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Title: Colorado Outings

Author: James W. Steele

Release Date: July 15, 2019 [EBook #59923]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Lisa Corcoran and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

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Colorado Outings

BY JAMES STEELE.

ISSUED BY THE PASSENGER DEPARTMENT

BURLINGTON ROUTE,

CHICAGO.

COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY

THE CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY

RAILROAD COMPANY.

A Colorado Mountain View—The Mount of the Holy Cross, as seen from near Leadville.

Colorado Outings.

CHAPTER I.

Glimpses of a Mountain World.

COLORADO—for thirty years no geographical name has been oftener written in connection with the phrases that express height, vastness, space, clearness and a colossal beauty that never wearies or changes or grows old. Hundreds of books, millions of words, have described its scenes. Many thousands have visited it. Endowed with a beauty of fascinating awfulness, and with still another beauty that underlies the magnitude and sits serene amid the grandeur, the inadequate, word-trammeled idea of it has found endless expression, and yet the scenes of Colorado have never been described. Whoever has visited her ever after turns aside from words; whoever has not, can obtain from them but a faint conception of that which in truth can be imagined only in actual presence—and hardly even then.

Yet it seems necessary that maps should be drawn, and details written out, and the camera be called upon to reproduce the stupendous microscopic detail, and that magnificence should find a biographer and be put into figures that in the presence of the reality are almost meaningless. For it is a work-a-day world. The questions of time, distance, convenience, cost, possibility, cannot be barred from their foreordained connection in the human mind with even the magnificence that was builded by the æons; the beauty whose mother was cosmos.

Imagine, to begin with, the extent of this piece of scenery. Colorado contains 104,500 square miles—66,880,000 acres. Of this vast area—as big as all New England with Illinois added—two-thirds is mountains. Not such as claim that name in Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia and the Carolinas, but Titanic. The height of the average Alleghanies and of the Blue Ridge is perhaps 2,500 feet. The famed peaks of the chain may rise sometimes to 5,000 feet. Katahdin is 5,385 feet high, and there are others 3,400, 2,800, etc. The thirteen peaks of Mount Desert Island and vicinity are from 1,000 to 2,800 feet high. Mount Agamenticus is a hill that claims 670 feet. Kearsarge, historic name, has only 3,250 feet. The Peaks of Otter, in Virginia, climb to 4,200 feet.

They might all be lost in this Colorado and never be found again. The state is traversed by the main chain of the Rockies, the oft-quoted “backbone of the continent,” the huge rooftree of our republic, prolific mother of rivers, this great watershed gives rise to the Rio Grande, the two Plattes, the Arkansas, the rivers of central Kansas, the Colorado that in Arizona passes for two hundred miles between those sheer red walls that are the scenic wonder of the world, and flows at last into foreign seas.

Out of this mighty chain and its flanks rise the peaks beside which most of the serenest heights of the common world are as hillocks; Pike’s, Gray’s, Long’s, Lincoln, Ouray, Grant, Sherman, Yale, Harvard, Dome, Spanish Peaks, the Wet Mountains; and scores of others whose heights range from 11,000 to 15,000 feet. To him who sees them first from afar, perhaps across eighty miles of plains-country, where the sudden rising against the sunset of the Rampart range seems impossible—to him afar these seem not mountains, but clouds. Thenceforth he is required to modify his views of elevation and to extend vaguely and indefinitely his notions of the picturesque. For these giants also he may come to know as familiar things. The flowers he may gather here also, and may place his hand within the clefts of those red cathedral towers that were not reared with hands. Here, too, has the human conquered, and up these vast defiles the railways climb. Puny they seem amid their strange environment, yet of the vast wonder they are become a part. Were there nothing else to appal or please, these alone would repay the journey from afar, for they illustrate once for all the unabashed capacities of that which amid nature’s wonders, and everywhere is the wonder above all—the mighty human mind.

The Colorado Capital—In Sixteenth Street, Denver.

It is a strange country. The very name is a memento of the passing race that, first of Europeans, saw these serene pinnacles leaning against the blue. The name means red, light-brown, ruddy, florid, and may even be a synonym for joyousness. A Dios con la Colorada—go thou merrily with God—is a phrase one may hear in Seville when lovers part. Why red? Because the dizzy walls that fence the cataract are in Colorado oftenest of the rich, dull red-brown that even human architecture chooses for its stateliest spires. One may imagine the Spaniard who clanked his broken armor in the Cañon of the Arkansas for the first time, and looked stiffly up at those ruddy walls, and remembered ever afterward, as most men do, what he saw in the land that is red.

Sublimity and beauty are not usually convertible terms. They do not mean the same. Grandeur is austere. Yet here one finds the most singular combinations of these two incompatibilities. The grandeur is over all; the overpowering sentiment of the vast domain. Yet in all her nooks and corners nestles the other—beauty beyond compare. When one looks for the first time upon the Rampart range, fencing the western rim of that vast undulating plain like a wall, it is impossible for him to imagine Manitou and Ute Pass and Cheyenne Cañon and the road to the Garden of the Gods, nestling there so near at hand beneath the cold dome of Pike’s Peak. When one is at Cañon City, a pretty town sleeping among its orchards in the sunshine, he does not think how soon his train will glide between the mighty jaws of the Arkansas Cañon. When one traverses drowsily the mesa lands, smooth and wide and given over to bees and gardens that lie west of Denver, he cannot by himself foresee the Clear Creek Cañon just ahead, or imagine the six parallel tracks and the windings and contortions that make the “loop” at its farther end above Silver Plume. And at Salida, at five o’clock in the morning, when the mountain world is filled with the turquoise blue—earth and air and sky, not merely tinted, but full of the strange solid color that heralds the mountain dawn—he cannot imagine the rare, sweet, thin air of the heights of the Marshall Pass that is just ahead, or imagine the rocky bosom of Ouray, bare, solemn, silent, changeless, serene in the vastness of the upper air, yet so near that one may almost count the stones that strew that gray summit where human toil and pain have never been.

Minnehaha Falls—Roadside cascade on the line of the Cog Railroad up Pike’s Peak.

So it is that beauty and grandeur have never been so nearly akin elsewhere as they are in Colorado. Of nooks and corners and little valleys and waterfalls grotesque shapes there are almost thousands. One may sit at a car window all day, not knowing precisely where he is, or caring, and catch them as they pass and come and go, until his soul is tired. Yet it is all on a scale of inconceivable immensity. Even the mesas and tablelands, where the grass grows as on a lowland farm, are 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea—more than twice as high as Mount Everett. There is nothing low. One cannot get down to the plane of all his life hitherto. The word “valley” is a relative expression; low and high have not their usual significance. Looking back as the train crawls up a mountain side in long doubling curves, one is surprised to see floating far below him a long and trailing film of silver lace; something so near and ethereal and beautiful that he cannot recognize it as that which he has looked up to all his life—a cloud. And on one side the valley sinks away, narrowing and lowering in distance that seems infinite. One was down there half an hour ago—down in those narrow depths, and they seemed high. But from the opposite window, whither one transfers himself to see the very roof of the world, sure that he has attained to such a height, as he looks out it is still up, up, up the slanting, narrow track, the world of mountains below, above, everywhere. Were he now far below he might look up and see this train as it actually is; see it as one sees the small brown worm crawling slowly in a slanting line high up on the face of the rugged, lichen-covered rock.

And if one will have it so, that is all there is to do in this world of mountains—sit still and be carried amid heights and pines and clouds, in a new air and an upper world that, save in respect of this railroad, has nothing in it of human things.

Will the reader kindly glance at the map and note this spiderish network of railways? When was it that the American engineer first discovered that his art was precisely the opposite of what it had been imagined to be—traditional—and that it was meant to make a locomotive climb where no sane and humane man would think of pushing the reluctant donkey, and amid heights and vastnesses where even the eagle was once, too, solitary? Before anyone knew it, except the capitalists, the idea had been absorbed by these unique brains, and the work was done. The result is one of the most singular that can be added to ordinary human experiences. Most travelers take it all for granted; it is there, and it works, and that is all. Utterly unknown to fame, the men who did these things have finished them and have gone away, but to them, nevertheless, is due, not one little railway line led on tall steel trestles across a few difficult places, but the most remarkable railway system of the world.

