to protect the road from the snows of winter, and which are hung late in
spring with brilliant icicles formed by the sun without and the cold
within. Passing through the last shed, which has a length of fully half
a mile, we reached the highest point of the divide, and while the extra
engine which had helped pull us up the steep grades went cautiously down
the valley toward Gunnison before us, we climbed the rocks about the
little station house, to enjoy at its best the magnificent view
presented. To the northeast, white with snow, towered the serrated range
of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, rising abruptly from the valley which
stretched away to the southeast and standing out in bold relief against
the deep blue sky. Between the range and us were lower hills and
isolated peaks tumbled into a confused mass, and only prevented from
pressing too closely together by the little valleys that ran between
them. Immediately around us grew stunted pines, bent, barren, blackened
and lifeless. Down the mountain side the forests became denser, greener
and fresher, while from the distant valleys, at the bottom of which we
could see tiny streams working their way to worlds beyond, came low
murmurs and sweet odors. Toward the west, and losing itself in a hazy
distance, ran the Tomichi valley, narrow, heavily wooded, and free from
all that rocky harshness so prevalent in Colorado. Far below we could
look down upon four lines of our road, terrace below terrace, the last
so far down the mountain as to be quite indistinct to the view. The iron
loops were lost to sight at times as the road wound about some
interfering hill; and often the forest was so dense that the track
seemed to have disappeared for ever. Five hundred feet down the mountain
side we could see a water-tank, and knew that it marked the spot where
we would be, after an hour of twisting down the incline. As we gazed
upon the mountains, the valley, and the far and farther heights, we
could imagine ourselves returned to the beginning of things, and shown
the globe only that moment finished. There was a wealth of coloring, a
sublimity unsurpassed, and withal an attention given to detail by which
the picture was made perfect. I remember to have stood on Marshall Pass
once when the sun was just dropping out of sight beyond the rolling
hills to the westward. As it sunk lower and lower behind its curtain of
snowy peaks, prismatic hues came flashing along the pathway of its
fading light, which touched the rugged sides of Ouray peak and the
white-capped range beyond until every treeless spot and gabled peak
shone with a mellow hue. All objects--those near by and those far
away--flashed bright colors, beautiful, brilliant, and as varied as
those of the rainbow. From the mountains long shadows were cast, and in
the forest crept dark shades. All nature prepared to sleep, and no
sounds came from around the lonely pass but the sighing of the wind as
it swept through the tangled trees. "All outward things and inward
thoughts teemed with assurances of immortality."
Our descent from the pass was continuous but slow. At least it was slow
at first. All steam was shut off in the engine and the air-brakes were
used to preserve a uniform speed. Winding in and out among the trees,
and catching at different times extended views of the Tomichi, we worked
our way to more level country and were soon skirting the meadows and
whirling across the ranch properties of the fertile valley. Close beside
us ran a sparkling stream, tapped here and there by the farmers, who
used its water for their lands, and again winding its way through the
willows that grew on its banks. Looking back over the way we had come,
there appeared dark-green forests, backed by high mountains with bared
summits; but before us lay the Tomichi, shut in on either side by low
hills and extending westward so far that its end was lost in haze.
Everything was green, fertile, luxuriant. Cattle grazed in the meadows,
ricks of hay stood by the side of low-roofed cabins, and narrow valleys
came down from the northern mountains to join the one along which we
kept the swift and even tenor of our way.
XXV
GUNNISON AND CRESTED BUTTE.
"Over the Mountains of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied,
"If you seek for El Dorado."
--EDGAR A. POE.
At its lower end, as the mountains in the range we have crossed begin to
grow indistinct in the distance, the Tomichi valley pushes aside the
hills which have hitherto confined it, and broadens into a wide, grassy
plateau, encircled by mountains, in the center of which stands Gunnison,
the chief town of Western Colorado. Westward, where the river comes
down, sculptured cliffs rise near and abrupt; but elsewhere the
mountains are far away enough to make invisible all their lesser
characteristics. Those to the north and south east have their long line
of irregular summits capped with snow; but to the west the ranges grow
less rugged and more rounded, while between the hills runs the valley
occupied by the Gunnison river on its way to the Grand, and by which the
railway enters the rich farming lands of the newly opened reservation
and the territory of Utah.
