The pursuit of a better life can lead people down very different paths In Colorado, some sought o pportunity on horseback, behind a storefront or working the land.

Others put their skills and resources toward caring for people in need.

These beginnings reached far beyond the lives of those who set them in motion.

Together, they helped build not only the economy of a young state, but the character of the Colorado we know today.

Mounted on my favorite horse, my trusty guns in my belt and the broad plains stretching away for miles and miles.

I felt I could defy the world.

What man with the fire of life and youth and health in his veins.

Could not rejoice in such a life.

Nat love.

Nat loves s tory began far from the open range.

Born into slavery on a plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, he was still a child when the Civil War ended and his family gained their freedom.

As a teenager, L ove headed west seeking work as a cowboy.

Nat love is one of the most interesting characters in U.S.

Western history.

At the age of 52, he wrote a memoir called The Life and Adventures of Nat Love about his life as a cowboy, which in so many ways epitomized the ideas that people had not only about cowboys, but about the West.

In his memoir, he really articulated what we might call a cowboy ethos, or an ethos of manhood based on honor, on people keeping their word.

And so he also became a voice for a certain kind of bedrock Western value system.

Nat love offered young people a vision of heroism that has more to do with dignity and respect for others than being gratuitously violent.

I see him as someone who foresaw some of the arguments about land preservation and the value of leaving nature wild, as he is very critical in his memoirs of extractive relationships with the land.

With the march of progress came the railroad.

And no longer were we called upon to follow the longhorn steers or mustangs on the trail.

To us wild cowboys of the range used to unrestricted life on the boundless plains.

The new order of things did not appeal.

I think there are many reasons why people might not be very much aware of Nat love, and people like him as an important part of American Western history and of Colorado history in particular, and that is the stories of the West have traditionally been presented as white stories about white people.

So, for example, the number of black cowboys was sizable.

There was a critical mass.

It was, you know, in some ways, in some communities, a black job.

People aren't aware of that because of the sanitized, white centered history that most Americans are fed.

Even to this day, I think that love, especially his memoir, is very important for ways in which it gives us a new perspective on the mythological West that continues to shape so many people's ideas of the West today.

The changing West offered new opportunities, but prosperity did not reach everyone, and few places would care for those who couldn't pay.

For Frances Wisebart Jacobs, their suffering became a call to action.

Frances Jacobs had a heart for helping the homeless and the sick people in Denver.

She was one of the few that didn't practice charity from a safe place, she went out into the street.

She visited people who were sick on the street who were living in slum areas.

Sh e was known for visiting 15 homes a day.

She would bring soap, food, sometimes medicine.

She was even known to take a sick person to see her doctor and pay for the visit.

At that time in Denver, there are many different charitable organizations.

Some were from different religious groups, some had different goals.

They were asking the same people to donate money.

They were trying to get aid to the same families, and they were stepping over each other's toes, basically.

So Frances Wise bart Jacobs saw that as an opportunity to organize.

That was one thing that Frances did really well, is that she kind of broke through those barriers of different religions and different ethnic groups and different financial groups, and she brought people together for one reason to help others.

In 1887, Frances Wiseb art Jacobs co-founded the Charity Organization Society, which brought together 23 separate organizations to work together with fundraising and helping people.

This later became known as the Community Chest, and eventually evolved into what is now known as the United Way.

It's not an exaggeration to say that the work that Frances Wisebart Jacobs did revolutionize philanthropy in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States, and without a cure without antibiotics.

Doctors advised patients to come west to Colorado with its abundant sunshine and mountain air.

And so, as a result, tens of thousands of sick patients made their way to Colorado, believing that that was the best treatment at the time.

Frances Jacobs is credited with having the idea of a free hospital for poor tuberculosis patients.

Her vision was of a hospital that would not discriminate based on race, religion or financial status where anyone could receive the care that they needed.

In 1889, the Jewish Hospital Association was created.

Frances and many others came together to plan this hospital that would be free to tuberculosis patients.

As part of the planning process, the Jewish Hospital Association selected a track of land east of the city on Colfax Avenue to build the hospital.

