SUMMER WANDERINGS IN COLORADO
Emerson
Deep in the heart of the Rocky Mountains lies Glenwood Springs, a fashionable watering place, where a great hotel, bearing the name of the Centennial State, with every pretty decorative device imaginable, allures the summer idlers, and where various kinds of springs and baths furnish excuse for occupation. All varieties of invalidism, real or fancied, meet their appropriate cure. One lady declared that the especial elixir of life was found in a hot cave that yawns its cavernous and mysterious depths in an adjacent mountain. Another continued to thrive on (or in) the sparkling waters of "the pool," which is, for the most part, a dream of fair women, relay after relay, all day and evening, swimming about after the fashion of the Rhine sisters; and those who do not take kindly to the pool or the dark and "hot" cave fall upon some particular geyser and appropriate it for their own. Woe to the woman who interferes with another woman's geyser! The whole region around Glenwood Springs is phenomenal. A hot sulphur spring boils up at the rate of twenty thousand gallons a minute. The "pool"—where the Rhine maidens are forever floating, morning, noon, and night—covers over an acre, and is from three to six or seven feet deep. Two currents of water are constantly pouring into it,—the hot (at one hundred and twenty-seven degrees) at a rate of ten thousand gallons a minute, and the cold from a mountain stream. A stream constantly runs from it, a part of which is utilized as a waterfall in the centre of the large dining-room of the hotel. On one bank of this pool is a colossal stone bathhouse (costing over one hundred thousand dollars), where every conceivable variety of the bath is administered, and from which "the pool" is entered. In warm evenings, when the full midsummer moon peeps over the mountains, the groups of girls, one after another, begin mysteriously to disappear, and in reply to a question as to the destination of this evening pilgrimage one bewitching creature in floating blue organdie, as she flitted past, laughingly answered, "Come to the pool and see." There was no time to be lost. The moon in silver splendor was climbing over the mountains, and the girls emerged from their dainty evening gowns to array themselves in bathing suits. A few minutes later they were to be seen at this mysterious trysting place at "the pool," the only difference being that some were outside and some inside. Surely those inside had the best of it. How can the scene be pictured? From the broad piazza of the hotel a terraced walk ran down through the greenest of lawns, with shade trees and a fountain resplendent in colored electric lights. The pool lies in an open glade. Not far away is one of the ranges of the Rocky Mountains, over which the August moon was climbing. Tall electric lights mingled with the moonlight, giving the most curious effects of chiaroscuro through the glade and the defiles of the mountains. On one side of this immense natatorium rose the vast stone bathhouse,—a beautiful piece of architecture. Near by the round sulphur spring boiled and bubbled in a way to suggest the witches' rhyme:
A high toboggan slide in one place descended into the pool, and was much used by the young athletes,—the men, not the girls. In the pool a natural fountain of cold water shot high in the air. The swimmers abounded. Those who were unable to swim would cling to a floating ladder. Here in the moonlight the girls—clinging two and three together—circle around in the water, needing only the melody of the Rhine sisters to complete the illusion of one of the most enchanting scenes in the entire Wagner operas.
Rev. Frederick Campbell wrote of this unique place:
"There is but one word to utter at Glenwood Springs—'Wonderful!' If one enjoys life at the most luxurious of hotels, here it is at Hotel Colorado. Built in the Italian style of peach-blow sandstone and light brick, lighted with electricity, a searchlight reaching from one of its towers at night and lighting the train up the valley, a powerful fountain supplied from the mountain stream up the cañon pouring the geyser 170 feet straight in the air, and views, views everywhere."
The hot cave is as wonderful as anything around Sorrento or Amalfi. In fact, all Colorado reminds the traveller of Italian scenery. It has been called the Switzerland of America, but it is far more the Italy. It has the Italian sky, the Italian coloring, and the mysterious and indefinable enchantment of that land of romance and dream. The volcanic phenomena is often startlingly similar to that of Italy. This hot cave at Glenwood Springs is of the same order as those on Capri and the adjacent coasts of Italy. In this cave at Glenwood hot air continually comes up from some unknown region, and it is utilized for curative purposes. The two or three caves have been made into one, a cement floor laid, and marble seats with marble backs put in (the ancient Romans would have found this a Paradise). Here come—not the halt or the blind, but the people who take "the cure." The process is to sit on the marble seat with a linen bag drawn completely over the entire form, with a hole for the head to emerge. Around the neck is placed a towel wrung out of cold water. To see a cave filled with these modern mummies, sitting solemnly, done up in their linen cases, like upholstery covering, is a spectacle. The men go in the morning, the women in the afternoon. One lady obligingly gave the data of her "cure." Twice a week she migrated in negligée to the hot cave, and sat done up in her linen covering, bathing in the hot air at one hundred and twenty degrees or so. Other afternoons were devoted to the hot sulphur water bathing, and what with the various gradations of temperature and the work of the attendants, the cup of Turkish coffee and the siesta, the process consumed the entire afternoon. It is bliss to those who delight in being rolled up like a mummy and sitting still. But if it were chasing a star that danced, if it were riding on a moonbeam, if it were dancing with the daffodils,—if it were anything in all the world that was motion,—then it might have some fairer title to charm. The felicity of lying about in a state of inertia is in the nature of a mystery. And one questions, too, whether the spring of life is not, after all, within rather than without. Let one take care of his mental life and the physical will, very largely at least, keep in spring and tune without elaborate and expensive processes of propping it up. To disport one's self in the pool,—there is a delight. Who wouldn't be a Rhine maiden under the midsummer moon in the heart of the Rocky Mountains?
In nearly all the cañons and caves of this surrounding region are found traces of the prehistoric peoples who inhabited them. Fragments of pottery, in artistic design and painted in bright colors, are numerous; relics similar to those found in the cliff houses are not unfrequently chanced upon in walks and excursions and the stone implements abound. The ethnologist finds a great field for research in all this Glenwood Springs country. There are carriage roads terraced along the base of the mountains where drives from five to twenty miles can be enjoyed in the deep ravines where only a glimpse of blue sky is seen above, and the saunterer finds a new walk every day. The mountains branch off in every direction, and the lofty peaks silhouette themselves against the sky. It is like being whirled up into the air. The sensation is exhilarating beyond words. If people could take "cures" getting up into sublime altitudes like this, where the views are so heavenly that one does not know where earth ends and Paradise begins,—that would be a cure worth the name. Really, it is vitality and exhilaration that one wants, and it is to be found in the air far more than in any other element.
