Colorado
Native Americans first settled in Colorado. The prominent Colorado Native Americans are the Navajo, Ute, and Cheyenne-Arapahoe Indians. The state was named after the Colorado River by Spanish explorers. US Army officer and amateur explorer Zebulon Pike was recruited by the United States government in 1806 to find the source of the Mississippi River and to check out Spanish settlements in New Mexico. Even though his recorded location for the source of the Mississippi was extremely inaccurate and allegedly got lost in his expedition, he did explore much of what would become the American Southwest. When he reached what is now Colorado Springs, he named a mountain after himself, Pikes Peak, which remains a symbol for the city as well as the state to this day. Colorado has a long history of mining and digging for gold. It is the place where the Pike's Peak Gold Rush took place. When gold in California was becoming harder and harder to find, people came to Colorado in large numbers when gold was discovered there in 1859, ten years after the California Gold Rush began. Many mining camps set up in Colorado would later become cities, such as Denver City and Boulder City. The motto for the gold rush was "Pike's Peak or Bust".