Before Frances died, she was able to see the cornerstone laid for the hospital that she had envisioned.

December 10th, 1899 was the grand opening of the National Jewish Hospital for consumptives.

And you could say that the hospital becoming a reality was the culmination of her life's work.

Citizens of Denver, do you know this infirmary is one of the 16 buildings of the National Jewish Hospital, where 700 men, women and children of all faiths are cared for each year?

No expense is spared to give these patients the best scientific care available to restore them to health .

Frances Wosebart Jacobs is the only woman and the only Jewish person honored by the state of Colorado with a portrait window in the Colorado State Capitol.

Our motto from the beginning at National Jewish has been none may enter who can pay.

None can pay who enter.

That motto still lives today.

We're here in the lobby of National Jewish Health, and I want to show you this beautiful statue of Francis Wisebart Jacobs.

It's got great detail, and it shows an example of the purse that she would carry around when she was visiting people in Denver.

It has a little bit of food and some coal.

Seeing this statue every day when I come to work as a nice reminder that we carry on her legacy every day at National Jewish Health.

By the turn of the 20th century, Denver's Jewish community reflected different waves of immigration.

Early settlers had come largely from Central Europe, while newer arrivals from Russia and Poland were making homes on the city's west side, bringing their own religious and cultural traditions.

One physician who shared that immigrant experience was Charles Spivak, born in what is now Ukraine.

Spivak fled to the United States in 1882, earning his medical degree.

His wife, Jennie, developed early signs of tuberculosis in 1896.

The family moved to Denver, hoping Colorado's climate would improve her health.

There, Spivak joined other physicians and community leaders in an effort to establish a new tuberculosis hospital.

We're here on the campus of the Rocky Mountain College of Art and design, but from 1904 into the 1950s.

This was the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society, a hospital that treated more than 10,000 patients from all across the United States and even around the world.

Many of the buildings on the campus today are still original to the JCRS, including this building behind me, the rotunda, which was built in 1909 and it was designed to aid patient care with large glass windows to let in fresh air and sunshine.

The JCRS was primarily established to cater to the needs of patients who were Eastern European Jewish immigrants, many of whom kept kosher and observed Jewish traditions such that they needed not only a kosher kitchen, but also a synagogue in which to pray.

The JCRS provided patients with both of those things out of an effort to be especially sensitive to the needs of their patients.

When the JCRS first opened, it was known as the Tent City, and behind me is the last original surviving tent.

This structure was specifically designed to allow maximum sunlight and fresh air to enter to aid patient care, while also ensuring that they would be quarantined so as not to spread disease.

Inside one of these tents, a patient could spend weeks, if not months or even years recovering from tuberculosis.

The JCRS was so much more than a hospital.

It staged theatrical productions.

It produced a magazine that patients could contribute to.

There were concerts.

People gave lectures about health and medicine.

There was a dairy farm and a poultry farm where patients could work if they were healthy enough.

This holistic approach to patient care was really pioneered by Doctor Spivak, who believed that in order to treat a patient, you needn't just treat their medical needs, but also their social, cultural and spiritual needs.

Most, but not all, of the patients were Jewish.

It was a nonsectarian institution, just like at National Jewish Hospital.

Patient care at the JCRS was completely free.

The Jacobs relied on contributions from Jewish communities across the United States in order to be able to finance its operations.

The official motto of the JCRS was Kol ha-mekayem nefesh achat k'ilu kiyem olam malei.

which means one who saves a life, It is as if they have saved an entire world.

Francis Wisebart Jacobs, and Doctor Charles Spivak helped to cement Denver's reputation as a leading center for medical treatment in the United States, and also helped us to rethink and reimagine what medical care looks like and should be.

The care of the sick and poor is not charity, it's justice.

Helping people isn't just about kindness, it's about giving everyone a chance to live the life that everyone deserves.

Long before Denver's hospitals opened their doors, another kind of enterprise was taking shape on Colorado's eastern plains.

Their trade between native communities and arriving settlers helped establish a growing cattle industry.

Amache Prowers was the daughter of a well-known Cheyenne chief.