Queer experiences—small ones—occur at frequent intervals in the course of this elevated and tortuous tour. As one passes by he may see a cleft between the tawny walls that seems to him as narrow as a door—a gateway into a mass of peaks that appear to lie jumbled and unbroken and inaccessible for an unknown distance. But here as he looks back he may see dimly shining in the half light the two steel rails of another road; a branch, perhaps, but nevertheless leading somewhere into the heart of this unknown world, and occupying all the space between the opening walls with their narrow-gauge utilities. And then one wants to return to that place sometime, and take that disappearing line, and be trundled into this new kingdom to see what he may find there.

Map of Marshall Pass.

GUNNISON CITY

SARGENT

MARSHALL PASS

PONCHA

SALIDA

SARGENT

TO SALT LAKE

BUXTON

CHESTER

SHAWANO

MARSHALL PASS

GRAY’S

TO DENVER

PONCHA

MEARS

SHIRLEY

TO VILLA GROVE

PONCHA PASS

Your train may stop at some little station like Mears, beyond Salida. Already you may have seen creeping up the mountain ahead of your train another like it. And here at Mears, looking out and upward from your window you again see this little train, this time directly above you two or three hundred feet, on another track, and snakily gliding away through a narrow gateway into the south. Reference to a map teaches you that this was not a happening, and that this narrow gateway, as unreal as a stage scene to the eye, and having a similar effect, is the opening of an extensive system covering Southern Colorado and extending into New Mexico.

Scores of times you see, away above or far below, another track. You may see only a section of it, cut off by rocks at each end, and manifestly having nothing to do with you and your travels. Then a person suggests that we were at that place half an hour ago, and asks if you think we have any connection with still another track, glimpses of which may be caught on the side of a mountain directly across, with a yawning chasm between that would make a crow dizzy if he looked down. And after awhile one is there also, looking across to where he once was, and in his heart not believing it.

All over this majestic mountain world, without a moment of weariness or hunger, without cold or heat or loss of rest, seeing all and realizing little; this is the material and artificial wonder of Colorado travel.

Mingled with these general sensations are the special wonders—the places and scenes that have been described in thousands of pages. In the case of most of them it was never of much avail to try to put them into words; with them all the camera reproduces in miniature scientifically exact, but failing utterly to convey any other meaning than that of prettiness, and there is not anything in Colorado that is merely pretty. When one says that the mountain torrent foams and tumbles among the rocks beside the track in the cañon for eight or ten miles, it is useless to say more. Then this camera comes; a wonderful and indispensable machine, it is true; and makes the white waterfall as big as one’s thumb nail—a foamy spot in a suggested colossal setting—and that is all. The restlessness, the tinkle, the indescribable sound of breaking foam, the overhanging shadow, the glimpse of the far blue sky above and far beyond, the sense that this is nature, careless utterly of you and all your tribe—all these things are left out. To be amid these scenes is to live in a new way during the fleeting time that one is there, and going away again it is to remember more vividly after ten or twenty years than you did the day after you saw them first.

Scores of places are not in the guidebooks at all that strike the casual stranger as vividly as anything that is. Every man’s Colorado is his own. Descriptions weary him. In them the words, however well chosen, illustrate only the orotund and the declamatory, not the thing described. All the guidebooks need much to be done again, and there does not live the man who can effectively rewrite them. Presence is required; presence undeterred by all that is merely written, here or elsewhere.

It might be not unprofitably remembered that much of the pleasure lies in the unmentioned things that lie between. One need not pass all the fourteen miles of the Black Cañon looking for the single towering red shaft that is called the Currecanti Needle. He need not wait and watch for Chipeta Falls—a little snow-born rivulet that commits ten thousand suicides in its tumble down the cliffs to die at last in the little tumbling river that never notices, and goes on forever. He need not shut his eyes because the guidebook gives him the impression that just ahead somewhere stands that special wonder that he is almost sure he came so far particularly to see. The entire endless, solemn, silent, chaotic mass that fills the view for days has all its entirely undescribable charm.

And amid it all live the plodding sons of men. Each little mountain nook where there is water has its occupant. Often there are ranch houses, and cattle and haystacks. Little mountain towns cling to the bench here and there. These things seem strange to us, but how must the wide Nebraska cornfield seem to the man who was born and reared amid scenes like these?

A man said he did not want any of that land; he thought it might pay, but he was not willing to undertake a Colorado farm with any hope of success. Would not a man, he inquired, go out in the morning with the best intentions, but with almost the certainty that he would sit down on the plow-beam and look at these mountains almost all day? And he was morally sure, besides, that he could never wait until Saturday, as they did in Michigan, to go a-fishing. Look at the river, he said, can a man stay away from that to farm?

A Nook in Estes Park.

James’ Ranch.

These are but glimpses. They fail, too, just as the guidebooks do, and there is a vivid glimpse of but one fact—that a man can see and know, and yet utterly fail to convey to any other human his conception of anything beyond the merest commonplaces of a country that sends no messages, writes no embellished chapters, and talks to her visitors only as the sibyl did—personally and mysteriously or not at all.

CHAPTER II.

The Colorado of Reality.

There are two view-points for Colorado, as there are for a woman who has two great endowments; wealth and personal beauty. Colorado is like such a woman. Captivating all comers, she yet claims importance as an industrial entity; a country with vast resources. In 1897, for example, she produced something more than thirty millions in yellow gold. She feeds herself besides, and has fruit, beef, wheat, galore.

But, attracted first by beauty, it is not such statistical, and withal very pleasant, things as these the casual visitor cares most about. He wants rather to understand the qualities and characteristics of so unique a piece of God’s creation.

For it will finally come to be understood that of all the mountain kingdoms she stands first, not even Switzerland and her Alps offering more than a fair comparison. That crescent chain which forms the chiefest attraction of Central Europe covers altogether an area of about 95,000 square miles. Its crowning peak, Mont Blanc, is 15,784 feet high, the most famous and most often named of the mountains of the modern world. But Colorado has many peaks lacking little of this height, and they stand amid others much higher than, but not nearly so bleak, as those the Alpine chain is made up of. The famous Jungfrau is 13,393 feet high. The Matterhorn is still lower. Vegetation ceases at a lesser height than it does in Colorado. The pass of the great St. Bernard is 8,170 feet high. Marshall Pass in Colorado is 10,850 feet, and is climbed every day by the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad and not much said about it. Veta Pass is over 9,000 feet high—another railway station. The town of Leadville, a familiar residence for twelve thousand people, is 10,200 feet above the sea. Some of the beautiful and famous parks of Colorado have their lowest depths higher than the average height of the Alpine chain.

Vegetation is less affected by the altitude here than it is in Europe. Cattle live all the year on indigenous grasses at elevations and in pastures that figures of height would relegate to the woodchuck and the mountain goat. Vegetables and fruits are raised in abundance in mountain valleys wherein in Central Europe the vast, slow-crawling glacier would lie. Timber line, and just above it eternal snow, mark 6,000 feet in the Northern Alps. In Colorado 10,000 is not in all cases the limit of vegetation, and the perpetual snow line is fixed at 11,000 feet, though on many heights almost unknown.

In Estes Park—James’ Ranch—Distant View.

Nor is the impression correct that Colorado is all mountainous. It is all of the mountains, mountainlike, but at least one diversifying feature is the parks. It is a Colorado name for mountain-fenced enclosures. No other mountain country has it, neither has any other the especial feature. The Colorado “park” is distinctive and remarkable. Many of them are of small size, by which it must be understood that they are perhaps no bigger than Rhode Island or Delaware. Those four that are named on the map are at least as large as some of the more important of the New England states. These are North Park, Middle Park, South Park and San Luis Park in the extreme south.

North Park lies near the northern boundary of the state, and is the basin into which run the numerous small streams which gather to make a beginning for the North Platte River, which runs all the way across Nebraska and into the Missouri a few miles south of Omaha; a good twelve hundred miles as it turns. It was a famous game country, and now its streams abound in the dainty-tasting mountain fish. Its surface is alternatively meadow and forest. It is the highest in elevation of the four great parks, and one of the loveliest regions in the world.

Middle Park lies next this to the south, separated from it by a range of mountains; one of the numerous “Continental Divides,” and big enough to be that, as are all others of the same name. Here rise the waters that finally flow into the Colorado of the West, and at last reach the Gulf of California; those that flow east, as the Platte, rising on the other side of the range. This park is fifty miles wide by about seventy long, and its floor is not a plane, but is traversed by ranges of hills of about the magnitude of the Alleghanies. There are several distinct and extensive valleys. But the rim is studded with some of the highest peaks of the state, among them Gray’s Peak, Long’s Peak and Mount Lincoln, rising to an elevation of 13,000 to 14,000 feet.