THE WALLS OF THE CAÑON, GRAND RIVER
The Denver and Rio Grande Railway is well called "the scenic line of the world." From Denver to Pueblo it runs almost due south, across a level valley, with perpetually enchanting views of the mountains and curious rock formations, between Denver to the region below Colorado Springs. From the great smelting city of Pueblo, "the Pittsburg of the West," the road turns westward, on an upward grade, till it reaches Cañon City, and from there to Glenwood Springs this road is a marvel of civil engineering. Up the narrow, deep cañons of Grand River, through the towering granite cliffs, it winds, on and up, passing Holy Cross Mountain, offering at every turn new vistas of sublime and wonderful beauty. To take a day's ride through such scenery, with the luxurious comfort of the most modern Pullman cars, and a good dining-car constantly with the train, is to enjoy a day that lives in memory. Not the least of the attractions of Glenwood Springs is the enchanting route by means of which one arrives in this picturesque region. As the train climbs up to plateau after plateau in the mountains the scenes are full of changeful enchantment. The formation is interesting,—a deep cañon, with rock cliffs apparently towering into the sky, and then the emerging on a great level plateau. All along this route, too, are those wonderful sandstone formations that have made the "Garden of the Gods" so marvellous a place. Between Cañon City and Glenwood Springs the very dance of the Brocken is seen in Sandstone sculptures.
Near the summit of Iron Mountain, which is in the immediate vicinity, the "Fairy Caves" rival the famous "Blue Grotto" of Capri in attraction. These caves (less than a mile from the Hotel Colorado) are a most intricate and wonderful series of subterranean caverns, grottos, and labyrinths, with translucent stalactites and stalagmites, and they are all lighted by electricity,—a great improvement on the sibyls' cave, where the sibylline leaves were read. The oracles of that time were sadly lacking in conditions of modern conveniences. The sibyl had not even a telephone. We do things better now, and run electric cars up to the Pyramids. Nor did the sibyl of old have a tunnel two hundred feet long, by which her votaries could approach the scene of her oracles; but visitors to the Fairy Caves may pass by means of this tunnel to one of the grandest and most awful precipices in the Rocky Mountains, where they step out upon a balcony of stone into the open air, with a perpendicular wall of rock one hundred feet high, above, and an almost perpendicular abyss, down, twelve hundred feet below. Standing on this balcony, nothing can be seen behind but sheer perpendicular ascent and descent of rock; but in front and far below may be seen the Grand River, appearing as a brook, winding in and out among the projecting mountains, visible here like burnished silver, and lost there, only to reappear again at a point far distant.
THE "FAIRY CAVES," COLORADO
At this high elevation the opening of the cañon of the Grand is seen in all of its majesty,—the massive mountains projecting against each other in their outlines, and the lofty peaks reaching to the skies. The Denver and Rio Grande Railway is at the foot of the cañon,—a mere winding line, as seen from this Titanic height.
The Colorado Midland Road also runs through Glenwood Springs, whose phenomenal hot caves and luxurious and elaborate bathhouse have given it European fame. The twin towers of the hotel remind one of Notre Dame, and the views from these are beautiful. The design is after the Villa Medici in Rome,—the same motive repeated for the central motive of this superb Hotel Colorado with its towers and Italian loggias and splendid spacious piazzas, and its searchlight from one of the towers, illuminating the evening trains that pass in the deep cañon of Grand River. Here is a region that might be that of Sorrento and Capri.
In Glenwood Springs the traveller may meet Mrs. Emma Homan Thayer, the author of "Wild Flowers in Colorado," published in both London and New York. Mrs. Thayer was a New York girl, one of the original founders of the Art League, and the daughter of an enterprising and well-known man. She is an artist by nature and grace,—sketches, paints, and writes, and in both painting and literature she has made a name that is recognized, and she has charmingly perpetuated in her book the unique and wonderful procession of Colorado wild flowers.
Lookout Mountain, rising some twenty-five hundred feet above the town, has an easy trail to its summit; the driving is picturesque and safe on terraced mountain roads with perpetual vistas of beauty, and many lakes in the vicinity—Mountain, Big Fish, Trappers' Lake, and others—offer excellent fishing. The hotel grounds at night are transformed into a veritable fairyland. The fountains shoot their jets of water up hundreds of feet into the air, with a play of color from electric lights thrown over them until they are all a changeful iridescent dream of rose and emerald and gold mingled with blue,—the very rainbows of heaven reproduced in mid-air.
MARSHALL PASS AND MT. OURAY, COLORADO
The journey up the "scenic route" has one point especially—that at the base of the Holy Cross Mountain where the train climbs from plateau to plateau—that enchants the imagination. The vast mysterious cañons lie far below, steeped in the twilight of the gods. The air shimmers with faint hints of color. Above, the towering granite walls seem to cut their way into the sky. The faint plash of a thousand waterfalls echoes from the rocky precipices, and the faint call of some lonely bird hovering over a pinnacle is heard. The mysterious light, the dim coolness and fragrance, the glimpses of blue sky seen through the narrow openings of the cañons above all, combine to produce that enchantment—the "Encantada,"—that Vasquez de Coronado felt when he first beheld this marvellous country.
Emerson asserts that life is a search after power,—
"Merlin's blows are strokes of fate."
