Moffat County, Colorado: History
=== Displacement of the native people ===
The first recorded humans in northwestern Colorado were the Ute tribes. The Spanish expedition of Dominguez–Escalante of 1776 reached just south of what would become Moffat County, describing the area and inhabitants, but did not offer detailed information. In the early 1820s, William H. Ashley organized a major expedition of trappers into the Green River area of the county beginning the first use of the area's resources by Europeans. John C. Fremont would lead the first organized exploration of Moffat County on his return from California during his second expedition. His party crossed into the future Moffat County on June 6, 1844.
Despite the encroachment by trappers, miners, and explorers, the Ute Treaty of 1868 (a.k.a. The Kit Carson Treaty) and the Brunot Treaty of 1873 identified northwestern Colorado as part of the Ute nation and 'agencies' were established to act as representatives of the U.S. government within the Ute Nation. In 1879, a new agent, Nathan Meeker, was appointed to serve at the White River Agency in northwestern Colorado. Meeker had founded a Christian-based European agricultural colony in 1870 in eastern Colorado and had strong ideas of how a community should be structured. As the "Indian Agent" he felt compelled to change the nomadic lifestyle of the Ute Indians and attempted to "civilize" them by converting them into farmers. His efforts to impose an agricultural lifestyle on the native people created a conflict that ultimately led to the murder of Meeker and all of the staff at the Agency. The U.S. government's reaction to the massacre resulted in the relocation of most of the Ute tribes to Utah by force. After the removal of the Ute tribes, the U.S. government opened up northwestern Colorado for mining, commercial cattle ranching, and homesteading.
In 1861, the Colorado Territory was organized and northwestern Colorado became Summit County. In 1874, Grand County was created out of the northern half of Summit County, and in 1877, Grand County was further subdivided, creating Routt County. It would be another 34 years before Moffat County would be carved out of the western portion of Routt County. The county was named for David H. Moffat, a Colorado tycoon who died in 1911. …