Beside it on the west lies the smaller basin, called Egerea Park, and on its northeast side is Estes Park. At its southeast corner lies the wee county of Gilpin, one of the oldest, longest-yielding and richest gold districts of the world.

South Park is thirty miles wide and about sixty long; a basin that furnishes the headwaters of the Arkansas and South Platte rivers. It is the best known of all the parks, as the discovery of rich mines in early times opened roads and established settlements. The scenery is charming, and fine pasturage and water offered superior inducements to those who were in Colorado at a time when a man could much more easily have what he fancied than he can now. The three hours’ ride across the southern edge of this park on a clear afternoon, on the Colorado Midland road, is an event to one new to these scenes. Here the South Platte River loses entirely the character one learns to think is that of every mountain stream, and has not even banks. The clear stream, entirely unruffled, lies in innumerable bends—almost coils—along this level floor, without any willow fringes, or even tall grass, just bank-full and no more. But it makes up for this preternatural quietness when it breaks into its foreordained cañon at the eastern edge, and begins its journey of some hundreds of miles into Central Nebraska, where, in Lincoln County, it joins its twin, which rises in North Park. Looking at the map one wonders what mysterious affinity brings these two divergent branches together at last, across distance, high mountains, wide plains and every obstacle possible to running water.

Hell Gate, on the Colorado Midland Railway.

The San Luis Park is the last and largest of these unique mountain amphitheaters, and lies in the southern portion of the state. It surrounds a beautiful lake of the same name, some sixty miles in length, and into which run nineteen streams. The San Luis Lake has no known outlet, but in the respect of being fresh and not salt it departs from the usual rule of lakes with no outflowing waters. This area of about 18,000 square miles, included in San Luis Park, is among the choicest known for the uses of civilization. It was the only portion of what is now Colorado that was to any great extent permanently occupied by the Mexicans. About 25,000 of them lived here when our occupancy began, and fully that number of their descendants are there still. It was into this region that one Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike, of the United States army, blindly wandered while he was surveying interior Louisiana—how strangely the matter-of-fact old story reads now—and was politely taken in and escorted to the capital, the opulent and ancient Santa Fe, and much further elsewhere. He died in battle at last, a soldier and the son of a soldier, and this little excursion into wilds absolutely unknown so short a time ago gave him the most colossal and enduring of monuments—Pike’s Peak.

In this beautiful region—where, besides the nineteen streams that feed San Luis Lake, sixteen others flow into the Rio Grande, here a little white mountain stream newly born—it is surprising how little great elevation affects trees, grass and flowers. It is an all-the-year cattle country at almost any height. Big trees grow 10,000 feet above the sea. Cereals and the tender vegetables thrive at 7,000 feet, and potatoes at 8,000. Beautiful flowers and all the grasses are found at 11,000, and the pines and firs are of fair size at 11,500 feet.

It is singular the discriminating eye for a good thing the early Spaniard had, here and in California, especially the padres. They knew it when they saw it, and took it and kept it for a considerable time. And then we got it—always. And they accept us as neighbors and fellow-citizens and lawmakers without any ill-will, and keep on doing just as they always did, and as their ancestors did in Spain four hundred years ago.

When the reader has assimilated the idea of these Colorado parks he is left only one other mental task—to conceive of all the rest as a piled-up succession of panoramas. Behind each other, far into the purple distance, the ranges lie tier upon tier. The valleys that lie between, great and small, number thousands. There are in Colorado two hundred and sixty snow-born small streams, but large enough to have each a name. There are nine named lakes. There are sixty-three rivers. Besides some seventy peaks that are still unnamed there are about one hundred and fifty towering domes that have names already given.

Amid these general scenes lie half-hidden those that are particularly beautiful; the nooks and corners where one wonders grudgingly when one comes upon them if they have lain there through the ages, and have been as beautiful as they are to-day, wasted, so to speak, in a world where gems are so very rare. There is an impression, held without warrant, but natural, that these places have charms, yes, but that they are overrated and overwritten after the manner of western efflorescence and the frontier desire to surprise. The truth is that quite such scenes and places do not exist elsewhere in all the world; that when white men first saw some of them they were unable to convey to others any adequate idea of them by means of even their own picturesque vocabulary. Since then, and always, the same difficulty exists, because in the inadequacy of mere descriptive words the idea becomes confused, and exaggeration is taken for granted. There is a natural reason why hundreds of men and women should go to Colorado, should meet there a revelation of natural beauty that leaves them permanently affected, and yet should speak of their experiences only to each other. It is useless to talk, or, alas! to write.

Sopris Peak, near Aspen, as seen from the Valley. 12,972 feet high.

CHAPTER III.

The Colorado Pleasure Ground—Manitou.

When the Colorado visitor comes for the first time he is fortunate if his approach is by one of those lines whose trains, like those of the Burlington, come careering across the high plains from the eastward at an hour that shows the notched and serrated mountain wall against the sky. There is no other mountain approach in the world like that to Colorado from the east. Here is the sudden ending of that wide and silent vastness in which the modern traveler now lives less than twenty-four hours, but which the old-time wanderer dwelt in for more than a month. To reach this mountain world, ending abruptly at the plain, is a surprise. Let one ray of sunshine lie upon a peak, far in the distance, and it is known that the fleecy texture of a cloud could not give back that peculiar glint, cold and bright and half a frown, and that these huge shapes are, at last, the Rocky Mountains. Such a glimpse may not occur to the railway traveler once in a hundred journeys, but if seen it is a suggestion of the spires that Bunyan saw; the Beulah that lies beyond the river.

More than a quarter of a century ago, before the time of the transcontinental lines, the present writer, visiting his guard lines at 4 o’clock in the morning on the banks of the Purgatoire, has seen one rose-colored spot high up among the fading stars, and wondered what it was. The mirages of the plains had shown no mountains to the westward while daylight lingered. It was the sunrise on Pike’s Peak, eighty miles away.

To this eastward edge of the mountains and western ending of the plains all westward travelers come first, and it is here that the majority linger. In it are situated Denver, Colorado Springs, Manitou, Pueblo, Trinidad, Golden, Boulder, Fort Collins, Greeley, etc. These names are all familiar. Their situation in respect to each other is in a crooked line running north and south along the edge of the high plains, and about three hundred miles long. Greeley is furthest north and Trinidad furthest south. Denver is the center of the line, singularly situated as the gateway to all that lies to the westward.

It is useless to attempt to occupy attention with a description of this beautiful and well-known city. It is in reality of the plains, though standing at an elevation of over five thousand feet. To it all roads lead, and from it all go out toward the nooks and corners of an intricate mountain system. The foothills of the real mountains rise behind it, as high as the average Alleghanies.

Southward and northward from Denver lie the resorts that all tourists visit, whether or not they go into the interior, whose general aspects have been sketched in a previous chapter. Chief among these is Manitou.

The road from Manitou to the Garden of the Gods—One of the most beautiful drives known.

To visit Manitou it is necessary to take one of three lines running directly south from the capital to Colorado Springs, a distance of seventy-eight miles. This city is built on the mesa, and to be a health resort was not its original purpose. But such it is, and it has a wide reputation with that class who wish to avoid the activity and merriment of Manitou, which lies in sight to the westward. The hotels are fine, and, speaking largely, every day in the year is sunny. To be able always to see the mountains, and to be able also at any time, and by an easy railroad or carriage ride, to enter some of their most beautiful nooks, is an attraction to many hundreds of people. The town has a population of about twelve thousand, and an elevation of nearly six thousand feet. Like Denver, it stands on the edge of the plains.

Between Denver and Colorado Springs or Manitou there are several smaller resorts, all on railroad lines running south from Denver. Among these is the village of Castle Rock, deriving its name from the castellated cliff under which it nestles. Perry Park, a little distance away from the line, is in a park filled with rock formations similar to those found in the famous Garden of the Gods, near Manitou. Palmer Lake lies in the midst of good foothill scenery. The peaks of the Snowy Range are visible from near this point, and the walks and drives of the neighborhood are fine. Glen Park, half a mile away, is the Chautauqua of Colorado. It is one of the prettiest glens in this region of nooks and glens, and the cliff behind it is 2,000 feet high. The Chautauqua assembly is held here annually, and otherwise the place is used for summer residence and for outings.

Almost midway between Colorado Springs and Manitou, and in sight of both, is the old town of Colorado City. It was the first capital of Colorado, and in some one of the now dilapidated log buildings, wanderers in an unknown land called themselves to order after the manner of the usual American empire builder.