It is apparently a twentieth-century Merlin who has dreamed a dream of wresting electricity from the mountain currents to utilize as power to create a new field for industrial energy. The electrical engineer, who is the magician of contemporary life, demonstrates that not the volume of a stream, but rather its "fall," is the measure of its possibilities of power, and no country is so rich in water that comes tumbling down from the heights as is Colorado. The wild streams that precipitate themselves down the mountain-sides are as valuable as are the veins of gold that permeate the mountain. Science has now taken them in hand, and will not longer permit these torrents and waterfalls to run to waste or to display themselves exclusively as decorative features of the mountain landscapes. The General Electric Company is utilizing these falling waters, and is already achieving results with their transformation into power which are beyond the dreams of imagination. The Silver Cascade, which for ages has had nothing to do but leap and flash under the shimmering gold of the Colorado sunshine, suddenly undergoes
It becomes an important factor in the world's work. For instance, in lovely Manitou,—the little town that dreams at the foot of Pike's Peak and which seems made only for stars and sunsets and as the stage setting of idyllic experiences,—in lovely Manitou an hydro-electric plant has been for more than a year in successful operation; and an opportunity is thereby afforded the interested observer to see the practical working of an enterprise that draws its energy directly from nature's sources. The power is obtained from water that is stored in a reservoir situated far up on the side of the peak. Three and one-half miles of pipe were used to carry the water from the reservoir to the plant. The water has a fall of twenty-three hundred feet, which is much more than is needed to turn the giant wheels that furnish the power to be distributed to Colorado Springs, Colorado City, and the surrounding country. The mills at Colorado City use this power exclusively, and the cheapness at which it can be furnished is a potent factor in making for the success of their operation.
At Durango the Animas Power and Water Company has installed a plant for hydro-electric energy which will furnish power to the entire San Juan county. The plant comprises two three-thousand horse-power current generators and the station appliances that correspond with these; and from this plant extend fifty-thousand volt circuits to all the large mines near Ouray, Silverton, and Telluride. The "Camp Bird," the "Gold King," the "Silver Lake," the "Gold Prince," and the "Revenue Tunnel" mines all draw from this plant for their entire milling and mining work.
To harness the cascades, which for ages have known no sterner duty than to sparkle and frolic in the sunshine, to force the water sprites and nixies to perform the work of thousands of horse-power, is the achievement of the modern Merlin.
The Platte River Power and Irrigation Company are about to establish two electrical power enterprises most important to Denver, one of which is to supply all the power that is necessary to turn every wheel now in motion in the city, and the second is to secure electric power from the water that is stored in the Cheesman dam and transmit it to Denver. Responsible men are working for the success of the enterprises, and it is anticipated that Denver will soon enjoy the advantage of power furnished at a minimum of cost.
The Denver inter-urban service for transportation will be carried on entirely by electricity within the near future. All the railroads that centre in this City Beautiful are preparing estimates and making ready to conduct experiments. The recent tests in the East of electrically driven locomotives indicate that Colorado, with Denver as a centre, will one day be a network of electric lines traversing productive regions and connecting all the prosperous towns of the state by this most ideal form of transit.
In Colorado it is one of the unwritten laws—a law from which there is no appeal—that nothing which is desirable is impossible. This is one of the spiritual laws, indeed, and he who holds it as an axiom shall perpetually realize its force and its eternal truth. The entire physical world is plastic to the world of spirit. In that realm alone realities exist. For "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." The faith that stands—not "in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God"—is that which shall be justified by the most profound actuality. It is that hidden wisdom "which God ordained before the world unto our glory." Science has already discerned the connection between organic form and super-space; and speculations already begin to emerge from the dim and vague region of conjecture into hypothesis and theory out of which are developed new working laws of the universe which are as undeniable as is that of the law of gravitation.
In harmonious accordance, then, with that unwritten law of Colorado that nothing which is desirable is impossible, it was realized that the Gunnison River, a powerful stream thirty miles east of the Uncompahgre, afforded an abundance of water to reclaim these desert wastes to the traditional blossoming of the rose. The Gunnison River, however, flows through a box cañon three thousand feet deep. Were it at the bottom of a gorge three thousand miles deep, that fact would hardly daunt the Colorado spirit. Immediately some invention, incomprehensible to the present mind of man, would be made by which the desirable issue should be achieved. As has been remarked, failure is a word not included in the vocabulary of Colorado. That state has a "revised version" of its own for the resources of its language, laws, and literature. Its keynote is the invincible. Ways and means are mere matters of minor detail. If an achievement is desirable, it is to be accomplished, of course. It is not even a question for discussion. There is no margin of debatable land in the realization of every conceivable opportunity.
A stupendous work in development is that of this Gunnison Tunnel under the Vernal Mesa to Uncompahgre Valley,—a desert waste whose area comprises some one hundred thousand acres of sand, sagebrush, and stones. Yet even here irrigation worked its spell, and while the Uncompahgre River held out a water supply, the land reached proved fertile beyond expectation. But the Uncompahgre had its far too definite and restricted limits; no other water supply was available for this region, and there lay the land—a tract of potential wealth, but destined to remain, so far as could be seen, an unproductive and cumbersome desert region unless irrigation could be achieved.
To the constructing engineer of the reclamation service there came a telegram from the chief engineer in Washington asking if it were feasible to divert the waters of Gunnison River to Uncompahgre Valley by means of a tunnel under Vernal Mesa? This implied building a tunnel from a point totally unknown. No one had ever succeeded in passing through Gunnison Cañon. But the past tense does "not count," any more than Rip Van Winkle's last glass, in any estimate of the present in Colorado. Professor Fellows, an engineer of Denver, selected his assistant; they prepared their instruments, their provisions, and their inflated rubber mattress, and set forth on this expedition in which their lives were in constant peril; in which hardships beyond description were endured. The topographic map, for instance, was made by Mr. Fellows in the delightful position of being lowered with ropes into the deep cañon where, should the slightest accident occur, he would never return to the day and daylight world again. The establishment of precise levels for both ends of the tunnel, one of which must, of course, be lower than the other to induce a flow of water, was another matter requiring a delicacy of adjustment beyond description. Of their wonderful and even tragic experiences a local report says: "It all ended by Fellows and his companion saving two things,—their lives and their notebooks. Everything else went down with the flood. When the men emerged at the Devil's Slide, weary, bruised, and bleeding, friends who had been waiting to pick up their mangled bodies hailed them as if they had returned from the dead."
Of all this story there was no hint in the cheerfully laconic telegram despatched to Washington,—"Complete surveys for construction." The tunnel will be five or six miles in length, of which over two miles are already completed. The work proceeds night and day with the drills like mighty giants eating their way through the solid granite of the Vernal Mesa that lies between the two rivers. This desert region which will thus be reclaimed comprises portions of three counties,—Ouray, Montrose, and Delta,—the region being at an altitude of five thousand feet. It easily produces fruit, alfalfa, and grain, and it is also well adapted to the culture of potatoes, celery, and the sugar beet. The land when irrigated is estimated to be worth five hundred dollars per acre. The tunnel will have a capacity for conveying thirteen thousand cubic feet of water per second, and there will be connected with it an elaborate system of lesser canals and ditches that will carry the water all over this desert tract. It is estimated that this enterprise will add thousands of homes to the valley of the Uncompahgre, and that it will increase by at least ten millions the taxable property of Colorado. The cost of the Gunnison Tunnel will be some two and a half millions.
