />The historic record is unclear about when the first French <br />' traders from the Mississippi Valley may have set foot in modern <br />Colorado. In 1739 the Mallett Brothers' trading expedition crossed <br />Nebraska along the Platte, followed the South Platte to the Front <br />Range and then headed south to the Arkansas before pointing their <br />caravan east along the Arkansas or Cimarron Rivers and returning to <br />' the Mississippi Valley. From that time until 1763, when France <br />formally relinquished all claims to the area, the two European <br />powers sought, through either trade or diplomatic means, to control <br />' 30 <br /> <br />