Class and Community in Frontier Colorado
Spurred by the Gold Rush of 1859, settlers of diverse backgrounds and nationalities trekked to Colorado and began building towns. Existing accounts of their struggles and those of townbuilders throughout the American West focus on boom-or-bust economics, rampant boosterism, and bitter social conflicts. This, according to sociologist Richard Hogan, is not the whole story.

In Class and Community in Frontier Colorado Hogan offers a fresh perspective on the frontier townbuilding experience. He argues that townbuilding in Colorado was not, as some have suggested, monopolized by local boosters or national business interests. It was, instead, a complex, dynamic process that reflected competition, cooperation, and conflict among various socioeconomic classes, and between local and national business interests as well.

Hogan shows how farmers, ranchers, miners, tradesmen, merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs, land speculators, and eastern investors all vied for control in six of Colorado’s emerging urban centers: Denver, Central City, Greeley, Golden, Pueblo, and Canon City. Meticulously he traces the conflicts and coalitions that arose in and among these groups.

By combining historical sociology with local history, Hogan’s study challenges current thinking about economic development, class structure and conflict, political partisanship, collective action, and social change in the American West.
1100410943
Class and Community in Frontier Colorado
Spurred by the Gold Rush of 1859, settlers of diverse backgrounds and nationalities trekked to Colorado and began building towns. Existing accounts of their struggles and those of townbuilders throughout the American West focus on boom-or-bust economics, rampant boosterism, and bitter social conflicts. This, according to sociologist Richard Hogan, is not the whole story.

In Class and Community in Frontier Colorado Hogan offers a fresh perspective on the frontier townbuilding experience. He argues that townbuilding in Colorado was not, as some have suggested, monopolized by local boosters or national business interests. It was, instead, a complex, dynamic process that reflected competition, cooperation, and conflict among various socioeconomic classes, and between local and national business interests as well.

Hogan shows how farmers, ranchers, miners, tradesmen, merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs, land speculators, and eastern investors all vied for control in six of Colorado’s emerging urban centers: Denver, Central City, Greeley, Golden, Pueblo, and Canon City. Meticulously he traces the conflicts and coalitions that arose in and among these groups.

By combining historical sociology with local history, Hogan’s study challenges current thinking about economic development, class structure and conflict, political partisanship, collective action, and social change in the American West.
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Class and Community in Frontier Colorado

Class and Community in Frontier Colorado

by Richard Hogan
Class and Community in Frontier Colorado

Class and Community in Frontier Colorado

by Richard Hogan

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Overview

Spurred by the Gold Rush of 1859, settlers of diverse backgrounds and nationalities trekked to Colorado and began building towns. Existing accounts of their struggles and those of townbuilders throughout the American West focus on boom-or-bust economics, rampant boosterism, and bitter social conflicts. This, according to sociologist Richard Hogan, is not the whole story.

In Class and Community in Frontier Colorado Hogan offers a fresh perspective on the frontier townbuilding experience. He argues that townbuilding in Colorado was not, as some have suggested, monopolized by local boosters or national business interests. It was, instead, a complex, dynamic process that reflected competition, cooperation, and conflict among various socioeconomic classes, and between local and national business interests as well.

Hogan shows how farmers, ranchers, miners, tradesmen, merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs, land speculators, and eastern investors all vied for control in six of Colorado’s emerging urban centers: Denver, Central City, Greeley, Golden, Pueblo, and Canon City. Meticulously he traces the conflicts and coalitions that arose in and among these groups.

By combining historical sociology with local history, Hogan’s study challenges current thinking about economic development, class structure and conflict, political partisanship, collective action, and social change in the American West.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780700631551
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Publication date: 10/08/2021
Series: Studies in Historical Social Change
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Richard L. Hogan is professor emeritus of sociology at Purdue University. He is the author of The Failure of Planning: Permitting Sprawl in San Diego Suburbs, 1970–1999, and his articles have appeared in Theory and Society and Social Science History. This was his first book.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables

Preface to the Kansas Open Books Edition

Preface

1. Class Structure and Conflict in Frontier Colorado

Part One: Carnival Towns of Colorado

2. Denver: The Carnival Capital

3. Central City: Supply Town for the Mines

4. Greeley: Dry Farming and Utopian Capitalism

Part Two: Caucus Towns of Colorado

5. Golden: Denver's Western Rival

6. Pueblo: Skins, Steers, and Steel Center

7. Canon City: Gateway to the Southern Rockies

8. The Enduring Legacy of the American Frontier

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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