Reading American history can be a little like meeting an armadillo up close - there's a hard, shiny outer shell that gets our attention and a soft, ticklish underbelly hardly anyone ever sees. Take the crucial Civil War year of 1864, for instance. Hardly a soul can recount a thing about our great nation's history of that time save for the terrible blue-grey struggle. America is an enormous country, almost 14 times the size of France, and much more was occurring here in 1864 than just that bitter sectional feud.

This month of June, 148 years ago, is the anniversary of such terrible ordeals as the Battle of Cold Harbor in Virginia - the last battle won by Robert E. Lee. General Grant almost lost his job over that engagement. Over near Atlanta on June 9, 1864, there was the fearsome fight between the North and the South at Kennesaw Mountain. Old Abe had just been nominated for the second time, and he prepared to face off politically against his former top commander, General George C. McClellan, who was running as a peace-platform Democrat.

What's amazing is that just as our Union was tearing itself apart in Virginia, 1500 miles due west yet another bustling territory was approaching statehood in that struggling union. In Denver, Colorado, the United States Mint began in June 1864, stamping out a 2 cent piece with the unique motto, "In God We Trust," stamped on the back. Two weeks later, in another trend-setting moment, the U.S. Congress deemed that Negro soldiers serving in the Union Army should receive the same pay as their white counterparts. Interestingly, neither action gained much discussion at the time.

Elsewhere, Prussia began her march toward German-unification with a stunning attack on Denmark with Bismarck laying the foundation for an aggressive new superpower in Europe. The foreign news ran on page two on the New York papers and was hardly mentioned at all in the South. In London a radical professor named Karl Marx set up the First International Workingmen's Association, but south of Richmond not a soul cared.

One-hundred-sixty-four years ago this month reports were received at the United States Mint in Denver that the Overland Stagecoach route was being harassed by bandits and Indians. Lincoln's War Department ordered a detachment of the 9th Kansas Cavalry under Lieutenant-Colonel William O. Collins from Fort Laramie in the Wyoming territory to deploy around Laporte in the northern Colorado territory. The Overland Stagecoach Route was one of the primary western highways, and it had to be kept open for miners and pioneers traveling west.

North central Colorado had been one of John Jacob Astor's prime sources of fur. The name of the river, Cache la Poutre, literally means "storage of the powder," as in gunpowder. The French fur-trappers stored their gunpowder reserves and supplies on a bluff overlooking this swift Rocky Mountain stream. By the 1840s Kit Carson had made the Astor trading camp his own headquarters for exploration and Indian scouting.

Kennerly Clark, son of William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame, was another of the scouts working with Kit Carson in this northern Colorado territory near the Wyoming border. Baptiste Charbonneau (son of Sacajawea) was there, as was John C. Fremont, the "Pathfinder of the West," a man who'd allegedly been expelled from the College of Charleston in the 1820s.

As the battle for Cold Harbor raged and Lee's forces killed nearly 20 times more of Grant's men as he himself lost, Kershaw's brigade of upstate South Carolinians reeled from the 2nd U.S. Cavalry's use of Spencer repeating-seven-shot - .50 caliber rifles. That incident marked the deadliest use to date of semiautomatic weapons in American warfare. The 2nd Cavalry survived into the 2nd century and is known as the 2nd Stryker Armored Regiment of Iraqi War fame.

Lieutenant-Colonel Collins and his mounted men patrolled the Cache la Poutre River valley through June 1864, when the snows began to melt in the Rockies. It's doubtful that he knew anything of the battle of Cold Harbor or any of the other battles raging around Richmond in that summer. Collins, an Ohioan and friend of General Sherman, established a temporary guard post on the Cache la Poutre River in early June 1864.

However, the unexpected rush of melting snow turned the insignificant la Poutre into a raging torrent. Collins barely had time to rally his men and horses to higher ground.

They watched helplessly as pioneer cabins and livestock were swept away in a cascade of debris.

As Lincoln announced his bid for a second term, Collins' detachment picked their way through the flood plain six miles further south. On a slightly higher plateau he staked out a new camp that subsequently became known as Fort Collins. Though it never had an enclosed perimeter, the fort did become home to several troops of cavalry and a detachment of artillery.

When the Civil War ended, the War Department pulled all but a detachment of cavalry out of Fort Collins. Settlers, many from the defeated South, poured into the luscious valley north of bustling Denver. Scientifically-minded farmers and ranchers were drawn to the fertile land in the shadow of the great Rocky mountains. In 1870 these hardy pioneers established Colorado Agricultural College, now Colorado State University, 19 years before the founding of Clemson in our own state. Elijah Edwards and two faculty members opened the one building housing instruction for agronomy, and a total of 19 students showed up to form the first class.

While the hamlet of Cold Harbor buried the dead and the armies pulled ever closer to Appomatox and the War's end, Colorado territory was making headway toward statehood in the union.

Now, 140 years later, the settlement of Fort Collins has grown to a metropolis of 128,000, and the Colorado State University claims an astronaut, Pulitzer prize winners, and a couple of governors among its distinguished alumni. The university has been ranked as the "greenest" environmental university in the country.

Fort Collins residents can still recall 1967 when the Rolling Stones performed in the University gymnasium and the football team helped in crowd control. When Viet Nam protesters, mostly out-of-state students, brought the campus to a standstill, the in-state students had a great bonfire and celebration up the mountain.

A lot of things have changed since the pioneers days of Kit Carson, John C. Fremont, and the Civil War days when Colonel William Collins roamed around this post card paradise, but the aspen trees still turn golden in the Fall and the Cashe la Poutre still floods its banks.

The glass and steels buildings of Colorado State University bear the high water marks!

Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. Visit his website at www.historyslostmoments.com.