tions of the country. It
was during this journey that the night came which lends itself to
imaginative picturing with dramatic vividness when, just after
Christmas, he stood in the Garden of the Gods near the foot of Pike's
Peak, while the stars of the Colorado skies blazed above him, and, as if
by a flash of vision saw a town arise in the desert. The vision fell
upon him like an inspiration. Founding towns seemed, indeed, to run in
the family, as one of his ancestors had founded the town of Elizabeth,
New Jersey, naming it after his wife.

Mr. Meeker returned to the Tribune office with his dream of a beautiful
city to arise out of the sand and sage-brush of the desert. An idealist
himself, Mr. Meeker had also the good fortune of having married a woman
capable of sharing ideal dreams and of rising to the heights of
sacrifice, and she, too, embraced his new enthusiasm.

"Go ahead," replied Mr. Greeley, when Mr. Meeker mentioned his new
project, "the 'Tribune' will back you."

A meeting was then called in Cooper Institute, as before stated, Horace
Greeley presiding, and John Russell Young entering into the idea with
sympathy. Mr. Meeker presented his project of a Union colony to
establish itself in Colorado. Of the conditions he said:--

"The persons with whom I would be willing to associate must be
temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among as
many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars each, or
twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while others may have
from two thousand to one thousand dollars and upward. For many to go so
far without means could only result in disaster."

The members were to each contribute one hundred and fifty-five dollars
to a fund to purchase and prepare the land. It was in April of 1869 that
the committee made the purchase of forty thousand acres, located between
the Cache la Poudre and the South Platte rivers, twenty-five miles from
the Rocky Mountains and in full sight of Long's Peak. Greeley has a
beautiful situation, and a perfection of climate that perhaps exists
hardly anywhere else in all Colorado. Whatever the heat of the day, the
nights are cool. The days are so bright, so beautiful, that they seem a
very foretaste of paradise.

In the spring of 1870 the seven hundred members of Union Colony, with
their families, arrived.

Mr. Meeker further stipulated:--

"In particular should moral and religious sentiments prevail, for
withou