Uncompahgre Valley, lying between the Continental Divide on the east, and the Utah Desert on the west, comprises the greatest extent of irrigable land west of Pueblo in the entire state; but the need for irrigation and the possibilities of supplying that need were so widely apart that even Merlin the Enchanter recognized the difficulty, though by no means defining it as an impossibility. The Uncompahgre River was soon exhausted, and only this apparently impracticable scheme, now happily realized, offered any solution of the problem. Hon. Meade Hammond of the state legislature of Colorado secured the appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars to meet the expenses of surveying and preliminary work. Hon. John C. Bell, the representative for that district in Congress, gave untiring devotion to the project, and to his efforts was due the zeal with which the reclamation service took up this vast work; and when Professor Fellows was appointed as the government district engineer its success became the object of his supreme interest and unremitting energy, and its achievement adds another to the remarkable engineering works of Colorado.
In this Land of Enchantment almost anything is possible, even to yachting,—a pastime that would not at first present itself as one to be included among the entertainments of an arid state which has to set its own legislative machinery and that of Congress in motion in order to contrive a water supply for even its agricultural service; nevertheless, on a lake in the mountains, more than a mile and a half above sea level and some one hundred miles from Denver the Beautiful, a yacht club disports itself with all the airy grace and assurance of its ground—one means of its water—that distinguishes the delightful Yacht Club at old Marblehead on the Atlantic Coast. There was, however, no government appropriation made to create this lake, as might at first be supposed, nor any experts sent out commissioned to prepare the way. There are numerous forms of summer-day entertainments that are more or less in evidence in the inland states; but yachting has never been supposed to be among them, as preconceived ideas of this joy have invariably associated it with oceans and seas. Still, it must be remembered that Colorado is an exceptional region in the universe, and creates, not follows, precedents. It is the state, as has before been remarked, to which nothing conceivable is impossible.
THE WONDERFUL HANGING LAKE, NEAR GLENWOOD SPRINGS, COLORADO
Grand Lake is in Middle Park, sixty miles from the nearest railroad station. (With the incredible celerity with which life progresses in the Centennial State, of course by the time this description is materialized in print Grand Lake may have become a railroad centre—who shall say? It is not safe to limit prophecy in Colorado.) At present, however, a railroad journey of forty miles from Denver, supplemented by sixty miles of stage, brings one to the lake, a beautiful sheet of water two miles in length and more than a mile in width, whose water is icy cold. The locality has become something of a summer resort for many Denver people, and also, to some extent, to those from Chicago and Kansas City, and a group of cottages have sprung up. Some seven years ago the Grand Lake Yacht Club was duly organized, with Mr. R. C. Campbell, a son-in-law of Senator Patterson of Colorado, Mr. W. H. Bryant, a prominent citizen of Denver the Beautiful, Major Lafayette Campbell, and other well-known men, as its officers. The club has now a fleet of yachts; it has its regatta week, and altogether holds its own among nautical associations; it takes itself seriously, in fact with what Henry James calls the "deadly earnestness of the Bostonians," which is paralleled by this inland and arid-land yachting club.
Besides the joys of yachting in an arid state where that nautical pastime is apparently carried on in mid air, is the local diversion of climbing mountain peaks that are pronounced impossible of ascension. This is one of the favorite entertainments of Colorado young women, who have conquered Long's, Gray's, Pike's, and Torrey's peaks, Mount Massive, the "Devil's Causeway," and various lesser heights, which they scale with the characteristically invincible energy of their state. The summit of Mount Massive is fourteen thousand five hundred feet above sea level, and of one of these expeditions a Denver journal says of this party of several ladies and gentlemen:
"Camp was struck at Lamb's ranch, where, in the early morning, the wagon was left with all the outfit not absolutely necessary. The trail sloped steadily to the boulder field, where the party stopped for lunch. They were now at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. A cold wind swept across the range and chilled them, so that the climb was soon renewed.
"The boulder field is two miles long and seemed five, for walking over the great stones is a wearisome business. At the end of the boulder field, which is much like the terminal range of an old glacier, is a great snowbank. From a long distance the mountain climbers saw the keyhole,—a deep notch of overjutting rock through which goes the only trail to the summit of Long's. It is a gigantic cornice to a ridge that extends north from the main cone.
"After passing the keyhole, which had loomed up before them through weary miles of tramping, a great panorama of mountains stretched before them.... There was a precipitous slope of rocks jammed together in a gulch. This rises for about seven hundred feet, every inch stiff climbing.
"The danger at this point was that some climbers might dislodge rocks which would come bounding down on the heads of those in the rear. For this reason the orders of the leader were urgent that the party should not get separated. The trail at this point led up the sharply sloping eaves of the mountain roof, from which the climber might drop a dizzy distance to the depths below. Clinging to the rocks and hanging on by hands or feet, the party pushed up to a ledge from which they looked over an abyss several thousand feet sheer down."
In Southern Colorado the cliff-dwellers' region offers some of the most remarkable ruins in America, and their preservation in a government reservation, to be known as the Mesa Verde National Park, has been assured by a bill that has been recently passed by Congress and which is one of the eminent features of latter-day legislation. It is Representative Hogg who introduced this bill providing for the permanent protection of those cliff-dweller ruins which, with those in New Mexico and Arizona, constitute some of the most valuable and interesting prehistoric remains in the United States. Already much of this archæological treasure of inestimable scientific value has been carried away by visitors, while, instead of permitting this region to be thus despoiled, it should be made easily accessible to tourists and held as one of the grand show places of the great Southwest. Like the Grand Cañon and the Petrified Forests of Arizona, like the Pike's Peak region in Colorado, Mesa Verde would become an objective point of pilgrimage to thousands of summer tourists. In the winter of 1904-5 Representative Lacey, of Iowa, the eminent chairman of the House Committee on Public Lands, made in behalf of his committee a favorable report on the Colorado Cliff-dwellers' Bill, presenting, with his characteristic eloquence of argument, the truth that the permanent preservation of these wonderful and almost prehistoric ruins is greatly to be desired by the people of the Southwest, as well as by those interested in archæology elsewhere. "The ruins are situated among rocky cliffs, and may be easily preserved if protected," said Mr. Lacey, and added:
"With the exception of two or three small, fallen, and totally uninteresting ones, all the ruins of the Mesa Verde are in the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. It is an extremely arid region, and little or no agriculture is practised by the Utes, although they range sheep, goats, cattle, and ponies on the mesa and in the cañons. It is a poor range at best, and the Indians appear to need all they can get. Moreover, the reclamation service has made some estimates regarding storage reservoirs in the upper Mancos, and it may be at some future time a part of this land in the reservation will be irrigable and greatly increased in value. The Utes are not going to destroy these ruins or dig in them. They stand in superstitious awe of them, believing them to be inhabited by the spirits of the dead, and cannot be induced to go near them."
