Hiram Pitt Bennet, the first American conservationist in Colorado?

November 10, 2009 · Posted by in Environment 

OK, so I was nerding out this weekend, reading a little history when I came across Hiram P. Bennet, who was the first territorial delegate from Colorado to the U.S. Congress. He couldn’t vote, but he could lobby for Colorado’s interests. Here’s a quick passage about his two terms, 1861-1865:

Bennet did as Colorado’s businessmen wanted. He secured a branch mint for Denver…. He worked on getting post offices and postal routes for the territory, and he pressed for statehood. With sensitivity to Colorado’s Hispanic residents, he asked the federal government to pay for publishing territorial legislature proceedings in Spanish. Both that request and his proposal to outlaw the “wanton destruction of the buffalo” failed in Congress.

I don’t know if even that would make him the first American conservationist in Colorado, but he’s got to have been the first person in Colorado with any sort of power (not very much — he was a non-voting member of Congress) shouting back east that something had to be done.

The passage is from Colorado: A History of the Centennial State. Does anybody out there know of earlier American conservationists in Colorado?

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