By the spring of 1859, there were cities on both sides of the South Platte. The situation was tenuous and filled with confusion, as tensions between the cities grew and nearly led to bloodshed. Horace Greeley described the rapidly growing metropolis as a "log city of 150 dwellings, not three-fourths completed nor two-thirds inhabited, nor one-third fit to be." Finally, a torch-lit meeting was held, and on the one bridge over Cherry Creek, for the price of a barrel of whiskey, all other names were dropped and the settlement in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains came to be known as