MANITOU—About this unique spot there will always be something to say. But generalities do not describe it. He who has not been there at all can get from them no conception of the real place. And it is not so much a place as it is a locality; the center of a group of beautiful places that have made it, with its surroundings, a spot once seen never to be forgotten.

Imagine the outward opening of Ute Pass—a cleft in the undulating mountain wall extending backward and upward. It opened into the plain, as Pike’s tattered wanderers first saw it, in V-shape, and in this notch bubbled three or four peculiar springs. There was no one there. The antelope and buffalos from the plains, and the black-tailed deer and elks from the mountains came there to drink. The Utes trailed down the rocky cañon that bears their name, single file, afoot, and camped beside the springs. One of them went out to the edge of the mesa, east toward Colorado Springs and lay down on his naked stomach and peeped out over the plain from behind a sage bush, and was on picket duty there to watch lest the plains Apache catch his kindred unaware.

Car and Engine used in the Ascent of Pike’s Peak by the Cog Railroad.

The waters bubbled as they rose, and had a faint sweetish taste, and the savages, and all who have since tasted them, liked them well. They were “medicine waters,” too. There is a pleasant supposition that these painted savages named the place “Manitou”—a name used by the Indians of Cooper and tradition to express the idea of a spirit, God or Devil, indifferently. It is a pretty name in sound, and the legend does not the slightest harm. In reality, the Utes owned these unknown mountains in large part, and they also liked to hunt buffalo on the plains, and they passed this place in their migrations because it was convenient and they were thirsty. All that is left of them now is their one supposed word, “Manitou.”

Then, as now, the strange wind-wrought obelisks of the Garden of the Gods stood near at hand, and in the trail the huge Balanced Rock seemed waiting to be pushed to its fall by some passing child. Then, as now, the gateway, guarded by its red perpendicular portals, springing more than three hundred feet straight up from the level plain, stood open. The clefts in the mountain’s flank that are called the north and south Cheyenne Cañons were there as now, and the cascade that falls in seven leaps five hundred feet in the southern cañon was there, it is almost difficult to believe, precisely as it is to-day and as it has been for ages. All the trees were there; the Douglas spruce, the Rocky Mountain pine, the Picea Grandis, the creepers, the mauve and white clematis, and, over all, towering and inaccessible, the red granite walls.

The twin cañon to the northward held its tumbling waters too, and Seven Lakes, Monument Park, Rainbow Falls, Manitou Park, Williams’ Cañon, Cave of the Winds, Engleman’s Cañon, Red Cañon, Crystal Park, Glen Eyrie—all these were the same as now, but unnamed and almost unnoted. Nothing in the modern world is ever done until a railroad comes.

Yet there has been a change; as great a change as the ingenuity of man can make in everlasting things. The Manitou Grand Caverns have been discovered and opened, precisely as though nature had not been lavish enough before, and must needs do some other brilliant thing through man’s accident and luck. Wagon roads have been graded in all directions, and from one famous place to another, until there is no pleasure ground in America, possibly in the world, so well equipped for out-of-doors pleasure in a climate that has no vicissitudes, and amid remarkable scenes that have been clustered around this one favored spot with a profusion unknown elsewhere in all the civilized world.

To South Cheyenne Cañon from Manitou it is nine miles; to North Cheyenne Cañon eight and one-half; from the mouth of the cañon to the Rainbow Falls and Grand Caverns it is one and one-half miles, and every visitor wishes it was further, because it is a road of rugged sweetness quite unequaled; to Red Cañon it is three miles; to Crystal Park, three; to the Garden of the Gods, three—a drive lovely as pleasure knows, with an extraordinary scene at the end of it; to Glen Eyrie it is five miles; to Monument Park by “trail”—which is native for a fine riding road—it is seven and one-half miles; by carriage road it is nine miles; to Seven Lakes, again by trail, it is nine miles; to the summit of Pike’s Peak, this time by the Cog Road, it is nine wonderful miles, with an elevation rarely attained in this life at the end of it; to the same by trail it is thirteen miles. There are four ways of going up this mountain, to climb which was a few years ago a remarkable feat—afoot, horseback, by carriage and by rail. All these ways are practised, according to the spirit and physical condition of the visitor. The bicycle, for only this once, is not included.

These are some of the show places, the world-renowned scenes about which there cannot easily be any exaggeration. People linger among them for months, and go to them again and again.

But in addition to these there are scores of mountain nooks and corners; cañons, caves, waterfalls; private places that the visitor seeks out or casually finds for himself. There are acres, and quarter and half acres that have been discovered hundreds of times, and are owned, practically without cost, by the finder for so long as he lingers amid these scenes. There may be sometimes a pair, to whom the place is a joint-stock enterprise.

Within the limits of Manitou there are nine springs, all cold mineral waters. They are of two kinds; the “soda” springs, effervescent and resembling in taste and quality appollinaris water, and the iron springs. All are medicinal, and all have records of cures. They are at least the nucleus of an agreeable supposition: the beautiful scenery, the crisp mountain air, the out-of-doors, the inducements to activity, the tiredness that is really rest—these are the health-restoring facilities of Manitou. The waters are very pleasant, and may be regarded as a duty, always with the understanding that if the visitor is made over again in the course of a few weeks, as he often is, he may ascribe it to the waters if he wishes.

The Colorado Mining Industry. Miner’s Pack Train near Aspen.

It is manifest that of such a place a volume might be written. The specific attractions of each attraction cannot here be described. It would be useless space-writing if they were. Manitou, once visited, remains ever after a picture of the mind, never put into words. Over all, always, shimmers the indescribable Colorado sunshine, a light that is not of other lands.

So far as creature comforts are in question, Manitou has long been sumptuously equipped. There are five large hotels, capable of accommodating an aggregate of over twelve hundred guests. There are, besides, many small hotels, and there are cottages that may be rented for periods of weeks or months.

One of the notable works of man at Manitou is the Cog Railroad to the summit of Pike’s Peak. It was completed in 1891, and is in many respects singular even for its kind. It climbs in the eight and three-quarters miles of its length to a height of 14,147 feet above sea level. It cost half a million dollars, and the construction is of the very highest class. There is a cog-rail in the center, between the two other rails, which weighs a hundred and ten tons to the mile. At intervals of two hundred feet the track is anchored to heavy masonry. Brakes are so contrived that the train can be stopped on any grade within a distance of ten inches. The trucks of the cars and engines are always tilted at the angle of the ascent, but in the case of the former the seats are level to the sitter, and the engines are built high at one end and remain so, even on level ground. The engine does not pull the train, but pushes it. Three hours are consumed in making the ascent, and a hundred passengers make a load for the train. Stops are made at interesting points on the way up.

There are many feats of engineering and in the overcoming of great physical difficulties that render this the most remarkable of the climbing passenger railroads of the world. The ascent of this big mountain was always a feat by the ordinary means; the elevation is one not usually attained in this life under any circumstances, and the sensations are indescribable in words.

No attempt is here made to describe in detail the scenes within the scenes at Manitou. No one who has been there ever attempts this even in ordinary conversation. They who return from the Cheyenne cañons or the Garden of the Gods are ever a silent company. That name Manitou should be applied to the entire region, as indicating vaguely that spirit far removed from the platitudes and tediousness of ordinary language and common life that pervades it all.

A famous piece of railway construction—“The Loop,” above Georgetown.

CHAPTER IV.

The Colorado Pleasure Grounds, II.

The “Loop” Journey.

In almost the opposite direction from that which takes the visitor to Manitou, and still near the eastern rim of the mountains, is one cañon that can be visited from Denver in a day. It lies upon one of the lines of the U. P., D. & G. road, and is known as Clear Creek Cañon.

This defile in the mountains has been long known. When Colorado was young it was a miners’ wagon road over the range. Tens of thousands have seen it, and it still remains, especially to one who has no time to see the overpowering scenery in the interior, an experience not to be left out.

From Denver it is fifteen miles to Golden, which is the simple name of a town, one of the original gold camps, over a stretch of country that was once an inlet of the great plains sea, and is as level as the Nebraska prairie. It is a fruit, farm and ranch country, suggesting nothing of the scene that is so near at hand. The basin in which the town lies is the bottom of this sea, and the rocks around the shore are water worn, and show where the waves once lapped. But a little distance beyond lies the opening to this famous gorge and its tumbling stream, and thence the road follows it for more than twenty miles.

The place, like most cañons, is apparently a cooling crock; a place that opened in the shrinking of the crust when the white-hot world began to harden. The projections of one side vaguely fit the indentations of the other. Very often the red walls come very close together, revealing, as one looks upward, only a narrow blue streak where the sky is.

