When he was only two years of age, Archies father relocated the family to Lorain County Ohio. Archie worked on a farm and attended the Public Schools of Elyria, until he was seventeen years of age, then entered a dry-goods store as clerk, where he remained until the breaking out of the Rebellion. He immediately raised a company which was mustered as Company K,23, Regiment Ohio Infantry Volunteers. He not only participated in the battles of West Virginia but was at Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam and most notably, Vicksburg.
He was appointed commissioner for the exchange of prisoners, and succeeded in releasing from Andersonville, Georgia, and Cahaba, Alabama, more than eight thousand captives. The prisoners were taken to Camp Fisk, named in his honor, and located about four miles to the rear of Vicksburg. Col. Fisk was the only person on the part of our government to secure relief for the famishing and suffering captives, who had been immured within the walls of Southern prisons.
Through his efforts, a cartel was agreed upon between himself as commissioner for the U. S. Government and Col. N. G. Watts and Howard A. M. Henderson, the agent of the Confederate Government, whereby the prisoners from Andersonville, Libbey and other places, were to be transferred to Camp Fisk, to remain until exchanged. At the final surrender, Col. Fisk signed the paroles of and furnished transportation to their homes of seventy-five thousand Confederate soldiers from the armies of Generals Dick Taylor, N. B. Forest and Wirt Adams. The people of Vicksburg saw that Col. Fisk was a just and faithful officer and treated him with marked courtesy and because of their kindness probably, as much as anything else, he located at Vicksburg after the close of the war.
Locating at Vicksburg, Col. Fisk began at once to display in civil life, the faculty for projecting and executing, that had characterized him as a soldier. He engaged actively in mercantile and manufacturing pursuits. He built a large gin, constructed the first cotton-seed oil-mill that was erected in Mississippi, and was also an extensive planter. He took a prominent part in the work of reconstruction, and was the proprietor and editor of the Republican, the first Republican paper published in the State. Subsequently he purchased the Times, the most bitter and partisan Democratic paper in the south and changed its politics to Republican. In 1868 he was a delegate to the convention which nominated Gen. Grant, was a member of the Republican National Executive Committee the ensuing four years, was chairman of the State Committee in 1869, and also a candidate for Congress on the Independent Republican ticket, and was supported chiefly by ex-Confederates.
After residing in the south for eight years he determined to seek a new home. Believing that the west afforded a better opportunity for ambitious and energetic men, he came to Denver, arriving there in the spring of 1873. He embarked at once in real estate, but served as Clerk of the District Court in 1878, 1879 and 1880. He was the chief promoter of the Denver Circle Railroad, President of the Denver Circle Real Estate Company, President of the Denver Land & Improvement Company, and President of The American Trust Company. Has been for years an active member of the Chamber ofCommerce and the Real Estate Exchange, and has been connected with a large number of strong companies, organized for the purpose of buying and selling property, and developing the resources of Colorado and contiguous States and Territories.He is interested in a number of mines, producing gold and silver, is engaged in banking, possesses large interests at Ogden, Utah, is one of the most extensive farmers in Colorado, and is engaged in raising horses and cattle.
Denver without men like Col. Fisk would have been less aggressive, and would not to-day stand forth as the " Queen City of the Plains." Ever awake to her best interests and jealous of her welfare, he has early and late and at all times, worked hard in her behalf. Go where one will throughout the length and breadth of that fair city, and at every quarter of the compass one will see a monument of some kind, great or small,with whose planning and construction is associated the name of Col. Archie C. Fisk.
A full biography can be seen here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=2vEQAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=col+archie+fisk&source=bl&ots=lDvK03F2WI&sig=k4N-q0fZXjoOsDN6LYE3AiIO9w4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=12dqUMvPCsf3qQGrroGADQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=col%20archie%20fisk&f=false