Drawing rapidly nearer the center of the plateau, we approached the city
and perceived that it consisted of two distinct parts, with a gap of
half a mile between them. Then a new freight-house cut off the view and
we came to a stoppage in one of the busiest "yards" outside of Denver.
The town, as I have said, stands in the middle of a level park, at an
altitude of about 8,000 feet above the sea. There is room enough "to
hold New York City," as the people are fond of saying. No stream waters
the middle of this area, but skirting the further edge, just under the
bluffs, which on every one of these bright summer evenings
"----topple round the West,
A looming bastion fringed with fire,"
runs the Gunnison river, through a bosky avenue of full-foliaged trees
and thickly interlaced underbrush. Away to the southward of the town
again, the Tomichi curves about the base of rounded, plush tinted hills
that look like the backs of gigantic elephants. I have called the first
of these streams the Gunnison, but if you follow it up a little way you
will come to repeated forkings known as East river, Taylor river, Ohio
creek, and so on. I believe, therefore, that properly the Gunnison does
not attain individuality and deserve its name until all this cluster of
northern tributaries joins with the Tomichi, just below the town, and
the united and largely increased stream flows independently onward.
[Illustration: A UTE COUNCIL FIRE.]
It is in the fork of these chief sources of the Gunnison,--at its very
head so to speak,--that the town is placed. It is not upon the banks of
either, but the pure waters are easily led in open aqueducts all over
the site, running by their own current. There are places enough for them
to run, too, and people enough to consume them, leaving only begrimed
tailings for the engine-tanks at the station.
The town began in two parts and became the shape of a dumb-bell, the
handle represented by Tomichi avenues. The knobs of town at each end are
rival districts known as Gunnison and West Gunnison, but the former is
the larger, seems to have the start, and has secured such distinctions
as the post-office, the banks, the court-house, the high school and the
principal newspapers. These, with several of the mercantile
establishments, show fine structures of brick and stone, the latter
being a white sandstone of great excellence for building purposes, which
abounds in the buttes on the edge of the plateau. The majority of the
houses, both for business and for residence, however, are frame
buildings. Some are of pretentious size, and many prettily decorated, so
that we do not know, a cleaner, more regular, cosy-looking city in the
state than this. The divided appearance is gradually disappearing by
increased building between, which proceeds with amazing rapidity.
The history of this valley and town is entertaining. In the early days
of Rocky Mountain exploration, this whole region was known as the Grand
River country, its noblest stream, now called the Gunnison river, then
being known as the South Fork of the Grand. Of its history, or its
geography, as I have intimated, little has been known until very recent
times. It is recorded that in 1845, ex-Governor Gilpin, then a mere lad,
traversed the entire length of the river valley from west to east, on
his return from Oregon to St. Louis. "Having crossed southern Utah by an
old Spanish trail he pushed his way up through the valleys of the South
Fork of the Grand, crossing the divide very near the southeastern corner
of what is now Gunnison county. Although pursued relentlessly by savages
he was enthusiastic over the results of his trip and embodied the
knowledge so obtained in a map which is now on file in Denver. The
interval following Governor Gilpin's exploration between 1845 and 1853
is entirely an historical blank, only vague Indian stories being given
out by occasional trappers and by the Mormons, who joined in relating
the beauty and richness of the country.
"In 1853 Captain Gunnison, a gallant officer, following Rock creek up to
its head, discovered a nobler stream coursing southward from the Elk
mountains. This stream cost him his life. As he was exploring it, he was
set upon (whether by Indians or not seems doubtful) and cruelly
murdered. After this adventurous officer the Gunnison river was named
and afterwards Gunnison county. In 1854 the indomitable 'Old
Pathfinder,' General Fremont, passed over nearly the same country from
east to west and in his report paid glowing tribute to the beauty and
wealth of these regions. It was not, however, until 1861, when some
prospectors, approaching through California gulch, where Leadville now
stands, gave names to Washington gulch, Taylor park, Rentz's gulch, and
Union park, that any positive development was undertaken. Then it was
only on a very small scale, and although the discoveries they made
created considerable excitement in mining circles, the fear of Indians
was yet so great as to prevent any immigration of any consequence. This
fear was heightened by the horrible discovery one morning of the
massacre of twelve men in Washington gulch. This wholesale tragedy gave
a gloomy side-defile the name of Dead Man's gulch. The story of this
outrage quickly spread throughout the entire country, each person
coloring it as it went and adding a little to the horrors of the event.
