The Southwest Border Area

-"“The aridity of Arizona, New Mexico, and bordering areas in Utah and Colorado discouraged large scale Anglo agricultural settlement in the nineteenth century" (Birdshall, etc...).  What brought the Anglo settlement to Colorado was the discovery of gold and silver.  Denver originally was inhabited by Native Americans, but the miners took over the land because of the need to escape their jobs in the mountains.  Denver has such of a wide array of cultural influences that it is hard to distinguish one.  The Ute tribes were one of the larger tribes found in Denver, but then their population decreased which led to the rise of the Cheyenne and Kiowa tribes.  These two tribes along with the Arapaho fought the white settlers in 1863 for over two years.

-The hispanic population in Denver is 18%, according to the 2000 census, which puts them second highest after the white percentage.  As stated in the text,  the percentage of hispanics living in Colorado is 17.1% (Birdshall, etc...)  With the high amounts of immigration into the United States, many Hispanics probably choose Denver because it is one of the larger urban centers in the US.  The NAFTA has helped out Denver because of their large export economy with Canada and Mexico.  The state wage according to the state website is $7.36 per hour.


References:
http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/CDLE-LaborLaws/CDLE/1240336908932