She married a non-Native man, John Prowers, and their marriage represented this idea of native peoples and euro-americans coming together in peaceful ways.

Amache Prowers Is important for thinking about the early development of Colorado in an economic sense.

She allows for trade between indigenous communities and early eastern settlers, and this is critical to the development of life on the eastern plains of Colorado.

Amache and her husband established a cattle operation on land belonging to her Cheyenne family after her father, Cheyenne Chief Ochinee was killed in the Sand Creek massacre.

Amache received additional land as compensation for his death.

Those holdings helped their business expand into one of the largest cattle operations in southeastern Colorado.

In many ways, Amache Prowers represents the spirit of Colorado.

This community that was forged through collaboration and sharing.

And that's really the thing that leads to our common success.

While ranching expanded across Colorado's Eastern Plains, railroads and mining were creating new opportunities in the mountains.

Among those drawn to Colorado was Chin Lin Sou, an immigrant from southern China who had supervised crews on the Central Pacific Railroad, arriving in the early 1870s.

He began building a new life in the mining communities of Black Hawk and Central City, Chin Lin Sou was a very enterprising man.

He worked in mines.

He owned some mines.

It is said that he had actually struck it rich, when he was there, which allowed him to open some stores in Chinatown, and he was able to import goods from China, and he was able to actually raise a family.

He was one of the few who were able to bring his wife over from China to Denver, and their descendants continue to live in Denver today, so he was a real pioneer.

Financial success did not shield Chinese immigrants from suspicion and prejudice.

In 1874, when Chinese miners were blamed for a fire in Central City, C hin publicly challenged the accusation.

He argued that Chinese residents were too often singled out for blame, and pointed to an improperly cleaned chimney as the cause.

One of the reasons we remember Chin Lin Sou today is because he was considered the mayor of Chinatown.

What that means was he was an interlocutor between the Chinese community and the mainstream white community.

He embodies the entrepreneurial spirit, if you will, the frontier spirit of the community In Denver, Chin helped organize Chinese businesses and mutual aid associations, providing loans and support to fellow immigrants.

Even after the anti-Chinese violence of 1880 drove many residents away, Chin and his family remained, continuing their lives in a city they had helped build.

For some entrepreneurs, success in business opens doors to a larger role in public life.

At the age of 20, Casimiro Barela moved with his family to a farm near the newly established town of Trinidad.

As homesteads spread across the Purgatory Valley, Barela built a successful business raising sheep and horses, operating a mercantile shop, and investing in local enterprises as his business interests grew.

Barela became increasingly involved in the affairs of his community.

His political career began when he became a justice of the peace and later served as county assessor.

In 1871, he was elected to Colorado's territorial legislature.

During the territorial period, many Southern Coloradans had been somewhat resistant to the idea of Colorado harboring older connections to New Mexico.

The in many ways were preserved even despite the formation of the Colorado Territory.

Casimiro Barela represents this permanent merger between southern Colorado and the rest of the state, lending voice to Southern Coloradans and a lot of their concerns having to do with what they perceived to be kind of a forced inclusion into the state of Colorado.

They lacked facility in English to be able to take part in debates around laws.

The laws were also not frequently published in Spanish so as to allow them to digest the meaning.

Among the more interesting things about Casimiro Barela is he pushes for the publication of Colorado's constitution in multiple languages, including Spanish and German, and these really represent the diversity of the communities that were resident in the state at the time.

Casimiro thought it was important that the Constitution be published in multiple languages, so as to ensure that all of the residents of the state could participate fully, to ensure that they were able to abide by the laws of the land and generally form bonds with one another, that were going to be critica to the ongoing success of the state.

Barela was elected to the first state Senate he would serve for 40 years, earning the nickname the Perpetual Senator.

Throughout his career, Barela advocated for underrepresented Coloradans, defending Hispano ranchers against powerful business interests and becoming an early supporter of women's suffrage.

If it concerns my race, especially if it concerns discrimination, I abdicate all my political ideologies and I dedicate myself to its defense at all times and all places.

Casimiro Barela.

To me, this quote really shows that there's more to life and there's there's more to society than just politics.

