The 20th century dawned in Colorado clear and mild, a routine winter day marked by routine news. Claim jumping in Cripple Creek. Police raiding a cockfight in a Denver saloon. A burro going berserk near Colorado Springs, killing a dog and stomping a boy.

"A man who noticed the actions of the brute quickly secured a revolver and fired twelve shots into its body before he succeeded in killing it," the Rocky Mountain News reported.
It was Jan. 1, 1900, in the Old West. The New West hadn't been invented.
But its vague outline was gathering on the horizon.
"It is estimated that at the end of another hundred years Colorado will boast a population of four millions of souls," a writer for Harper's magazine had reported a few years earlier. "Her stone quarries, her petroleum ... her coal and iron, her natural parks, scenic wonders, mineral waters, farm and fruit and pasture lands, her vast stores of metals -- all these, and many resources that I have not mentioned, will more than support a population of that magnitude."
He was right. In 1900, however, the state's pioneer days were still winding down.
It had been less than a decade since historian Frederick Jackson Turner proclaimed the frontier losed. Just 31 years since the last major Indian battle. Only 42 years since gold was discovered, touching off Colorado's first boom.
Today, only about 6,000 people work as miners; more than 44,000 sell real estate. When people talk about the Front Range, they no longer mean the first mountains to the west but the sea of humanity lying at their feet.
The Old West is history. The New West is ever-changing, full of growing pains and ambiguity. The Next West awaits out on the horizon.
The story of this journey -- of what has changed and what has endured during the past remarkable century -- can be found in Colorado's people. In a miner's scarred lungs. In a road builder's dedication. In the ambition of a developer. And in the vision of a ski bum.
It can be found in the dreams of a mythmaker. And in a daughter's allegiance to her father's ideas. In the conviction of a young woman striving to keep her ancestors' language alive. And in the eyes of an old woman who cannot erase death from her mind.
The story also can be found outside San Luis, Colorado's oldest town, where the great-great-grandson of one of its founders perpetuates the family legacy on a shoestring.
"My land?" Joe Gallegos says of his farm, among the oldest in Colorado. "It's God land. I just pay taxes on it."

Colorado Millennium 2000 is a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society
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