At this time nothing could tempt the daring miners of the adjacent and
already populous Colorado gulches to risk their lives in this country.
Even the most marvelous stories which were told of the golden bullets
used by the Indians, and of mines to which El Dorado and Comstock and
Golconda were vanities, failed to tempt their cupidity sufficiently to
cause them to venture into the blood-christened country. A few, however,
who had already forced their way in, earned a precarious livelihood in
Washington gulch, fortified from the Indians and living for months at a
time upon game and fish. In their leisure moments, between fighting
Indians and hunting game, they occupied themselves in placer mining and,
it is said, made from five to twenty dollars a day. Not until 1872,
however, was any organized attempt made to open up the country. In that
year Jim Brennen, of Denver, headed a small party of prospectors and
located in the Rock Creek region.
"From this time really dates the origin of the mines, their reports
being so enthusiastic that in 1873 Dr. John Parsons, Professor
Richardson and thirty miners entered from Denver. One of the stories of
this party which is told, but which is historically doubtful, runs to
the effect that in pushing around by the southern entrance over the
Saguache, General Charles Adams, who was then in charge of the frontier,
forbade their further progress without the consent of the Utes. A heated
debate is supposed to have arisen over the matter, which was settled by
Chief Ouray himself, voting to grant them permission. In 1874 a colony
was formed in Denver to settle upon and cultivate the Gunnison's
agricultural lands. Accordingly twenty men, all told, located themselves
at various points upon Tomichi river and gave their special attention to
ranches. The mining districts, however, on account of the Leadville and
San Juan excitements, together with the difficulties and inconveniences
of mining in this country at that time, did not really begin to grow
until several years later."
In the latter part of 1877 the state legislature set off Gunnison
county, containing about twelve thousand square miles, or an area
somewhat larger than the state of Connecticut. Three-fourths of it lay
within the Ute Reservation, and it has since been subdivided into four
new counties,--Gunnison (restricted to the eastern end), Montrose, Delta
and Mesa. By 1880 matters began to assume a fixed condition. The people
left their tents and sought more durable habitations. Business ceased to
be desultory. The prospect-diggings, of which five thousand had been
recorded, were developed as rapidly as possible, the buzz of the
saw-mill and planer was heard, and smelters began to be erected.
Historically, there is little to add. Steady growth has benefited the
city. New and large business blocks have been erected, a handsome hotel
built, and a smelter put in operation. It has now a population of fully
five thousand, is lighted with gas, and has a system of water-works. The
streets are wide and clean; and the entire town has lost that frontier
appearance which characterized it in its earlier days.
And Gunnison is a railway center. To the north the Denver and Rio Grande
has extended a branch to Crested Butte and brought into closer
communication with the outside world the adjoining mining towns of
Irwin, Ruby, Gothic, and others of less importance. The road leads
northward from Gunnison up the pointed valley until it gets close upon
the bank of East river. Following the river, the valley narrows into a
ravine, and some interesting masses of broken volcanic rocks, injected
edgewise into the general sandstone strata, attract the eye.
It is the far-away landscape, nevertheless, that holds attention as we
look backward. Rising above the level of the plain upon which the city
is built, you can span with your vision hills and mesas southward, and
behold "striking up the azure" a vast length of the ever-magnificent San
Juan mountains,--the same glorious pinnacles that towered about us, near
at hand, in Baker's park. We could count the peaks by dozens if we
tried, but it would be rash to try to name the separate points of the
long serration. Many snow clouds have shed their burdens upon them since
we saw them last, but to-day their heavens are clear and the sun blazes
down upon scores of miles of lofty _nêve_ fields, the uniform purity of
which, at this distance, seems broken only by the shadows the higher
peaks throw upon their lowlier companions and upon their own
half-concealed sides. Gazing at them across the dim foreground of
sage-plain, the middle scene of receding, intermingled, haze-obscured
and bluish hills, we were more and more delighted with their
loveliness,--a word whose propriety you will appreciate when you, too,
have laid away this treasure of memory--one of the most entrancing bits
of landscape in Colorado.
