In Denver Town.
Colorado! What an open-air sound that word has! The music of the wind is
in it, and a peculiarly free, rhythmical swing, suggestive of the
swirling lariat. Colorado is not, as some conjecture, a corruption or
revised edition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, who was sent out by
the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico in 1540 in search of the seven cities of
Cibola: it is from the verb _colorar_--colored red, or ruddy--a name
frequently given to rivers, rocks, and ravines in the lower country. Nor
do we care to go back as far as the sixteenth century for the beginning
of an enterprise that is still very young and possibly a little fresh.
In 1803 the United States purchased from France a vast territory for
$15,000,000; it was then known as Louisiana, and that purchase included
the district long referred to as the Great American Desert.
In 1806 Zebulon Pike camped where Pueblo now stands. He was a
pedestrian. One day he started to climb a peak whose shining summit had
dazzled him from the first; it seemed to soar into the very heavens, yet
lie within easy reach just over the neighboring hill. He started bright
and early, with enthusiasm in his heart, determination in his eye, and a
cold bite in his pocket. He went from hill to hill, from mountain to
mountain; always ascending, satisfied that each height was the last, and
that he had but to step from the next pinnacle to the throne of his
ambition. Alas! the peak was as far away as ever, even at the close of
the second day; so famished, foot-frozen and well-nigh in extremity, he
dragged his weary bones back to camp, defeated. That peak bears his name
to this day, and probably he deserves the honor quite as much as any
human molecule who godfathers a mountain.
James Pursley, of Bardstown, Ky., was a greater explorer than Pike; but
Pursley gives Pike much credit which Pike blushingly declines. The two
men were exceptionally well-bred pioneers. In 1820 Colonel Long named a
peak in memory of his explorations. The peak survives. Then came General
Fremont, in 1843, and the discovery of gold near Denver fifteen years
later; but I believe Green Russell, a Georgian, found _color_ earlier
on Pike's Peak.
Colorado was the outgrowth of the great financial crisis of 1857. That
panic sent a wave westward,--a wave that overflowed all the wild lands
of the wilderness, and, in most cases, to the advantage of both wave and
wilderness. Of course there was a gradual settling up or settling down
from that period. Many people who didn't exactly come to stay got stuck
fast, or found it difficult to leave; and now they are glad of it.
Denver was the result.
Denver! It seems as if that should be the name of some out-of-door
production; of something brawny and breezy and bounding; something
strong with the strength of youth; overflowing with vitality; ambitions,
unconquerable, irrepressible--and such is Denver, the queen city of the
plains. Denver is a marvel, and she knows it. She is by no means the
marvel that San Francisco was at the same interesting age; but, then,
Denver doesn't know it; or, if she knows it, she doesn't care to mention
it or to hear it mentioned.
True it is that the Argonauts of the Pacific were blown in out of the
blue sea--most of them. They had had a taste of the tropics on the way;
paroquets and Panama fevers were their portion; or, after a long pull
and a strong pull around the Horn, they were comparatively fresh and
eager for the fray when they touched dry land once more. There was much
close company between decks to cheer the lonely hours; a very bracing
air and a very broad, bright land to give them welcome when the voyage
was ended--in brief, they had their advantages.
The pioneers of Denver town were the captains or mates of prairie
schooners, stranded in the midst of a sealike desert. It was a voyage of
from six to eight weeks west of the Mississippi in those days. The only
stations--and miserably primitive ones at that--lay along Ben Holliday's
overland stage route. They were far between. Indians waylaid the
voyagers; fires, famine and fatigue helped to strew the trail with the
graves of men and the carcasses of animals. Hard lines were these; but
not so hard as the lines of those who pushed farther into the
wilderness, nor stayed their adventurous feet till they were planted on
the rich soil of the Pacific slope.
Pioneer life knows little variety. The _menu_ of the Colorado banquet
July 4, 1859, will revive in the minds of many an old Californian the
fast-fading memories of the past; but I fear, twill be a long time
before such a _menu_ as the following will gladden the eyes of the
average prospector in the Klondyke:
MENU.
SOUP.
A la Bean.
FISH.
Brook Trout, a la catch 'em first.
MEATS.
Antelope larded, pioneer style.
BREAD.
Biscuit, hand-made, full weight, a la
yellow.
VEGETABLES.
Beans, mountain style, warranted boiled
forty-eight hours, a la soda.
DESSERT.
Dried Apples, Russell gulch style.
Coffee, served in tin cups, to be washed
clean for the occasion, overland
style, a la no cream.
In those days Horace Greeley, returning from his California tour, halted
to cast his eye over the now West. The miners primed an old blunderbus
with rich dust, and judiciously salted Gregory gulch. Of course Horace
was invited to inspect it. Being somewhat horny-handed, he seized pick
and shovel and went to work in earnest. The pan-out was astonishing. He
flew back to New York laden with the glittering proofs of wealth; gave a
whole page of the _Tribune_ to his tale of the golden fleece; and a rush
to the new diggings followed as a matter of course.
Denver and Auraria were rival settlements on the opposite shores of
Cherry Creek; in 1860 they consolidated, and then boasted a population
of 4000, in a vast territory containing but 60,000 souls. The boom was
on, and it was not long before a parson made his appearance. This was
the Rev. George Washington Fisher of the Methodist Church, who accepted
the offer of a saloon as a house of worship, using the bar for a pulpit.
