Home Encyclopedia Summa Fathers ... C > Colorado A B C D ... CICDC - Home of the Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan Colorado The thirty-fifth, in point of admission, of the United States of America . It lies between the 37th and 41st degrees of N. latitude and the 102nd and 109th degrees of W. longitude, the meridian lines making its shape a parallelogram as exact as the curvature of the earth will allow. When its original territorial limits were discussed it was suggested that the crest of the Rocky Mountains was a natural boundary, and it was on the reply of Colonel William Gilpin, who became its first governor, that railroads and political unity had superseded natural boundaries, that it was placed squarely across the divide and so has its mountain centre with a slope to either ocean. After the Cliff-dwellers, its Indian tribes were the Utes and Arapahoes. It became part of French and Spanish America, and was covered by the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Texas cession (1850), and the cession from Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848). Its area is 103,900 square miles. The third of the State east of Denver Climate The climate is exceptionally dry, healthful, and invigorating. The summers are cool and the winters moderate; There is an average of 181 clear days out of 365. Manitou, Glenwood, and Sulphur Springs are noted sanatoria. The annual rainfall is low, but so widely variant in localities that no intelligible average can be stated; Extremes are 12 and 29 inches. | |
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