There are a few patches of rank meadow, but most of the way the hills
run down so close to the river banks, that there is barely room for the
road-bed to be made. Growing so close to the water that they are
reflected in its depths, are sweet-smelling trees, tall, graceful,
luxuriant, but in winter they bend beneath the snow that clings to them.
Reaching to the top of the hills and completely covering them, are
tangled masses of brush, pushed aside at times by forests of pines and
torn asunder in places by the rocks that have lost their balance on some
far summit and been rolled to the river below. In the narrowest places
precipices menace each other across the stream; and on their faces,
brown and weather-beaten, grow hardy shrubs, clinging to the crevices
and hugging the bold headlands.
Nor does the valley afford satisfaction to the lover of what is only
picturesque in nature. We have seen many a trout whipped from his cool
retreat under the shadow of the rocks. The region is a sportsman's
paradise. Nature is at her best, the forests are full of health-giving
odors, and a day's tramp could not fail to bring color to the palest
cheek, strength to the weakest body.
[Illustration: OURAY.]
Twenty-eight miles north of Gunnison the narrow valley lets us into a
snug little basin among the hills which border upon the Elk range, Slate
river comes winding through it from the north, while Coal creek sweeps
abruptly around a lofty spur at the left. Straight ahead, behind a green
ridge, a white conical mountain stands challenging our admiration, and
on our right a still nearer height rises like a mighty pyramid of gray
stone from a richly verdant base.
The Madame gazes at them with delight a moment, but quickly glances with
more eager interest to the meadow-land in which we are coming to a
standstill, for the lush grass is dyed with innumerable flowers.
"Why Crested Butte?" she asks as the station sign comes in view.
I point, for reply, to the conical gray height which dominates the
valley.
"That is neither a butte, nor is it crested," she says. "A butte
properly is not a peak of volcanic or primitive rock even if it is
isolated--the proper name for that is 'mountain' or 'spur.' A butte is a
hill of sedimentary rock, not mountain-like in appearance, and standing
by itself in a flat region. Moreover there isn't a bit of crest. Its
apex is as sharp and round as a well-whittled pencil."
"If you could look at it from the other side you might find a very
well-marked crest."
"But I can't, and nobody does, see it from the other side. However"--and
here her prerogative of inconsistency was exercised--"I am glad they
adopted the mistake for now the town has a name worth remembering,
something you can't say of too many of these mountain villages."
Crested Butte had the honor to be the first settlement in the Gunnison
region. A recent review of its history says that in the spring of 1877
the Jennings brothers, who were hardy prospectors, penetrated as far as
the Butte and were somewhat surprised and delighted at finding coal.
Instantly turning their attention to that branch of mining they located
some land. The fame of this discovery, blending with that of others,
proved an incentive to the overflow from Leadville and the rest of
Colorado. In 1877 a few men came in, but no effort was made even to
survey the country until 1878. In that year Howard F. Smith dropped in
and purchased some coal interests. He soon had the country surveyed,
erected a store and advertised so well that within a few weeks a village
had been started which is now one of the pleasantest summer places on
the western slope, and can boast a hotel that has no superior in the
Rocky mountains for comfort. This is the Elk Mountain house, and it is
the property of the town-site company, who appreciate that the first
impressions of a traveler (and possible settler) are largely colored by
his early experiences in the matter of food and lodging.
No mines for gold and silver exist in the immediate vicinity of the
village, though many "camps" in the Elk Mountains from five to twenty
miles away are tributary to it; and the chief reliance and _raison d'
être_ of the settlement is found in the coal-beds that are adjacent to
it. These are of the greatest value and importance, and at night, when
the blaze of the coke ovens sheds a lurid glare upon the overhanging
woodlands and the snug town, one can appreciate the far-seeing
expectations that lead the people there to call their town the
Pittsburgh of the West.
Between two great foothills south and west of the town, flows a little
creek whose channel is cut through five beds of coal, dipping southward,
with the rest of the stratified rocks, at an angle of about six degrees;
the lowest is ten feet in thickness, the others six, five, four and
three feet. This coal is bituminous, and has been proved to be the best
coking coal in the United States, as is shown by the following
authoritative analysis:
Coal .44 34.17 72.30 3.09
Coke 1.35 ----- 92.03 6.62
The railway having reached Crested Butte, the coking veins are now well
opened "by three drifts on water level, working the seam to the rise."
