WPA Writers’ Program — American Guide Series2.0

“Comes now the Colorado State Guide,” the preface announces, “with its carefully garnered historical data, maps, and pictures that both confirm and correct the bright expectations of the half-million annual visitors to the State.” It is a fitting opening for a book about a place of superlatives: a state of tremendous mountains that gave forth almost a billion and a half dollars’ worth of gold and silver, of cool summer climate and high-range snowbanks, immense pine and spruce forests, half-mile-deep canyons, twelve-thousand-foot passes, and trout streams and ski runs all reached by its 75,000 miles of roads.

Like every book on the writers’ program, this one is the product of many minds rather than a single author. The Colorado Writers’ Project assigned its personnel to strategic points across the state to accumulate first-hand information: tours were laid out and driven along main highways and intriguing byways, libraries were ransacked for source material, and the misty memories of pioneers were stirred into vocal reminiscence. The wordage thus organized, the editors joke, could be estimated more appropriately by the pound than by number — and only after months of checking and rechecking, mapping and remapping, was the book finished.

The guide’s structure carries that ambition. Part I, “Colorado and Coloradoans,” moves from the land — its geology, plant and animal life, and natural resources — through the people, from the men of the Stone Age and the Indian nomads to the plainsmen, the “Pikes Peak or Bust!” rush, territorial days, and the twentieth century, then surveys the economic base of mining, ranching, farming, and manufacturing and the arts that grew alongside them. Part II, “The Urban Scene,” profiles Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver, Pueblo, Trinidad, and the mountain towns of Leadville and Central City.

Part III, “Up and Down and All Around,” is the longest section: twenty-one numbered automobile tours with their many lettered branches, plus dedicated sets of park and trail tours for Rocky Mountain National Park and Mesa Verde National Park — Bright Angel and Bear Lake, Longs Peak and the Cliff Palace. Because the guide went to press before the 1940 census figures were available, the 1930 population figures are used throughout the text, with the 1940 numbers gathered in the appendices alongside a chronology, a selective reading list, and the index.