Lewis and Clark went northwest to the Columbia in 1803; Pike went up the Arkansas in 1806; and that young man's simple tale of the things he dared and the sights he saw in his march from the Mississippi to the lone fort he built on the banks of the Conejos in the San Luis Valley is charming and adventurous. He was the American pioneer of the future Colorado. Wandering trappers and hunters had preceded him; but none told what they had seen. Long, with his expedition, in July, 1820, crossed the spot where Denver now stands. Long was an explorer, not a pioneer. Pioneers are prophets, and see the fences and barns that are to come. To Long all west of the Missouri, "agreeably to the best intelligence that can be had ... is throughout uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.... This region, however," he says, "viewed as a frontier, may prove of infinite importance to the United States, inasmuch as it is calculated to serve as a barrier to prevent too great an extension of our population westward, and secure us against the machinations or incursions of an enemy, that might otherwise be disposed to annoy us in that quarter." This opinion, widely circulated, perhaps helped to defer the day of actual occupation of that Great American Desert which, after Long's report, took possession, on our maps, of nearly all the country whose history is Denver's prehistoric days. [Illustration "SMOKY" JONES.] Then came Sublette and his like, and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, the Santa Fé trail, trappers, Indians; and these also, beginning about 1822, would furnish material for romance, were the simple story thereof not romance enough. Bonneville in 1832 vanished from sight in the Northwest for three years; and many others, among them Irving, Bonneville's historian, sought profit, adventure, or knowledge in the new land. In '42, Frémont, the Pathfinder, on his first expedition pushed out nearly to the site of Denver. And Frémont's travels, the romantic note in them heightened by the presence of Kit Carson, prince of pioneers,--what color they add to our chronicles of exploration! Five times he set forth. Once he camped on the site of Denver, with 160 lodges of Arapahoe Indians near by. Once he nearly perished with all his party in the Sangre de Cristo range. Kearney's military expedition to Santa Fé at the time of the Mexican War; Gunnison's exploration for a railroad route to the Pacific, in 1853; Marcy's incredible midwinter march from Fort Bridger, across the very backbone of the continent, south to New Mexico; all these were great deeds, and all served to add to that knowledge of the still wild West which brought about its final conquest. [Illustration THE PRAIRIE SCHOONER, THE PROPER CREST FOR THE COAT-OF-ARMS OF THE WEST.]