These dwellings are excavated in cliffs from five to nine hundred feet above the plateaus. Of these, two dwellings stand out prominently,—the "Spruce Tree House" and the "Balcony House," the former of which contains a hundred and thirty rooms, of each of which the average measurement is about eight by six feet. Much pottery, weapons, armament, and many skeletons and mummies are found in these dwellings.
The later conclusions of scientists are that these cliff-houses were designed as places of refuge and defence rather than as ordinary habitations. The parallelogram and circle forms predominate, and they are often forty feet in diameter. There are sometimes double, or even triple walls, solidly built of hewn stone, with a circular depression (council-chamber) in the centre.
Pueblo is the metropolis of Southern Colorado. It is the second city in the state, ranking next to Denver. It is an important industrial centre, being the location of the great steel works of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and two large smelting plants in constant activity. It is a town with unusual possibilities of beauty, rambling, as it does, over the rolling mesas with a series of enchanting vistas and mountain views of great beauty. The Spanish Peaks are in full sight from the new residence region of Pueblo, and here is the home of ex-Governor and Mrs. Alva Adams, with its spacious, book-lined rooms; its choice and finely selected souvenirs of foreign travel; its music and pictures; and far above all, the gracious sweetness and charm of Mrs. Adams, who has that most perfect of gifts—that of transforming a household into a home. Governor Adams, although in his modesty he would deprecate the distinction, is easily the first citizen of Colorado. Twice the Governor of the state, he has impressed the entire people with his flawless integrity of character, his noble ideals, and his energy of executive power in securing and enforcing the best measures for the people and carrying onward into practical life the highest moral and educational standards.
Governor Adams is always greatly in demand as a speaker, and in September of 1906 he was again nominated for Governor of the state.
Colorado, quite irrespective of party, is all aglow with the name of Alva Adams. Good Republicans have long been greatly perplexed over the fact that the man they most desire to vote for, the man to whose guidance they would most willingly commit the affairs of state, is a Democrat. The ability, the unquestioned integrity, the fidelity to lofty ideals, and the great administrative power of Governor Adams inspire the almost universal enthusiasm of Colorado irrespective of party lines.
No son of the Centennial State is more in sympathy with its individual problems. Born in Wisconsin (some fifty-five years ago), Governor Adams was about to enter the Ann Arbor Law School when the illness of a brother brought him in his earliest youth to Colorado. Its beauty, its rich possibilities, enchanted him. Here he married a very cultivated and beautiful young woman, whose parents came in her early girlhood to Colorado, and whose sympathetic and perfect companionship has been the unfailing source of his noblest inspiration.
In an address on "Pathfinders and Pioneers," given before an irrigation congress at Colorado Springs, we find Governor Adams saying:
"What a sublime moment when the explorer realizes the fruition of his dream! What fateful hours upon the dial of human progress when Columbus saw a new world emerge from the sea, when Balboa stood 'silent upon a peak in Darien,' when Lewis and Clark upon the continent's crest saw the waters of the rivulet run toward the West! Such events compensate great souls, and their spirits defy hardship, ingratitude, chains, dungeons, and the axe. The curtain has been run down upon the careers of those brave men whose praise we sing. Their race is run. The explorer, priest, trapper, and pioneer have vanished.
"'Westward the course of empire takes its way;The four first acts already past,A fifth shall close the drama with the day;Time's noblest offspring is the last.'"Would it be a daring assumption to consider the irrigated regions of America as the arena in which the fifth act, time's noblest offspring, is to perfect and complete the drama of civilization?
"Irrigated lands were the cradle of the race. The first canals were run from the four rivers of Paradise. May not the fruition of mankind seek the same conditions amid which it was born? Providence has kept fallow this new land until man was fitted to enter and possess it.
"'Hid in the West through centuries,Till men, through countless tyrannies, could understandThe priceless worth of freedom.'"
"I would not decry culture and refinement," said ex-Governor Adams in this address; "they are the charm and beauty of modern life, the music and art of the social commerce of the age; but in their acquirement I would not give up the robust, vigorous, daring qualities of the pioneer."
"They had blood and iron in their heart, they had the nerve to dare, the strength to do. I do not believe in battle for battle's sake; but I never want to see our people when they are not willing to fight, and able to fight. The only guarantee of peace and liberty is the ability and willingness to do battle for your rights. Refinement alone is not strength, culture alone is not virtue. Absalom, Alcibiades, and Burr stand in history as the most polished, cultured men of three ages, yet they were more a menace than a brace to the liberties of their time. In stress, the world calls upon the Calvins, the Cromwells, the Jacksons, Browns, and Lincolns. They were stalwart, strenuous, courageous men; not cultured and refined, but rich in royalty and daring. It is the rugged and the strong, and not the gentle and the wise, who gather in their hands the reins of fate and plough deep furrows in the fields of human events. It is they who have driven the car of progress and have woven the deepest colors in the fabric of human happiness. It is true that some of our Western torch-bearers were not perfect; none of them were ever anointed with the oil of consecration; around them surged the temptations of a wild and boisterous age; through their hearts and souls there swept the impulses and passions of the strong; if they sinned, it was against themselves, not their country. Let their frailties be forgotten, and their good cherished. Often rough and defiant of the conventionalities, they were ever true and loyal, and most of these empire builders can stand before the great white throne with open hearts. They were the architects, the Hiram Abifs of these Western empires. They laid the foundations in courage and liberty."