The mines are prepared for an output of four hundred to five hundred
tons of coal per day, and the coke can be furnished to any extent, by
the Colorado Coal and Iron Company, who own the mines. At first this
coke was made in open pits, but now a long series of ovens has been
built, and the railway tracks run to the ovens and almost to the
mine-entrance. The cars drawn up the incline from the "breasts" to the
surface, are thence dragged by mules through a quarter of a mile of
sheds, built to guard against the deep winter snows, down to the ovens
and the cars. Forty or fifty miners are employed at present, and these
live with their families in large log houses built under the edge of the
forested hill close to the mine.
The coke of all coal, being composed of fixed carbon and ash, depends
for its value on the minimum of ash. The coke from the coal of Crested
Butte contains from two to six per cent. less ash than the coke of the
best eastern coals, its total of ash amounting only to six per cent. For
all purposes of steam, this bituminous coal is said to have no superior
on the continent. A well known mineralogist is reported to have said of
it that, while a pound of Pennsylvania anthracite will make twenty-five
pounds of steam, a pound of this bituminous coal will make twenty-three
pounds; but while one pound of eastern anthracite is burning, two pounds
of this will burn. Therefore, while the pound of Pennsylvania anthracite
is making twenty-five pounds of steam, this coal will generate
forty-six.
These coal-beds can be traced without difficulty up Slate river, exposed
here and there in the western bluff, and can be found hidden in the
opposite hills. As it is followed, however (rising in altitude with the
upheaval toward the mountain-center), a change is seen to take place in
its character. Two miles above the village it is neither soft nor hard;
a little farther on, a part of the bed is decidedly anthracitic; while
four miles above Coal creek, and at an elevation of a thousand feet or
so above it, genuine anthracite of the best quality is mined from the
same seams that, four miles below, yield the coking soft coal. "Nothing
could be plainer, nor more beautiful to see," than this practical
demonstration of how under different conditions of heat and pressure,
the same carbonaceous deposit becomes bituminous or anthracitic.
The anthracite mine is at the top of a wooded hill and is reached by one
of the most entertaining roads in all Colorado. The coal-beds form
strata right across the hill, so that the miners can run their tunnels
out to daylight in any direction, and need not fear the gas which is so
troublesome in the bituminous diggings below. The vein now worked is
five feet thick at the entry, but increases to ten feet in thickness
within. It is solid and pure, and is thrown down by blasting. The men
are paid seventy-five cents per ton for breaking it into convenient
pieces and loading it into the little cars. These cars are then drawn to
the brow of the hill and dumped into larger cars which travel on a
tramway sixteen hundred feet long, and most skillfully erected on a
curved trestle, down to the breaker at the river level. This breaker is
the only one west of Pennsylvania, and is capable of transmitting five
hundred tons a day, properly crushed, to the railway cars, which run
underneath its shutes.
The highest excellence is claimed for this anthracite coal by its
owners, not only for domestic purposes, but in the making of steam. In
price, this company is able to meet the Pennsylvanians at markets on the
Missouri river, and to furnish all nearer points at a much lower rate
than eastern shippers can afford; while they hope to secure a large
part, if not the whole of the California business, which amounts to
about fifty thousand tons annually. The mine and breaker have now been
put in shape to yield steadily a large product; they are hereafter
expected to be able to meet the whole demand. The anthracite beds in
this region are believed to be very extensive, so that undoubtedly other
mines will be opened as soon as a large enough demand will justify it.
The discovery of these anthracite beds caused an immense excitement, for
it was the first true hard coal found in the State; and a mob of men
rushed in as though to an old-fashioned placer-find.
This region in 1879, indeed, caused a great flurry in the minds of
prospectors who began to enter it at the risk of their lives long before
it ceased to be an Indian reservation. As long ago as 1872 argentiferous
quartz had been found in Rock creek just over the divide between these
waters and the Roaring Fork of the Grand river, where Galena, Crystal,
Treasure and Whopper mountains are seamed with large veins of
comparatively low-grade, but easily smelted galena ore. The center of
this district is Crystal City, and from that point prospectors pushed
their way right and left as fast as they dared, and thus led to the
opening of the Gunnison region.