Today we were given a lot of information about the history of Chicago.  One of the topics that Dr. Sarah Marcus talked about that I found very interesting was when she was comparing the history of Chicago with the little known history of Peshtigo, Illinois.  We explored the reasons why Peshtigo is so unknown, even though it suffered a worse fate than Chicago at about the same time- having a great fire destroy the town, and only a few hundred of the two thousand living there survived.   We talked about economics, waterways, trade, immigration and investors to name a few reasons why Chicago was rebuilt and Peshtigo is pretty much forgotten. 

I actually just completed a class on Colorado History and in part of the class, we focused on the development of Denver as our state capital.  Pueblo wanted to be the capital as well; however the mighty dollar won out there as well.  Denver had the people, politicians and investors to make Denver Colorado’s capital, whereas the industrial base developed in Pueblo.

  I think this would be an interesting study to continue with students, asking them to do some brief research on different towns in Colorado, looking at the economic development in each.  After researching, they could infer why they think certain cities developed in different areas of Colorado, explaining how each town/city etc. fit in to the puzzle that makes up Colorado.

I know I have not totally figured this out, but it would be a new way of looking at Colorado, or any other state for that matter.