Let no one fancy that Pueblo is a primitive Western city devoid of electricity, telephones, motor cars, or even Marconigrams. Let no one fancy it is too far from Paris to have the latest French fashions. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that it demands the best and the most up-to-date ideas of the Eastern cities to be at all eligible in these Colorado towns. Pueblo has a most delightful club-house on the edge of a lake—the lake is artificially created, and being made to order, is, of course, exactly the kind of lake that is desired, the water being conducted from the mountains into a large natural depression—where great open fires in every room greet the daily visitor; where there are large reading-rooms, a dining-room, and a ball-room; no intoxicating beverages of any kind are allowed to be sold, so that youths and maidens may at any time enjoy the club with no insidious dangers to their moral welfare.
There are many centres of social life; and if Pueblo people have any other conceivable occupation than to give dinner parties at night and go motoring in the morning, with endless receptions of the Daughters of the Revolution and other clubs, organizations, or purely private card receptions invading the afternoons, the visitor hardly realizes it. The dinners given are often as elaborate as in the large Eastern cities, as one, for instance, given by Mr. and Mrs. Mahlon D. Thatcher at their stately home "Hillcrest," where the decorations were all in rich rose red, a most brilliant effect, and the souvenirs were India ink reproductions of old castles on white satin. The dinner cards held each a quotation from the poets.
Pueblo is always all sunshine and radiance, and has a beauty of location that makes it notable, with its encircling blue mountains and picturesque mesas, and the perpetual benediction of the Spanish Peaks silhouetted against the western sky. Its new library is the pride and delight of every citizen. It is one of the Carnegie chain,—a large, two-story and basement structure of white Colorado stone, the interior finished with the richly variegated Colorado marble which is used for mantels and fireplaces. The book stacks, the spacious and splendid reading-room, the children's room, and the smaller ones for reference and special study, are all planned on the latest and most perfect models.
The library is in the Royal Park, on the crest of one of the mesas, very near the home of Governor Adams. It is a library to delight the heart of the book-lover. Pueblo offers, indeed, great attractions to all who incline to this land of sunshine. The climate is even more mild than that of Denver, from which city it is a little over three hours distant by the fast trains, or four hours by slower ones. Colorado Springs lies between—two hours from Denver and a little over one hour from Pueblo. The location combines many attractions. With three railroads; its large industries in smelting and steel; its excellent schools, both public and private; its churches, its daily newspapers; its library; and its fine clubhouse, open to families,—women and children as well as men enjoying it freely,—Pueblo seems one of the most delightful of places. It has large wealth and a power of initiating many opportunities. It is on the most picturesque and delightful lines of travel to Cañon City, Salida, Leadville, Glenwood Springs, and through Salt Lake City to the Pacific Coast; or on the line to Arizona and the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, and on to Los Angeles and San Francisco; or eastward to Chicago and the Atlantic Coast; or southward to Mexico, or St. Louis, or New Orleans. Pueblo is really in the heart of things, so to speak. The Chicago papers arrive the next day, the New York papers the third morning, and the telephonic communication is simply almost without limit. Governor Adams will step from his library into another book-lined room where the telephone is placed, and from there talk with people in five different states. Once he held a conversation with a man at the bottom of a mine a few hundred miles away,—a man whose subterranean sojourn had the alleviation of a telephone.
The greatest industrial organization west of the Mississippi River is that of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, whose largest plant is at Pueblo, and is held at a valuation of fifty-eight million dollars. On its pay-roll are fifteen thousand employés. There are twenty thousand tons of steel rail produced each month, and it is said that this number will soon be largely increased, and that the Goulds and the Rockefellers are arranging to utilize the product of these mills for their vast railroad interests. The company owns such large tracts of land in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming; it owns coal mines, iron mines, lime quarries; it owns parts of two railroads, besides telegraph and telephone lines galore, so that by reason of these extensive holdings it is able to secure at a minimum of cost all the raw materials from which the finished products are turned out. Upward of three hundred thousand acres of the richest coal lands in the West, an empire containing one hundred square miles more than the coal area of Pennsylvania, constitute the holdings for coal mine purposes of the company. In addition there are iron, manganese mines, and limestone quarries containing the elements which give to the product of the furnaces and mills qualities that secure the markets of the Western world. Its plant at Pueblo has become the centre of a town called Minnequa, composed of its own employés and their families. The company has established a model hospital, with a surgeon's department fitted up with the most elaborate and finest scientific and nursing facilities; a fine library and large reading-rooms, and a recreation hall and gymnasium for the workmen. Nearly one million dollars has been expended on the tenant houses belonging to the company, which are rented to their employés on fair and advantageous terms. In many respects Minnequa, at Pueblo, is one of the most remarkable manufacturing centres in the world, presenting aspects that invite study, in its extensive resources, the vast and colossal character of its purposes, and its remarkable achievements. All employés are given the opportunity to acquire homes; and every late ideal in the way of providing opportunities for their care in health, in mental and moral development, and in recreations, is carried out to the fullest possible extent.
The company has recently engaged in an irrigation enterprise in the purchase of water-right priorities of the Arkansas River for seventy cubic feet of water per second, at an expense of one million dollars. These rights, which date back to 1860-62, are among the oldest existing, and they insure to the company the uninterrupted and certain possession of the river flow. A court decree enabled them to change the point of division, and they have constructed a new head-gate at Adobe, six miles east of Florence. A canal fifty-eight miles in length is being constructed from Florence to the mills owned by the company. The cost of this canal will be some three quarters of a million. These mills produce over seventy-five thousand tons of iron and steel each month. The manufacturing plant at Minnequa includes blast furnaces, converting works, blooming mills, a merchant iron mill, a hoop and cotton tie mill, a spike factory, a bolt factory, a castings and pipe foundry, with open hearth furnaces, a reversing mill, and many other appliances.