Imagination, and a desire to have a place of beginning in detailed descriptive writing, have given these rugged rock faces peculiar resemblances, and fantastic names. They become faces, bold profiles, fairy castles. But the dignity of the place does not bear out any of these similitudes. Its charm lies in a general massive beauty; a something that is feebly expressed by the word “grandeur.” This is enhanced by the fact that one is there at the bottom of the gorge, and can look upward to dizzy heights that are constantly changing before the eye. There are places where the sun does not shine; others where the walls widen a little and one catches a glimpse of white peaks far off. Foaming along the bottom runs Clear Creek—now often of a color far from clear because of its admixture with tailings from extensive mining operations far toward its head. It is useless, here or elsewhere, to try to describe these Colorado torrents. They make a picture upon the inner consciousness, and one can shut his eyes long afterward and see and hear them. But they have no technique; only some human picture has that; and they are not the proper subjects of the inadequate things we know as words. All that a distant reader can be asked to do is to imagine a plain suddenly estopped by a red wall of rocks. In this wall a narrow gateway; a square, sheer opening, and into this he glides. After the entrance the walls grow higher and higher, and for half a day he is seated in a gliding box with a roaring torrent beneath or beside him, and these vast walls fencing him in on both sides. There are hundreds of sharp turns, and often the sides of his upholstered gliding box almost touch the wall. There is no opening but that which is toward the sky. For countless ages only these foaming waters broke the silence here. It is interrupted now only by the feeble clank of the wheel upon the rail—the wheel and rail that are, after all is said, the only powers that may not be daunted by such scenes.

In the V-shaped opening at the western end of Clear Creek Cañon lies Idaho Springs, a mining town, where, if these scenes are new to the visitor, odd glimpses may be caught of a life and traffic to most of the world unknown. The surrounding hills are marked with white spots high up, and these scars are almost countless. Mining is everything, and everywhere, and scenery is incidental. But Idaho Springs, as its name might indicate, is also a health resort. The springs consist of both hot and cold mineral water, and there is a natural vapor bath and boiling springs. The climate is celebrated even in Colorado.

Country Road Bridge over the Uncompahgre River—Western Colorado.

Fourteen miles further westward is Georgetown, and the road thither is simply an extension of the Clear Creek Cañon, here taking the form of a sloping-sided and very narrow valley. The town has a population of nearly four thousand people. These mountain towns, sheltered by the high ranges, have all a more equable climate than Denver. There is hardly one that is not both a winter and summer health resort. Strong men who came to this country many years ago with weak lungs, seeking the one great desideratum of a climate where they could live all the year out of doors, have gone wherever occupation and circumstances drew them in the mountains, and are conscious as a rule of no great difference in locality within certain well-defined and very wide lines. Winter does not interfere with any industry of the country. The sheltered valley, wherever it lies in central and southern Colorado, at least, furnishes a residence for that large class who would surely die in two years in the east, who know that fact, and who live here in health until they are old.

Perched high above Georgetown is the famous “Loop,” a wonderful piece of railroad engineering skill. The mining town of Silver Plume is perched at the apex of this work. Many eastern roads have “Horseshoe” and “Muleshoe” curves, and make lithographs of them, and speak of them as engineering triumphs worthy of the passenger’s particular attention. So they were in their time, but they have been incalculably surpassed in dozens of cases in Colorado.

The word “Loop” is in this case largely a misnomer. It is a railroad coil. The doubles and turns are carried to an extent to the date of its building unknown to railway engineering. There are places where one can count five tracks below him from his window, apparently having no connection with each other. The entire entanglement lies about ten thousand feet above sea level. Still higher above the uppermost turn there are working mines, the little square openings to which are like dormer windows let into the immeasurable sloping roof of the world. The casual traveler does not understand, the present writer does not know, how these openings are reached from the lower world. There are said to be lateral paths, not seen from the railway, where the patient and remarkably clear-headed burro hath his mission as a very common carrier. It was once thought beneath the dignity of the average American to use this plodding beast as his assistant, but the exigencies of steepness bring him at once far to the front. All over Colorado he is a factor, eating little, working much, patient, plodding, long eared and long lived, content as always with thistles and sunshine.

Glimpse of the Valley of Grand River—A characteristic Colorado valley scene.

Two and one-half miles from Georgetown is the famous Green Lake. It is 10,000 feet above the sea. It is full of fish, largely mountain trout, not now, however, as easily caught as they were in early times. It is a huge basin full of perfectly clear, deep water, but there is a prevailing tint of green; water, sand, moss, and even the oar drippings, are all green. At certain hours in late afternoon, when all the shadows and reflections are right, it is possible to catch glimpses of its great depth. There is a forest there, the trees still standing, but turned to stone.

Seven miles away is Argentine Pass, where the highest wagon road in the world is. From this pass there is a view that is remarkable, and for this alone, the delightful road excursion to the pass is made by hundreds of people every year. Four miles from Green Lake is Highland Park, a resort and famous place for picnics. One day’s ride by stage takes the tourist to Grand Lake, the largest body of water in Colorado. This lake is also full of trout, and its numerous tributaries afford fishing in plenty to those who like running water. The surrounding region has grouse and large game in plentifulness quite remarkable for these late times.

In Clear Creek Cañon, coming up, a rather remarkable railway junction is found. It is called “Forks of the Creek,” and there does not seem to be much room for car yards and switches, since the place is merely the running into the main cañon of a lateral one, with its walls little less steep and high than those of the main gorge are. But the branch line from here goes to Black Hawk and Central City, famous mining towns. These places can be reached also from Idaho Springs—by stage across the six miles intervening, done in one hour. On this stage road lies Russell Gulch, where in 1858 the first paying gold east of California was discovered by a man named Russell from Georgia, one of the original pioneers from that state to Colorado. The gulch was a great camp thirty years ago, and the remains are there to-day. Three miles further on is Central City, crawling up the mountain side. It is in the little rich county of Gilpin, previously mentioned. Mining industries abound in every direction.

A few minutes’ ride or walk down the cañon brings one to Black Hawk, though by rail it is four miles—a slight illustration of the exigencies of railway building in this country. On this four miles still further exigencies are illustrated by probably the only permanent “switchback” now in use. While going backward and forward down the sloping mountain—five hundred feet of descent in the four miles—one can look out of the car window and see, hundreds of feet below, the winding cañon down from Central City.

From Black Hawk the train may be taken back to Denver, going eleven miles to the junction mentioned in the heart of Clear Creek Cañon.

Gray’s Peak, one of the highest in Colorado, and its ascent by horses is an excursion often made either from Georgetown or Idaho Springs. The ride, to the beginning of the ascent by carriages, is one of the choicest of Colorado excursions. It is past Silver Plume to Graymont, at which point one may stop if scenery and views are the sum of his desires. Gray’s Peak is a little higher than Pike’s, but the ascent is easier. It is not unusual to start the horseback journey so early in the summer morning that the summit may be reached in time to see the sun rise. It is, of course, true that a description of this scene does not lie within the power of language, of colors, of the camera, or within any field but that of the remembering imagination. Painters, poets and writers come back discouraged. It changes the current of thought for the remainder of a lifetime, and tinges the creeping sordidness of the common world with a color that hereafter never entirely fades. To all, in whatever estate, this sordidness is an enveloping fog; accustomed unseen. There does not live a man or woman to whom the heights of Colorado are not necessary, once in their lives if no more.

End of the Stage Ride from Terminal of the Burlington Route—Estes Park.

It will be understood that it is not intended to do more here than give a sketch of an easy journey out of Denver into a celebrated mountain region. This little journey may be made over the “Loop” and back in one day. It may last a month or all summer. It is one of the remarkable features of Colorado travel that this trip among the heights and fastnesses of nature, and all other delightful journeys here, can be made without a moment of hardship, or even of inconvenience. Civilization is everywhere. Roads, railways, bridges, towns, dot the mountain world. Yet that world remains unchanged, lovely and magnificent in single phrase, and capable of being seen and enjoyed with an expenditure little greater than that which is always necessary at home or elsewhere.

CHAPTER V.

Nooks and Corners.

The State of Colorado contains four thousand three hundred and fifty-seven miles of railroads in a mountain area of a hundred and five thousand square miles. In any other state every mile of this would be “scenic,” and the most uninteresting part of it would elsewhere serve to divert extensive travel.