Things like community, things like education.

And at the end of the day, I think this quote really emphasizes the idea that humans in general have a lot more in common than they do different.

And I think when we remove those outside political forces that sometimes tend to impact our lives, whether we realize it or not, we can really find the humanity in each other that sometimes seems lost.

The work of many hands can grow into something that lasts beyond a single lifetime.

Through shared effort, people create livelihoods, establish businesses, and lay the economic foundations of a region.

On Colorado's Western Slope, agriculture provided that foundation, with family farms and orchards becoming enduring enterprises.

People coalesced around these places where they could grow food that they could sell, that they could use to feed their families, creating many of the first towns along the Grande Valley.

The history of agriculture in western Colorado begins and is completely dependent on the Colorado and Gunnison rivers.

In fact, Grand Junction gets its name as it is where the Gunnison joins what was then the Grand River and is now renamed to the Colorado River.

When the Westerners started moving in and building a community here in the late 1800s, they started with building canals and irrigating this dry, thirsty desert and planted a wide variety of row crops peaches, apples, fruits, just a whole spectrum of agricultural production.

And in those early days, we were 100% reliant on the railroads for transportation of the peaches.

By the first 5 or 6 years of production into the early 1900s, they were running four and 500 train car loads of peaches out of here every year, and declared that the peach industry was viable in the Grand Valley.

My family's history here in the Valley began in 1907, when our great great grandfather, Joe Yeager, moved into palisade and started raising peaches, and my grandfather married a peach growers daughter and started Talbert Farms, the company that we run to this day.

I was born and raised on this farm.

I remember cutting weeds around apple trees.

We'd get off the school bus, come home and grab our shovel, and we got paid $0.02 a tree.

Talbot farms today truly is a family owned and operated organization.

The family heritage of the farm has been a huge part of my life.

I grew up hearing all these stories, learning about my family through the business.

Grand Valley is very special to my heart.

It's very different than the rest of the state of Colorado.

We grow at an altitude of 4800ft, and we have these winds that come from the east and come from the canyon, and it usually makes us about ten degrees warmer than our counterparts in Fruita.

So we have very hot days, but we shift very cold nights and really creates some of the best fruit that I think grown in America.

I believe that the land gives back what you put into it.

There's far more that goes into caring for the land than just growing a peach tree and collecting the fruit.

Each season there is soil that we have to monitor, water levels that I personally have to monitor the microorganisms within to make sure that we're putting safe water on our trees.

So there's a lot of moving parts going on as we are picking and packing the peaches.

One of the things I love most about working on the farm is getting to grow things together.

It takes your work and makes your work personal.

It makes your work family.

I think my first memory was when I was like five years old and I started making boxes, just folding them, and I would do that all the time.

It was my first job.

We love what we do and the memories spread between generation to generation.

For me, I get a lot of joy and seeing the next generation come along now, my grandkids, to take them out into the orchards and vineyards and and see the entire season, to go through winter, to go through the dormancy, to go watch them being pruned, to watch the new flowers arrive in the spring, and the baby peaches and fruit that s just beginning to emerge and then to finish it off at the end of the season where we're going around finding those last Gleaner peaches that are just as juicy as can be and tree ripe.

And to share those experiences with my grandkids is is a part of the joy I have in my life.

The reason that I'm still here working for the farm to this day, is because of all the sacrifice I've seen my family members make.

I was a child.

When they're telling me stories of horrible losses and seasons that didn't go to plan, and they persevered through it all and kept fighting the good fight.

And so I'm here determined to keep that legend going.

Agriculture absolutely has a place in Colorados future.

We all eat, and in order for us to eat, we've got to have agricultural producers.

And the fundamentals never change.

We have to do it with Mother Nature and with the land and with the water that we have.

When I grow up, I'm going to be peach farmer.

The value of a life's work isn't always measured in its own time.

A story can change how we remember the past.

An act of compassion can become an institution.

A livelihood can grow into a tradition that gives another generation of future.

These achievements belong to history.

But their possibilities remain alive.

And as new dreams take root, we are Becoming Colorado.