"It must not be supposed, because we find it necessary to practise irrigation in Colorado, that we therefore never have any rains," observed a Coloradoan; "on the contrary, the rains of spring are usually of such abundance as to make the ground in fine condition for ploughing and putting in crops, and we seldom find it necessary to apply water to germinate any kind of seed; only once, in thirteen years' experience at Greeley, were we compelled to resort to irrigation before crops of all kinds were well up and considerably advanced in growth. About the last of May, however, as regularly as the natural periods of summer, autumn, winter, and spring occur in the other states, never varying more than a week in time, these copious rains suddenly cease and give place to light and entirely inadequate local thunder-showers. Now is the accepted time, and all over cultivated Colorado, within a period of not more than two days, every flood-gate is opened and the life-giving current started to flowing on the rapidly parching grain. Corn will endure until later in the season, but all sowed crops must get one thorough application of water within two weeks or become severely injured for the want of it. Day and night the silent current flows on and on, among the fields of grain; not a drop of water nor a moment of time must run to waste until the first irrigation is completed."
In so exceptional a summer of drought and heat as was that of 1901 the advantages of irrigation stand out. Journeying through Kansas, the long day's ride across the state revealed continued devastation from the lack of rain. Corn fields looked almost as if a fire had passed over them, so shrivelled and stunted they were; but in Colorado on every hand there were greenness and luxuriance of vegetation and of crops. The result is simply that, with irrigation, man controls his climate and all the conditions of prosperity. Without it, he is at the mercy of the elements.
The Union Colony of Greeley was the first to introduce upland irrigation in Colorado. Of the method employed, the "Greeley Tribune" gave this description:
"Almost the first question asked by many persons on their first arrival in Colorado, when they see the irrigating ditches running along the sides of the bluffs high above the river, and back from it five, ten, or twenty miles, is, 'How do you get the water out of the river, and so high above it? It looks as if you made the water run uphill.' The answer is very simple. All the rivers of Colorado are mountain streams, and consequently have a fall of from ten to thirty feet to the mile, after they reach the plains. In the mountains, of course, the fall is often much greater. The plains also have a gradual slope eastward from the foothills, where the altitude is generally between six and seven thousand feet above sea level, while at the eastern boundary of the state it is only about three thousand feet. Take, for example, the canal generally known as Number Two, which waters the lands of the Greeley Colony. This canal is taken out of the Cache la Poudre River, about seventeen miles west of Greeley, and where the bed of the river is probably a hundred and sixty feet higher than it is at Greeley. The bed of the canal only has a fall of from three to three and a half feet to the mile; therefore it is easily seen that when that grade is continued for a number of miles, the line of the canal will run in a direction further and further from the river, and on much higher ground, so that the lands lying between the canal and the river are all 'covered by,' or on a lower level than, the water in the canal. In the process of irrigation this same plan must be followed, of bringing the water in on the higher side of the land to be irrigated, then the water will easily flow all over the ground."
In Weld County, of which Greeley is the county seat, irrigation was extended during 1905 to cover from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand acres of arid land never before under cultivation, and storage reservoirs increased in capacity. It is proposed to cut a tunnel through the Medicine Bow mountain range and to bring a large quantity of water through from the Western slope to irrigate an additional fifty thousand acres of prairie.
Within the past year there have been two potato starch factories started in successful operation in Greeley which are estimated to pay out annually one hundred thousand dollars for potatoes that have heretofore been practically a total loss to the farmers.
The Swift Packing Company of Chicago propose investing one and a half millions in further irrigation in this county. The products of the Greeley district alone, for 1905, were five and a half millions,—a fact that suggests the wise foresight of Hon. Nathan Cook Meeker, the founder of the town, in selecting this location, in 1869, for his colony.
Of recent years a remarkable feature of agricultural progress in Colorado has been developed by the "dry farming" system, the discovery of which is due to Prof. H. W. Campbell, who has been experimenting, for some twenty years past, in Eastern Colorado, in the scientific culture of the soil without benefit of irrigation. Professor Campbell says that he had been assured that corn would not grow at an altitude of three thousand feet, as the nights would be too cool; but that he can refute this, as, during the past five years, he has averaged from thirty to forty-two bushels per acre at an altitude ranging from five thousand to nearly seven thousand feet. Successful agriculture is, in Professor Campbell's belief, based on the fundamental principle of soil culture, and in an interview he said:
"While the great work now being done by the government in promoting irrigation enterprises in the more arid portion of the West and the using of millions upon millions of money for the building of mammoth reservoirs have value and virtue, and means the development of many sections that must remain almost worthless without them, and the spending of thousands of dollars in traversing foreign countries to secure what some have pleased to call drought-resisting plants, will undoubtedly play their part in promoting the welfare and prosperity of Colorado, ... yet there should also be an understanding of, first, the necessary physical condition of the soil for the most liberal growth and development of roots; secondly, the storing and conserving the entire season rainfall,—not only the portion that falls during the growing season, but from the early spring to late in the fall; thirdly, the fact that air is just as important in the soil as water, and that it is the combination of the elements of air and water in the soil, together with heat and light, that is most essential; and that when these conditions are fulfilled, Eastern Colorado will come to its rightful own, and little towns and cities will spring up along all the great trunk lines, while the intervening country will be dotted with ideal farm homes and shade trees; orchards and groves will break the monotony of the now bleak prairie, and present a restful, cheerful, homelike, and prosperous condition."
While agriculture in Colorado is regarded as in its infancy, yet the product of Colorado farms alone contributed almost fifty-one millions to the world's wealth, in 1905, exclusive of wool, hides, or live stock. Professor Olin of the State Agricultural College estimates that there are over two hundred thousand acres in Colorado which produce crops without irrigation, by the application of Professor Campbell's "dry-farming" system. The so-called dry land, consisting of millions of acres in Eastern Colorado, averages now four dollars per acre, where one year ago untold quantities could be bought for an average of two dollars per acre. The speculative value of this land has gone up wonderfully under the impetus of the Campbell system of dry farming. If this system comes anywhere near proving the claims of its advocates, it will vastly increase the wealth and population of the state. With a greater understanding of the science of dry culture it is certain that the farmers of the state and the state generally will experience immeasurable advantage. In the eastern plains of Colorado are embraced more than fifteen million acres of land which are now lying practically useless, only a small amount being utilized for ranging cattle. The claims of dry-culture enthusiasts and those who have been experimenting with seed imported to meet the dry conditions are, that this empire will be made to yield harvests which will support many thriving communities. In proof of their claims they point to so-called model farms established at various places on the plains where the hitherto unyielding soil has borne substantial crops.