In this area, penetrated in every part by the astonishing railway mileage given, there are a hundred and fifty-five mountain peaks that are over thirteen thousand feet high. That is ten times as many as all Europe holds. One of these, situated so as to be seen sometimes a hundred miles across the plains, is forsooth climbed by a human railroad, and can be scaled and descended and the traveler be far on his way toward home within the daylight hours of one eventful day. When one begins to describe this country he has to deal with all the majesties, mountains, parks, crags, cañons, glens, waterfalls, geysers, lakes, caverns, cliffs, buttes, all spread out on a tremendous scale, none of them small. There are, it is said, seventy-two high peaks that yet stand nameless, waiting for some form of concurrent opinion as to how these colossal sons of nature shall be best called in mere human speech.

There are about five hundred lakes, large and small, some of them distinguished by a famous name, and many still asleep in mountain hollows almost unknown, where every wanderer who finds them is a discoverer for himself.

There are about six thousand miles of running water, born of snow, filled with fish, most of their countless windings still untraced by him who bears a rod and basket and would like to lure to unequal combat and certain death the mountain fishes, all “game” and difficult of capture. In the far recesses of the mountains there are places still unknown to all save one—the prospector—and here linger the mountain lion, the panther, black, cinnamon, grizzly and silver-tip bears, wildcats, lynxes, porcupines, deer, elks, antelope, and all the creatures of the wilds. These are never common; all the hunters’ tales do not ever make them that, and they must be hunted. He who finds and slays them is an adventurer, and was always such.

Glenwood Springs—General view.

Mineral springs abound. No one knows how many there are, yet there is a long list of them already well known. The names Manitou, Glenwood, Poncha, Pagosa, Buena Vista, Ouray, Idaho, Cañon City, have been heard by all. Every town has its especial waters. At some of these there has been a lavish expenditure of capital and hotel palaces have arisen. Some are so especially endowed with outlying attractions that the waters are a secondary consideration, and of these is Manitou. Others have extraordinary temperatures and volume, so that nature’s chemistry is the pastime of hundreds, and of these is Glenwood. Others are the favored of a few. Every prospector knows of one or more, where isolated cases believe that they must drink or die; have drunk, and did not die.

Every railway line in Colorado is truly an excursion line; to ride over it is a pleasure tour, and one that the man in health and seeking rest and recreation alone will enjoy first before he calmly chooses a spot wherein to rest, and which will thereafter be his chosen place before all others. In this way thousands of tastes are gratified every year, and each one wonders why all others cannot see with him in his place advantages incomparable and quite inexpressible. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad can reel off, so to speak, two dozen mineral springs and health and pleasure resorts on its lines in one small publication, not mentioning at all the places that are famous as scenery, passes, heights, cañons, mountains and astounding feats of railway construction. These number scores.

The Colorado Midland road, with less mileage and covering a much smaller extent of country, mentions fourteen resorts, besides twice or thrice as many famous pieces of scenery.

And here it may be remarked that of the famous resorts of Colorado one is reached by both the Denver & Rio Grande and the Colorado Midland. This is Glenwood Springs, sharing with Manitou an almost equal fame. The place is at the junction of Grand River and Roaring Fork, in a valley that is like an elongated bowl. The springs themselves are phenomenal, running out on both sides of the river, and varying from twenty to a thousand cubic inches a second—among the largest in the world. Those on the north side of the river discharge an immense body of water at a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and this stream is made to flow through an aqueduct on both sides of an island. On this island stands the famous bathing house. Here is found every species of bathing arrangement housed in magnificent style. There are twenty-two large two-room bathing apartments for each sex—forty-four in all—and each is supplied with hot, cold or warm mineral water, and the same temperatures of fresh water, and also showers of either. Here in the heart of the mountains will be found all the appliances of the highest grade of civilization, electric lights, smoking, billiard and eating rooms, linen rooms, hair-dressing rooms, laundries, etc. The feature of the place is perhaps the swimming bath. It is a huge out-of-doors oval tank, full of hot water, and ranging in depth from three and a half to five and a half feet. Two thousand gallons a minute of hot mineral water pours into this huge artificial swimming place, the high temperature being reduced by colder water as it enters.

These features—chief among which is, of course, the hot mineral water in immense volume, making the place remarkable among the resorts of the world—are backed by a hotel which takes rank among the palaces. It has two hundred guest rooms, in nearly all of which are open fireplaces, and there is every convenience that pertains to civilization, mention of which in detail is merely tiresome to the accustomed Colorado visitor. One of the features of our national life is seldom mentioned, and there is now only a small class for whom the mention is worth while. It is that wherever the American establishes himself he takes with him all there is. The refinement, the culture, the “style” of Newport and Saratoga are all duplicated at Manitou and Glenwood, housed magnificently of themselves and environed by scenes in comparison with which those of most of the pleasure places of the world are tame.

The Middle Falls of the Cascade in Cheyenne Cañon, near Manitou—This glen and waterfall are among the most celebrated in the world.

A third line, the Union Pacific, Denver & Gulf, has all the famous country beyond Clear Creek Cañon, full of scenery, resorts and mines; the South Park line to Leadville and Gunnison—a trip often made by the Colorado tourist for the pleasure of the journey—with the most famous mining “camp” of the world at the end of it.

The Burlington Route has a line running northwest from Denver to Lyons, whence one of the few remaining famous mountain stage rides may be taken to that which is by many—by all who know it well—considered to be the gem of the Colorado parks, Estes.

This park was in its time the most famous of the natural feeding grounds for all the Colorado animals. It is largely so yet, though in visiting it there is always a half regret that its location was ever divulged in type, so that it might have remained always a chosen spot for those only who could appreciate its original loveliness and were willing to share it with the animals who live there. It is skirted by mountains nine, eleven and fourteen thousand feet high. Two peaks of granite stand on either side of its only feasible entrance. The interior is shaped irregularly and there is little level ground. It is made up of natural lawns and of slopes and grades. It is but twenty miles in length and is not more than two miles wide in any place. One bright, swift trout stream, known prosaically as the Big Thompson, is born in the snow of Long’s Peak and flows crookedly through it from end to end. This is really one of the loveliest streams in the world. There are waterfalls and little lakes, fine groupings of trees, lawns that seem the work of the landscape gardener on a large scale. Nevertheless, sublimity is the dominant feature of Estes Park, after all. There are pinnacles of rosy granite, the streams are lost in cañons almost or quite inaccessible, and the upper end of almost every valley is closed in mystery. There are, though it seems so far removed from the actual heart of the Rockies, seven mountain ranges between Estes Park and the plains.

The lowest part of the park is 7,500 feet high. The summer midday is very warm, but every night is cool, almost cold. People live there and farm and there is no lack of either accommodation or hospitality. Still it is isolated, with the charm of nature utterly unbroken, a good place to fish and near the best remaining hunting grounds, perhaps, after all, the loveliest summer-time resting place in all this wonderland of nature.

A Mountain Hotel—The Half-Way House on the carriage road up Pike’s Peak.

All this northern region of which Estes Park is the gem calls loudly to that large class who imagine they have enough of society at home, and who wish for two or three blissful summer weeks to go where the Red Gods call them; to fish, or hunt, or to lie under pines and blink at the mottled sunshine, forgetful of newspapers and telegrams, and stiff collars and polished boots. Of such as these are the churls who build railroads and conduct enterprises and write real books, and torment their days with action and their nights with thinking. Some of these shamelessly bestow their women folk and their young men at Glenwood or Manitou, or elsewhere beneath a mingling of mountain shadows and electric lights, and then abscond with other temporary satyrs like unto themselves to Estes Park and places even further away.

And there is a line of travel thus far, and amid many other enforced omissions, not mentioned at all. It is operated by the Denver & Rio Grande road, and may be said to begin at that point mentioned in a preceding chapter, a little station beyond Salida, where in the early morning a train mysteriously vanishes within a side cañon, seemingly on a prospecting tour amid unknown depths and distances. The tour of this train they call familiarly “Around the Circle”—a circle several hundred miles in circumference.

This journey traverses the San Luis Park. It crosses the southern boundary line into New Mexico and throws out an attenuated and very crooked arm to Santa Fe, in the heart of a civilization that is the oldest and quaintest in America. One would hardly credit the fact that at the moment of disappearance this vanishing train is crossing the huge northern rim of San Luis Park, and that emerging on the inner side it proceeds to make a beeline, without a curve, across this vast mountain amphitheater for a distance of fifty-six miles. While crookedness is a wonder elsewhere, it is straightness that is a wonder here, and this unwonted tangent is deliberately mentioned as a curious thing. The grades immediately precedent were two hundred and eleven feet to the mile, and the look downward and backward through Poncha Pass was something as indescribable as any scene in Colorado. But it may be added that this is the longest stretch of straight railroad track, not alone in Colorado, but in the world.