His text was: "Ho, everyone that thirsteth! come ye to the waters. And
he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat. Yea, come buy wine and milk
without money and without price." On the walls were displayed these
legends: "No trust," "Pay as you go," "Twenty-five cents a drink," etc.
Colorado Territory was organized in 1861, and was loyal to the Union.
Denver was still booming, though she suffered nearly all the ills that
precocious settlements are heir to. The business portion of the town was
half destroyed in 1863; Cherry Creek flooded her in 1864, floating
houses out of reach and drowning fifteen or twenty of the inhabitants.
Then the Indians went on the war-path; stages and wagon trains were
attacked; passengers and scattered settlers massacred, and the very town
itself threatened. Alarm-bells warned the frightened inhabitants of
impending danger; many fled to the United States Mint for refuge, and to
cellars, cisterns, and dark alleys. This was during the wild reign of
Spotted Horse along the shores of the Platte, before he was captured by
Major Downing at the battle of Sand Creek, and finally sent to Europe on
exhibition as a genuine child of the forest.
Those were stirring times, when every man had an eye to business, and
could hardly afford to spare it long enough to wink. It is related of a
certain minister who was officiating at a funeral that, while standing
by the coffin offering the final prayer, he noticed one of the mourners
kneeling upon the loose earth recently thrown from the grave. This man
was a prospector, like all the rest, and in an absent-minded way he had
tearfully been sifting the soil through his fingers. Suddenly he arose
and began to stake out a claim adjoining the grave. This was, of course,
observed by the clergyman, who hastened the ceremonials to a conclusion,
and ended his prayer thus: "Stake me off a claim, Bill. We ask it for
Christ's sake. Amen."
Horace Greeley's visit was fully appreciated, and his name given to a
mountain hamlet, long after known familiarly as "Saint's Rest," because
there was nothing stimulating to be found thereabout. Poor Meeker, for
many years agricultural editor of the New York _Tribune_, founded that
settlement. He was backed by Greeley, and established the Greeley
_Tribune_ at Saint's Rest. In 1877 Meeker was made Indian agent, and he
did his best to live up to the dream of the Indian-maniacs; but, after
two years of self-sacrifice and devotion to the cause, he was brutally
betrayed and murdered by Chief Douglas, of the Utes, his guest at the
time. Mrs. Meeker and her daughters, and a Mrs. Price and her child,
were taken captive and subjected to the usual treatment which all women
and children may expect at the hands of the noble red-man. They were
rescued in due season; but what was rescue to them save a prolongation
of inconsolable bereavement?
When General Grant visited Central, the little mountain town received
him royally. A pavement of solid silver bricks was laid for him to walk
upon from his carriage to the hotel door. One sees very little of this
barbaric splendor nowadays even in Denver, the most pretentious of far
Western burgs. She is a metropolis of magnificent promises. Alighting at
the airy station, you take a carriage for the hotel, and come at once to
the centre of the city. Were you to continue your drive but a few blocks
farther, you would come with equal abruptness to the edge of it. The
surprise is delightful in either case, but the suddenness of the
transition makes the stranger guest a little dizzy at first. There are
handsome buildings in Denver--blocks that would do credit to any city
under the sun; but there was for years an upstart air, a palpable
provincialism, a kind of ill-disguised "previousness," noticeable that
made her seem like the brisk suburb of some other place, and that other
place, alas! invisible to mortal eye. Rectangular blocks make a
checker-board of the town map. The streets are appropriately named
Antelope, Bear, Bison, Boulder, Buffalo, Coyote, Cedar, Cottonwood,
Deer, Golden, Granite, Moose, etc. The names of most trees, most
precious stones, the great States and Territories of the West, with a
sprinkling of Spanish, likewise beguile you off into space, and leave
the once nebulous burg beaming in the rear.
Denver's theatre is remarkably handsome. In hot weather the atmosphere
is tempered by torrents of ice-water that crash through hidden aqueducts
with a sound as of twenty sawmills. The management _dams_ the flood when
the curtain rises and the players begin to speak; the music lovers
_damn_ it from the moment the curtain falls. They are absorbed in
volumes of silent profanity between the acts; for the orchestra is
literally drowned in the roar of the rushing element. There was nothing
that interested me more than a copy of Alice Polk Hill's "Tales of the
Colorado Pioneers"; and to her I return thanks for all that I borrowed
without leave from that diverting volume.
Somehow Denver, after my early visit, leaves with me an impression as of
a perfectly new city that has just been unpacked; as if the various
parts of it had been set up in a great hurry, and the citizens were now
impatiently awaiting the arrival of the rest of the properties. Some of
the streets that appeared so well at first glance, seemed, upon
inspection, more like theatrical flats than realities; and there was
always a consciousness of everything being wide open and uncovered.
Indeed, so strongly did I feel this that it was with difficulty I could
refrain from wearing my hat in the house. Nor could I persuade myself
that it was quite safe to go out alone after dark, lest unwittingly I
should get lost, and lift up in vain the voice of one crying in the
wilderness; for the blank and weird spaces about there are as wide as
the horizon where the distant mountains seem to have slid partly down
the terrestrial incline,--spaces that offer the unwary neither hope nor
hospice,--where there is positively shelter for neither man nor beast,
from the red-brick heart of the ambitious young city to her snow-capped
ultimate suburb.