In 1937, Colorado's native greenback cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki stomias) was believed to be extinct. Many attribute the greenback's decline to pollution, habitat loss, and predation as a result of intensifying front-range settlement during the late-1800s and the turn of the century. Importantly, in 1873, an old homesteader named Joseph C. Jones set out to strike it rich by developing a hotel and restaurant along Bear Creek (a tributary of the Arkansas River) in hopes of alluring tired travelers hiking a newly completed trail to and from the summit of Pike's Peak. Unknowingly, Jones would become an accidental conservationist.