On this circle route lies the famous Toltec Gorge, where the train crosses the range at an elevation of 10,015 feet. The line passes the corner of the Ute and Apache Indian reservations, and the aborigine has never lost his interest in the still inexplicable power that was the principal indirect cause of his being placed at last in this corner of the realm he once owned. He sits in the sun and waits for the train.

There is a place where the line is laid on a shelf in a cañon that is five hundred feet from the bottom and five hundred feet from the top, and where the cost of construction for a single mile was $115,000.

At Mancos station the ethnologically inclined may stop and visit the ruins of the cliff dwellers in Mancos Cañon. Rico, Lost Cañon, the Valley of the Dolores, Rio de Las Animas Perdidas—“the River of the Lost Souls”—the queer, sharp pinnacles known as the Needle Mountains, Sultan Mountain, Lizard Head Pass, Trout Lake, the celebrated piece of engineering known as Ophir Loop, the Black Cañon, are all places on this “circle” journey.

Bathing Scene at Glenwood Springs—A “Chute.”

The mines and mining interests of Colorado are immense. They form a special feature, and about them there is already an extensive literature. It is the richest mineral region in the world, a fact illustrated by the ease with which it can turn from silver to gold, calling itself the “Silver State” for a period of years, and producing in a year immediately succeeding more than thirty millions of gold. Through all these wanderings, in every nook and corner, are the mines. The country is known truly and in detail by but one class—the prospectors. Thorough experts in mining are found in every walk in life. Information in detail would fill a space ten times as large as can be given here. The two largest mining camps, Leadville and Cripple Creek, are both easy of access by rail from Denver, and, while as towns they possess features that are unique, there is little in them outside the lines of average American citizenship and human nature, except the vast interests to which they are exclusively devoted. The home is there as elsewhere; the school, the church and the average man and woman. The frontier story has been told and is out of date. The community of a great mining center is not so strange, nor apparently half so extraordinary in its methods, as that which clusters daily around the shrine in the Chicago Board of Trade.

To the miner, the farmer and the cattle raiser of Colorado the scenery has in time naturally become as is Niagara to him who lives with the thunder of the cataract always in his ears. It is to those to whom these wonders are not a part of daily life that they appeal. The interest involved in industrial Colorado is immense. The capital involved mounts easily into millions. But it is a separate topic, interesting only to business, appealing not at all to the man and woman whose cares and toils are lessened, whose lives are strengthened by the touch of nature once a year; for whom, since the first railroad line was laid across the plains, there has existed no outing like that amid the Springs and peaks and pines of Colorado.

A Full Cargo—Children and Donkey at Manitou.

Life out of doors—Summer camping party in Cascade Cañon, near Manitou.

CHAPTER VI.

Hunting and Fishing in Colorado.

One region after another in this country has been proclaimed to be, and was in its day, “A Hunter’s Paradise.” One after the other these places have come under the dominion of the plow until now the situation of that poor man who wants to do above all others that thing he does not have to do at all, is deplorable. In the matter of fishing the question is not so exigent. In that of hunting the question that is oftenest unanswered when asked is “where shall I go to find something to kill; something, too, that I may fancy will kill me if I don’t kill it.”

Now, if Colorado is a hunting country at all, it is one most of whose preserves can be nearly approached in a Pullman car. The climate, even in midwinter, is mild. There is always a town, a mine, a ranch, somewhere within tramping distance; somewhere to go, something to eat, a fire, good women, hospitable men. There is no Nimrod so hearty that these are not to him valuable considerations; if not in the morning, at least at night.

It may seem almost too much to say that nearly every prominent scenery place in the state is contiguous to good hunting. “Over the range” is always, in certain respects at least, another world. There are numbers of men here who habitually prospect in summer and hunt in winter. There is not one of these who does not know where large game is to be found. The trouble is not so much with the place as it is with the unaccustomed man. Find your appropriate and mountain-accustomed man as guide and you will get the game—if you can hit a gray or a light brown spot four hundred yards or such a matter away. It will hardly pay to come to these mountains in order to learn, for the first time, how to shoot at a mark, or how to go hungry because it was not touched.

“Youth’s daring spirit, manhood’s fire,

Firm hand and eagle eye,

Must he acquire who would aspire

To see the gray boar die.”

The forests still cover a large portion of Colorado. Many of these lying away from other interests so far, are almost as silent as they were in the beginning. They are the natural covert for elk, deer, antelope, the mountain sheep and a variety of smaller game. Any prospector will tell one that there is nothing more common than the fresh bear track near the stream, looking like the footprint of a barefoot negro baby. All mountain men encounter droves of elk and deer. Farmers will tell you where they think they are, because they have often seen them there.

For many sportsmen, the northwestern and parts of the northern portions of the state are the best large-game hunting grounds; Routt, Grand and Garfield counties, and the region of which Estes Park is the center. Parts of this northern region are more easily reached by the Burlington’s line from Denver northwest to Lyons than by any other. The region of the foothills, the land between plain and mountain, and including both, is the natural home of the elk. It is in the more outlying regions, of course, that the big shy game now live. Once, in the days of Indian occupation, all Colorado was a hunting field, perhaps the best known. Natural fastnesses, plenty of food and a mild climate made it so. The encroachments of civilization have naturally restricted the field, but with the result that there is now more game in the places they still occupy than there was in former times. This unoccupied region is still in the aggregate, and notwithstanding all the railroad lines, as large as the entire state of New York. One would be illy occupied in prescribing given localities to an accomplished hunter under these circumstances. Every resident hunter knows, if he would always tell, of half a dozen good hunting fields.

Pike’s Peak as seen from Briarhurst, near Manitou.

In brief, it may be said that there is still game all over Colorado except on the plains, and there the jackrabbit lives in large numbers. In localities where there is fine fishing every summer, such as the Gunnison River, near Montrose or Delta, there is also fine deer hunting in the season, and that is a region largely interested in farming and grazing. Or an inquirer will be rewarded with valuable pointers about the region of the mildest climate in the state; the nooks and valleys on either side of the San Luis Park. A little inquiry developed, perhaps, after the employment of a companion or guide, who is undoubtedly necessary to a stranger, will elicit facts about the hunting grounds and their possibilities that a man might wander over the state for a year and not discover for himself. The best hunting here and elsewhere, is obtained only by him who departs deliberately out of civilization for a period, lives in a cabin, does nothing but hunt while he is thus engaged, and stays long enough to learn the country and the haunts of the beasts for whose life he thirsts. It is not now so easy as it was, even in Africa. The time is coming when it will be a lost art.

People who hunt in Colorado unite in the opinion that the choicest hunting grounds of the Utes were those wilder places that still remain unoccupied. Among such places the country back of De Beque, a town on the line of the Colorado Midland, is prominently mentioned. North of this place lie the Book Cliffs, and through these wind narrow gorges that at places widen out into little parks. There are in these never-failing springs. The region is of large extent, full of trees, and the natural covert of wild animals. A late writer states that he has seen in this region in one morning and counted three hundred and fifty deer. There is also on the mesas an abundance of quail, grouse and sage hens.

In fishing, the case is slightly different. The watercourses of Colorado comprise eight principal rivers, which flow from their sources in the mountains in all directions, increasing in volume from almost countless tributaries. In all these streams the mountain trout is a native. For many years trout fishing has been the principal pastime of the people. The trout is a fish that is particular in his habits to a degree almost absurd, and when he has a place he usually stays there, with an occasional change from pools to riffles, until he grows too large, or until he becomes disgusted with the society of intruders in the persons of large fishes, many of whom have a taste for him when he is young. Like other fishes, they are deaf but they can see quickly, and are known to be gifted with an acuteness above the average. And yet they are great fools, shortsighted and capricious, biting a certain kind of bait one day and refusing it the next, always hunted first by the angler, always a little hard to get, yet caught by the thousands.

But it is only a question of time when the native trout will have disappeared from Colorado waters. Since the propagation of the California rainbow trout in these streams, and the eastern brook trout, he has in many localities already disappeared. The exchange is not a detriment. The rainbow trout grows to a great size here, specimens weighing twelve pounds being often caught. It is rapid in growth, game, and very fecund.