One important feature in the agricultural development of Colorado is the extinction of the bonanza ranch of thousands of acres. Instead, farms are reduced to manageable proportions, and are carried on far more largely by intelligent thought and scientific appliances than by mere manual labor.
The present day Colorado ranch is an all-the-year-round enterprise. The ranch owner is a careful business man, who watches his acres and the products thereof even as the successful merchant or manufacturer acquires close knowledge of all the details of his business. He sows his land with diversified crops, rotating hay, grain, and root crops scientifically for the double purpose of securing the greatest yields and preserving the nourishing qualities of the soil. Keeping in touch with the market conditions of the world, and with the advancing developments of science, he is easily the master of the situation, and in no part of the country is the condition of the farmer better, or perhaps so good, as in Colorado. The agriculturist of the Centennial State who is the owner of two quarter sections, or even of one, is altogether independent. The returns from his business are absolutely sure, and with the certain knowledge of substantial gains at the end of the season he plans improvements to his home, and comforts and even luxuries for himself and family, which far exceed those usually secured in the Middle West or by the small farmers of the East. In Colorado it will be found that almost every young man and woman of those who are natives of the state are college graduates. Co-education prevails, just as does the political enfranchisement of women, and the results of this larger extension of the opportunities and privileges of life are very much in evidence in the beauty, the high intelligence, and the liberal culture that especially characterize the women of Colorado.
Irrigation enterprises in Colorado are far more widely recognized than is the Campbell system of dry culture; but in 1905 these enterprises appealed with increased force to capitalists outside, as well as within Colorado, as a safe and profitable means of investment. Land held at ten dollars per acre is, by irrigation, instantly increased in value from twenty to fifty dollars; and it was seen that the most favorable localities within the state in which to raise funds for further extension of irrigation were among the farmers in the older irrigated sections who have won their ranches, improved their places, and made large deposits in the banks through the use of the productive waters trained to make the soil blossom with wealth.
Irrigation is developed to its highest excellence in Northern Colorado and in the valley of the Arkansas River. These regions have been the longest under irrigated culture, and their value is increasing rapidly. Each year sees the agriculturist grow more conservative in his use of water, and the quantity thus saved has been applied to new lands. Thus, in an interesting and quite undreamed-of way, a problem that incited discord and dissension, that promised only to increase inevitably as larger territories of land and their correspondingly increased irrigation should be held, was brought to a peaceful solution. Continued litigation, and a great pressure to secure legislative restrictions of the use of water supply, and the constant irritation and turmoil involved in these disputes, were all, happily, laid to rest by the discovery of the farmers themselves that extravagance in the use of water was not conducive to their own prosperity. In the matter of flood waters the irrigation experts of the state are quite generally meeting the condition in their own way. Storage reservoirs are dotting the irrigation systems at frequent intervals, and in the dry months the supply piled up behind the cement dams is drawn off to furnish the final necessary moisture for the maturing of the crops.
Another possibility of irrigation that is receiving the attention of engineers is the utilization of the streams for power purposes. In many cases the power thus generated will be made to accomplish marvellous feats in the way of construction, as in the instance at Grand River, already described.
One of the special journeys in Colorado is that called a "trip around the circle," affording more than a thousand miles among the mountains within four days' time; but a permission for ten days is available, thus affording several detours by stage, which penetrate into the most sublime regions. The abysmal depth of five of the great cañons; many of the noted mountain passes; great mining camps, with their complicated machinery; cliff dwellings, vast plateaus, and stupendous peaks; Indian reservations; the icy crevasses a thousand feet in depth; the picturesque "Continental Divide," from which one looks down on a thousand mountain peaks, where the vast Cordilleras in their rugged grandeur are seen as a wide plain; the beautiful Sangre de Cristo ("Blood of Christ") range; the sharp outlines of the Spanish Peaks, rising twelve and thirteen thousand feet into the air; beautiful meadow lands where the blue and white columbine, the state flower of Colorado, blooms in profusion, and the tiger lily, the primrose, and the "shooting stars" blossom,—all these are enjoyed within the "circle" trip; and it also includes Leadville, the "city above the clouds," Durango, Ouray, Gunnison, and other interesting towns. It offers a near view of the Mount of the Holy Cross, which strange spectacle is made by the snow deposits in transverse, gigantic cañons,—the perpendicular one being fifteen hundred feet, while the transverse cross is seven hundred and fifty feet in length; of Lost Cañon, a novelty even in a land of cañons; and of the Rio de Las Animas Perditas, old Fort Lewis, the valley of Dolores River, a region of early Spanish discovery; of Black Cañon and Cimarron Cañon and Grand River Cañon, whose walls rise to the height of more than twenty-five hundred feet;—all these are but the merest outline and hint of the scenic wonders compassed within the circle trip. Up the cañons the train climbs; through narrow gorges with overhanging rocks, on and on, till a plateau is reached; then more cañons, more climbing, more peaks towering into the skies, and waterfalls chiming their music. As even an enthusiast in scenery cannot entirely subsist on stars, sunsets, and silences, the luxurious comforts of these trains enhance one's enjoyment. A dining-car is always on, and the excellence of the food and the moderate prices for all this perfect comfort and convenience are features the traveller appreciates. That dance of the Brocken which one fancies he sees in the fantastic sandstone formations on the mountain's side on the romantic route to Glenwood Springs is occasionally duplicated in other cañons, where these strange rocks resolve themselves, with the aid of the mysterious lights and shadows, into a dance of witches, and every shape springs to life. The train rushes on, and one leaves them dancing, confident that although these figures may be stationary by day, they dance at night. Another mountain slope of the sandstone shows a colossal figure of a prophet,—shrouded, hooded, suggesting that solemn, majestic figure of death in Daniel French's great work entitled "Death and the Sculptor." The precipitous walls of the cañon rise in many places to over a thousand feet in height. In their sides such a variety of designs and figures have been sculptured by erosion that the traveller half imagines himself in the realm of the gods of Hellas. These innumerable designs and figures incite not only the play of fancy, but they invite the study of the geologist, who finds here the primary rock formations exhibited in the most varied and striking manner. As the train winds deeper into the heart of the projecting rocks the crested crags loom up beyond the sight; below, the river rushes in foaming torrents and only a faint arch of the sky is seen. There are recesses never penetrated by the sun.