Colorado and Isaac Cooper

Of all the children of Peter Cooper and Ann King, Isaac is the one who left the biggest mark on history.  Isaac was born in Joliet, Illinois in 1839, the fourth child of Peter and Ann.  He was only 10 years old when the family settled at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and was among the very first arrivals to that frontier settlement.  These were the days of much excitement and change on the frontier and Isaac came of age at the right time in the right place.  He was 18 years old when gold was discovered in Colorado and it wasn’t long thereafter that Isaac made his first foray to what would later be named “Denver” in the Colorado Mountains.

Isaac Cooper

There were two main routes followed by the early prospectors on their way to Colorado.  One route, beginning in Leavenworth Kansas followed the old Santa Fe Trail then up the Arkansas River to the gold country, and the other began in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the home of Isaac Cooper and followed the Platte River across the plains of Nebraska.  Isaac’s location in Council Bluffs could not have been more advantageous to encounter the adventurous individuals who were on their way to find riches in the gold mines of Colorado.

The first group into the Denver area settled at Dry Creek on September 9, 1858 and named their town “Montana” (the feminine for Mountain).  A few days later, on September 24^th, part of this group split off and started another settlement 5 miles to the south on the east bank of Cherry Creek.  This second community was originally called “Golden City” but the founders finally settled on the name of “St. Charles.”  A third group, also from the town of “Montana” settled the nearby town of Auraria on November 1st, 1858 on the west bank of Cherry Creek, adjacent to the previously settled St. Charles.”

Following the discovery of gold, the governor of the Kansas Territory, James W. Denver, sent his emissaries to Colorado with the intention of establishing the new county of Arapaho.  These emissaries landed in the town of Auraria, across the creek from St. Charles and By hook or by crook, managed to secure the constitution and by-laws of the “St. Charles” company, formed a new town on November 17^th, 1858, and called it “Denver.”  On April 3^rd, 1860, Auraria and Denver were consolidated under the name of Denver.

One of Isaac’s neighbors in Council Bluffs was Major D. C. Oakes whose documented arrival in the Denver area was October 10^th, 1858.  It is fair to assume that, since Isaac is missing from the 1860 census records that include the rest of his family and that family oral history tells of his early exploits in the gold fields of Colorado, he accompanied Major Oakes on his travels to the Colorado Mountains at this time.

With the onset of the Civil War, Isaac’s Colorado venture was cut short, while he served the Union Army with Co. ‘F’ of the 15th Iowa Infantry.  Isaac was wounded in the right shoulder late in the war and spent many years recuperating in his hometown of Glenwood, Iowa.  It was during these recuperative years that Isaac met and married Sarah Field Hall, and started his family.  By 1878, Isaac and Sarah had three children, Charlotte, Alice, and Harry, but Isaac longed to be back in Colorado.

By 1879, Isaac was back in Colorado where he met Mr. B. Clark Wheeler in Denver.  Mr. Wheeler was a representative of eastern capitalists who had just purchased the rights to several mining claims and a ranch in the area that would come to be named Aspen.  The capitalists had bought the parcels without having seen them and sent Wheeler to investigate their purchase.  “Captain Isaac Cooper” accompanied Wheeler when they crossed the mountains on snowshoes in February of 1880 on their way to Aspen.

It was on this trip that Isaac first saw the hot springs near the site of “Fort Defiance.”  The fort was a rudely constructed affair erected by the local miners as a defense against the perils of marauding Ute Indians.  This was shortly after the White River Massacre that had most of the areas miners on high alert and was the probable impetus for the original claimants to sell their Aspen holdings to Wheeler.

Isaac realized the potential of the hot springs as a resort for weary miners and travelers, and when he returned to Denver, started making plans for their development.  Isaac returned to the springs in early 1882 with partners John Blake, William Gelder and Frank Ensensperger and with the help of H. P. Bennett they formed the Defiance Town and Land Company.  In 1883, the name of the town was changed from Defiance to “Glenwood Springs” after Isaac’s hometown of Glenwood, Iowa.  Soon thereafter, on August 21^st, 1883, the county seat was moved from Leadville to Glenwood Springs and Isaac’s brother, Cornelius S. Cooper was elected county assessor.

Isaac moved his family to Glenwood Springs in 1883 and built the Hotel Glenwood in 1884.  In December of 1886 Isaac started work laying pipes for the Glenwood water-works system but he died the following year and the work was discontinued.  Isaac never fully recovered from his war wounds and died in his prime at the young age of 48.  His children, 14 year old Charlotte, 12 year old Alice, and 9 year old Harry were left without a father.

Having left a sizeable estate, Isaac’s family was not left destitute.  His wife Sarah never remarried and his daughter Charlotte married well in Denver and lived out her life there.  Daughter Alice attended eastern schools and became a renowned sculptress who was commissioned to do the bronze statue of Sacagawea for the Lewis and Clark Centennial exposition.  Her work still stands in Washington Park, Portland, Oregon.

Alice Cooper's sculpture of Sacagawea

The fate of Isaac’s son Harry is a sad one.  In the 1910 census he is picking fruit on the farm of Clarence and Cora Jarbeau in Grand Valley, Colorado, and by the 1920 census he is incarcerated in the city jail of Seattle, Washington, and is listed as a “café cook.”  Harold’s mother, Sarah, never learned of her son’s fate and always hoped he would return to Colorado one day.  He never did.

In the Riverside Cemetery at Denver, in the shadow of two great elm trees and facing the Rocky Mountains to the West, six uniform granite memorials bear the following epitaphs, headed by a marble U. S. Army headstone, inscribed: "Lieut. Isaac Cooper, Co. F, 15th Iowa Infantry."  Then on the monuments:

Cooper, Isaac, 1839 - 1887

Cooper, Sarah Field, 1847 – 1929                   Isaac’s wife

Hall, Lucy Field, 1821 – 1903                          Sarah’s mother

Wilson, Charlotte Cooper 1873 – 1938            Isaac's daughter

Hubbard, Alice Cooper 1875 – 1937               Isaac's daughter

Hubbard, Nathaniel Mead, Jr., 1860 – 1939    Alice’s husband