How Colorado Got Its Name From a River It Didn't Have

Until 1921, no river called the Colorado flowed through Colorado, at least by the federal government’s account, even though the state was named for it. The river’s name is Spanish, for “red” or “colored.” You’d think it was the obvious pick, but it wasn’t the only name on the table: some people wanted Jefferson, others wanted Arcadia, and at one point the bill said Idaho.

Red, ruddy, or colored

The federal record for the state translates colorado as “colored” or “reddish.” Henry Gannett’s 1905 list of place names for the U.S. Geological Survey goes with “ruddy” or “blood red,” and in a looser sense, “colored.” The record also says the word was applied, as a description, to the Little Colorado River in Arizona back in 1602.

Jefferson, Arcadia, Idaho, or Colorado

The gold rush of 1858 and 1859 brought a crowd of miners to the Pike’s Peak country, much of it then part of Kansas Territory. They wanted a government of their own. According to the historian H. H. Bancroft, politicians in Auraria, a camp that’s now part of Denver, came up with the idea of a “Territory of Jefferson.” In 1859, voters turned down a constitution for a “state of Jefferson,” 2,007 to 649, so one group of settlers went ahead and set up a provisional “territory of Jefferson” on their own. They elected a governor, R. W. Steele, and a legislature, which met that fall and even gave Denver a charter. Congress never recognized any of it.

Congress created the real territory on February 28, 1861, out of “many proposed” names, as the U.S. Geological Survey’s record puts it. Bancroft writes that Colorado was picked “at the suggestion of the man selected for its first governor,” William Gilpin. In a footnote, he quotes Gilpin’s own account:

“Some wanted it called Jefferson, some Arcadia. … I said the people have to a great extent named the states after the great rivers of the country … and the great feature of that country is the great Colorado river.”

Gilpin says a man Bancroft identifies only as “Wilson of Mass.” answered, “Ah, that is it,” and named it Colorado. Keep in mind that this is Gilpin telling his own story, in an undated manuscript Bancroft quotes, so you’re getting his side.

There was one more name in the running. The federal record for Idaho says “Idaho” was first proposed in Congress for the territory that became Colorado. History of Idaho (1920), edited by James Hawley, quotes an Idaho official who wrote in 1885 that Colorado “should have been called Idaho. It was the name first placed in the bill organizing it, but which was afterward changed.” Two years later, the name Idaho went to another new territory. We tell that story in How Idaho Got Its Name.

The Grand River fix of 1921

There was a catch with the name. That same record says it was “probably” given for the Colorado River, “which was wrongly assumed to head in the Territory.” In other words, people assumed the Colorado started there, and it didn’t, at least not under that name. The river there was called the Grand River, and the record calls it a tributary of the Colorado.

Colorado became a state on August 1, 1876, and the problem was still there. The fix came 45 years later, in 1921, when Congress renamed the Grand River the Colorado, so that part of the Colorado River would flow through the state named for it. So the name came first, and the river caught up.

Sources & further reading

• H. H. Bancroft, History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming (1890). The 1858–1859 gold rush and Auraria, “or West Denver” (pp. 366–376); the “Territory of Jefferson” idea, the conventions, the rejected state constitution and the election of Governor R. W. Steele (pp. 403–406); the petitions to Washington that went nowhere and the provisional government Congress replaced (pp. 403, 405, 407, 410); the act of February 28, 1861, “the name of Colorado was given to it at the suggestion of the man selected for its first governor,” and the footnote quoting Gilpin’s own account, with “Jefferson,” “Arcadia” and Wilson’s “Ah, that is it” (p. 413).
• James H. Hawley, ed., History of Idaho, vol. 1 (1920), pp. 28–29. Quotes Idaho’s territorial controller, James Onderdonk (1885): Colorado “should have been called Idaho,” the name first put in its bill (p. 28); and a settler’s letter dating Idaho Territory to March 3, 1863 (p. 29).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 88. “A Spanish word meaning ‘ruddy’ or ‘blood red;’ in a secondary sense, ‘colored.’”
• GNIS feature 1779779, Colorado (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record’s history note: statehood on August 1, 1876; the name “chosen by Congress out of many proposed”; the river “wrongly assumed to head in the Territory”; the 1921 renaming of the Grand River; the 1602 use for the Little Colorado.
• GNIS feature 1779783, Idaho (U.S. Geological Survey). Says the name Idaho “was originally proposed in Congress for the Territory that became Colorado.”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Colorado’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779779).