Great care is taken in the preservation of the fishing waters. A notable example of this is the South Platte, one of the ideal trout streams of the state. The railroad company plants here each season about two hundred thousand young trout. Platte Cañon, a few hours’ ride from Denver is a favorite ground. The Gunnison River, east of Grand Junction, is another famous fishing stream. There are a great many smaller brooks and streams. Every mountain stream that has not had its waters spoiled by tailings and the refuse of smelters has fish in it. As a rule, the further away from the haunts of many anglers one goes, the more fish there are to be caught. The hunting grounds are fishing grounds as well. The broad statement may be made that no other region of the world has so many streams where game fish naturally live, and that with continual stocking and great care by the railways and the state, the supply has not perceptibly diminished. Many streams are spoiled; many others still remain. They are well known. The accustomed angler knows his fishing place when he sees it, and besides the places where everybody goes he can easily find a domain where he and the fishes can have it out together. There is a United States fish hatchery located at Leadville, and the game laws of the state are well enforced. There is not the essence of truth behind any statement that the days of sport in Colorado are at an end.

Waterfall in Thompson’s Cañon, Estes Park.

The statutes of the state protecting game permit the killing of game birds from August 15 to November 1; waterfowl from September 1 to May 1. Deer and elk may be killed from August 1 to November 1. The killing of buffalo and mountain sheep is prohibited. It is lawful to take fish with hook and line from June 1 to December 1. Netting, poison and explosives are prohibited.

How to Go to Colorado.

There is perhaps an impression in the public mind that is an inheritance from the old time—that the long road across the plains is a dreary monotony—that the “Great American Desert,” as the region between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains was called until recent years, is an uninteresting waste, tiresome to traverse. But a surprise is in store for anyone having this picture in his mind, for the fact is that in the Nebraska of to-day is found a continuation of that exquisite panorama of farm-land scenery that is passed while traveling through Illinois and Iowa, or Northern Missouri. The journey is one full of interest from the beginning until the climax is reached, when on arriving within seventy-five miles of Denver the first glimpse is seen of the great rocky range of snow-capped mountains, which seem to stand as a barrier to further progress toward the west. Again, to one unaccustomed to extensive travel, the distance from the Great Lakes to Denver, for instance, seems very great, but when one stops to consider that it was only a few months ago that a special train over the Burlington Route covered the 1,025 miles from Chicago in 1,047 minutes, without unusual effort, and in the regular course of business, the long journey seems shortened and glorious Colorado appears to be as it is, easily accessible.

There are several railroads reaching from eastern territory to Colorado, but none which have the many advantages of the Burlington Route. This road owns its own tracks from Chicago, Peoria and St. Louis to Denver, and it has a world-wide reputation for the excellence of its equipment, the high standard of its dining-car service, and the regularity with which its trains make schedule time. For the individual bent on either pleasure or business, it is the most desirable from every point of view, and it appeals in particular to those entrusted with the selection of an official route for delegates attending a convention, for the reason that the Burlington’s system of lines reaches all the principal cities between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains, thus enabling the entire delegation to concentrate and travel together under a contract made with a single railroad. A glance at the map will demonstrate this.

Take the Burlington Route to Denver; it is the best line.

Green Lake, near Georgetown—One of the highest pieces of water in the world that can be visited.

The World’s Record.

1,025 miles in 1,047 minutes.

On the morning of February 15, 1897, a telegram was received at Chicago from H. J. Mayham, asking for a special train from Chicago to Denver. No details could be arranged until Mr. Mayham’s arrival at 9.15 a. m. Not until then was it known that Mr. Mayham was hurrying to the bedside of his dying son. Instructions were hurriedly given to get an engine ready, and at ten o’clock a private car, attached to an engine which had just brought in a suburban train and was most available, left the Union Passenger Station with instructions merely to “make a good run.”

To Burlington, Iowa, the distance is 206 miles, and the trip to this point was made in 228 minutes, including seven stops. After leaving Burlington for the run across Iowa nothing of moment occurred until after leaving Creston. Then it was discovered that the engine truck was running hot, but nevertheless the 36 miles to Villisca was made in 34 minutes, and then it was found necessary to telegraph ahead to Red Oak, 15 miles away, and order another engine to take the train to the Missouri River. These last 15 miles were made in 15 minutes. Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska, was reached at 8.11 p. m., Hastings, 638 miles from Chicago, at 10.03 p. m. The run from Hastings to Oxford, Neb., 78 miles, was made in 75 minutes, and from Oxford to McCook, 54 miles, in 51 minutes. The remainder of the trip through eastern Colorado and up the gradual but very long grade into Denver was accomplished without incident, and the train arrived, after the usual delays at crossings, at 3.53 a. m., mountain time. From the Union Passenger Station, Chicago, to the Union Depot, Denver, a distance of 1,025 miles, the time was eighteen hours and fifty-three minutes—breaking the world’s record for long-distance running.

Two features in connection with this achievement make it unique. First, no preparation of any kind was made for the run. Forty minutes after the order was given for the train it started, and was handled all the way through in the ordinary manner and with no idea of making a record. An emergency had arisen, and the aim of the operating department was simply to give a patron of the road, who paid for it, the best service possible under the circumstances. Second, it so happened that all of the division superintendents and chief dispatchers on the C., B. & Q. were in Chicago attending a meeting, and the details of the trip were, therefore, entirely in the hands of their subordinates. Both of these facts emphasize the perfect state of discipline which exists, and which made it possible to accomplish such a run without a hitch or impediment of any kind.

Burlington Route Through Train Service

From Chicago.

To Minneapolis and St. Paul—Two trains daily. Connection is made at St. Paul in Union Depot for Duluth and for all points in the northwest, including Puget Sound.

To Omaha, Denver and California—Three trains daily. Connection is made at Denver in Union Depot with the Denver & Rio Grande R. R. for all points in Colorado, Salt Lake City, Ogden and California. Personally conducted excursions to California, in through special cars, every week.

To Montana, Yellowstone Park and the Pacific Coast, via Omaha, Lincoln and the Black Hills—One train daily. Passes by the Custer Battlefield. Connection is made at Billings, Mont., with the Northern Pacific Ry. for Yellowstone Park, Helena, Butte and the Pacific Coast.

To Kansas City, St. Joseph, Leavenworth and Atchison—Two trains daily. Connection is made at Kansas City in Union Depot for all points in the southwest.

To Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, Galveston and San Antonio, via Hannibal and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Ry.—Two trains daily. Connection is made for all points in Texas.

From St. Louis.

To Minneapolis and St. Paul—Three trains daily; one via east side Mississippi River and two via west side Mississippi River. Connection is made at St. Paul in Union Depot for all points in the northwest.

To Kansas City, St. Joseph, Leavenworth and Atchison—Two trains daily. Connection is made at Kansas City in Union Depot for all points in the southwest.

To Lincoln, Denver and California—One train daily, via St. Joseph and Lincoln. Connection is made at Denver in Union Depot with the Denver & Rio Grande R. R. for all points in Colorado, Salt Lake City, Ogden and California.

To Montana, Yellowstone Park and the Pacific Coast, via St. Joseph, Lincoln and the Black Hills—One train daily. Passes by the Custer Battlefield. Connection is made at Billings, Mont., with the Northern Pacific Ry. for Yellowstone Park, Helena, Butte and the Pacific Coast.

NOTE—All through trains on the Burlington Lines are equipped with Vestibuled Pullman Palace Sleeping Cars, Reclining Chair Cars (seats free) and Burlington Route Dining Cars (meals served on the European plan). Some trains are equipped also with Pullman Compartment Sleeping Cars and Composite Cars, fitted with smoking room, sideboard and compartments for card players.

POOLE BROS. CHICAGO.

Burlington Route

High-resolution Version

BIRD’S-EYE MAP

OF

COLORADO

SHOWING

TOURISTS’ RESORTS.

High-resolution Version

Transcriber’s Notes

- Silently corrected a few typos.

- Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.

- In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.

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Table of Contents

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Colorado Outings, by James W. Steele

Colorado Outings

CHAPTER I. Glimpses of a Mountain World.

CHAPTER II. The Colorado of Reality.

CHAPTER III. The Colorado Pleasure Ground—Manitou.

CHAPTER IV. The Colorado Pleasure Grounds, II. The “Loop” Journey.

CHAPTER V. Nooks and Corners.

CHAPTER VI. Hunting and Fishing in Colorado.

How to Go to Colorado.

The World’s Record. 1,025 miles in 1,047 minutes.

Burlington Route Through Train Service

From Chicago.

From St. Louis.

Transcriber’s Notes

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