The holidays in early Colorado

From the Gilpin Historical Society

by David Forsyth, PhD

The first recorded Christmas celebration in what would become Colorado was in 1806. Zebulon Pike and his group of fifteen men were camped about three miles north of Salida, near the mouth of Brown’s Canyon, and their last food had been a turkey and a hare shot on December 22. On Christmas Eve, though, they found and killed a total of eight bison. With the weather bad on Christmas Day, Pike decided to let his men, who lacked winter clothing and even blankets after having turned most of them into socks, rest. He wrote in his journal, “we spent the day as agreeably as could be expected for men in our situation.”