Northwest from Denver is the picturesque Boulder Canyon, and here at
the mining town of Boulder is the University of Colorado, with six
hundred students. Beyond are Estes Park, one of the smaller enclosed
parks among the mountains, having Long's Peak on its verge, rising
fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy feet. Westward from Denver
is the Clear Creek Canyon, and the route in that direction leads
through great scenic attractions, past Golden, Idaho Springs and
Georgetown, where silver-mining and health-resorts divide attention,
the mountains also displaying several beautiful lakes. Beyond, the
railway threads the Devil's Gate, climbing up by remarkable loops, and
reaches Graymont at ten thousand feet elevation, having Gray's Peak
above it rising fourteen thousand four hundred and forty feet. In this
district is the mining town of Central City, while to the northwest is
the extensive Middle Park, of three thousand square miles area, a
popular resort for sportsmen. Southward from Denver the railway route
passes the splendid Casa Blanca, a huge white rock, a thousand feet
long and two hundred feet high, and crosses the watershed between the
Platte and the Arkansas, at an elevation of over seventy-two hundred
feet. Here, amid the mountains, seventy-five miles from Denver, upon a
plateau at six thousand feet elevation, is the famous city of Colorado
Springs, having twenty-five thousand people and being a noted
health-resort. It is pleasantly laid out, with wide, tree-shaded
streets, like a typical New England village spread broadly at the
eastern base of Pike's Peak. Here live large numbers of people who are
unable to stand the rigors of the climate on the Atlantic coast, and
it has been carefully preserved as a residential and educational city,
saloons being prohibited, with other restrictions calculated to
preserve its high character. The settlement began in 1871, but there
are no springs nearer than Manitou, several miles away in the spurs of
Pike's Peak. The climate of Colorado Springs is charming, and it has,
on the one hand, a magnificent mountain view, and on the other a
limitless landscape eastward and southward, across the prairie land.
Here are the Colorado College and other public institutions, and the
National Printers' Home, supported by the printers throughout the
country. In the pretty Evergreen Cemetery is buried the authoress,
Helen Hunt Jackson, who died in 1885.
Probably the best known summit of the Rockies is Pike's Peak, rearing
its snowy top over Manitou, and about six miles westward from Colorado
Springs, to an elevation of nearly fourteen thousand two hundred
feet. As it rises almost sheer, in the Colorado Front Range, this
noble mountain can be seen from afar across the eastern plains. A
cog-wheel railway nine miles long ascends to the summit from Manitou,
rising seventy-five hundred feet. There is a small hotel at the top,
and a superb view over the mountains and glens and mining camps all
around. In 1806 General Zebulon Pike, then a captain in the army, led
an exploring expedition to this remote region and discovered this
noble mountain, which was given his name. Forests cover the lower
slopes, but the top is composed of bare rocks, usually snow-covered.
Below it a huge tunnel is being bored through the range to connect
Colorado Springs with the Cripple Creek mining district to the
westward. Manitou has a group of springs of weak compound carbonated
soda, resembling those of Ems, and beneficial to consumptive,
dyspeptic and other patients. They are at the entrance of the romantic
Ute Pass, a gorge with many attractions, which was formerly the trail
of the Ute Indians in crossing the mountains. Nearby, upon the Mesa,
or "table-land," is the "Garden of the Gods," a tract of about one
square mile, thickly studded with huge grotesque cliffs and rocks of
white and red sandstones, their unique carving being the result of the
erosive processes that have been going on for ages. They are all given
appropriate names, and its Gateway is a passage just wide enough for
the road, between two enormous bright red rocks over three
hundred feet high. Farther south on the Arkansas River is Pueblo, an
industrial city of thirty thousand people in a rich mining district,
where there is a Mineral Palace, having a wonderful ceiling formed of
twenty-eight domes, into which are worked specimens of all the
Colorado minerals. The route then crosses the Veta Pass at ninety-four
hundred feet elevation, whereon is the abrupt bend known as the "Mule
Shoe Curve," and beyond this it descends into the most extensive of
the Colorado Parks, the San Luis, covering six thousand square miles.
Sentineling its western side is the triple-peaked Sierra Blanca, the
loftiest Colorado Mountain, rising almost fourteen thousand five
hundred feet. The Rio Grande flows to the southward, and there is
Alamosa, and up in the mountains Creede, an extraordinary development
of recent silver mining, which began its career when the ore was
discovered in 1891, has seven thousand people, and has produced
$4,000,000 silver in a year.
[Illustration: _Gateway, Garden of the Gods, Colorado_]
Following up the Arkansas River from Pueblo, a route goes northward
behind and west of Pike's Peak into the Cripple Creek district,
situated at an elevation of nearly ten thousand feet among the
mountains, where in 1890 was a remote cattle ranch. The next year gold
was found there, a new population rushed in, and it has since become a
leading gold producer, its output of fourteen to twenty millions of
gold annually almost turning Colorado from a silver to a gold State.
There is now a population of twenty thousand, and the town has many
substantial buildings. Westward the route crosses the Continental
Divide and descends into the extensive South Park, covering two
thousand square miles, reaching Leadville beyond, renowned as a mining
camp that has developed into one of the highest cities of the world.
In the early Colorado days this was the great gold placer mining camp
of California Gulch. Afterwards it produced enormous quantities of
silver from the extensive carbonate beds discovered in 1876, and the
population expanded to thirty thousand, its name being changed to
Leadville. Of late, its gold mining has again become profitable, and
its population now is about fifteen thousand, the yield of silver,
which once reached $13,000,000 annually, being much reduced owing to
the decline in value. To the westward, the Colorado Midland Railway
crosses the Continental Divide by the Hagerman Pass, at eleven
thousand five hundred and thirty feet elevation, the highest elevation
of any railway route across the Rockies. It descends rapidly to Aspen,
where $8,000,000 of silver and gold are mined in a year. North of
Leadville is the noted Mountain of the Holy Cross, fourteen thousand
two hundred feet high, named from the impressive cruciform appearance
of two ravines crossing at right angles and always filled with snow.
The Grand Canyon of the Arkansas is one of the most magnificent
gorges in the Rocky Mountains. This river above Pueblo forces its
passage through a deep pass known in the narrowest part as the Royal
Gorge, where the railway is laid alongside the boiling and rushing
stream, with rocky cliffs towering twenty-six hundred feet above the
line. It ascends westward, beyond the sources of the Arkansas,
crossing the Continental Divide by the Marshall Pass, at ten thousand
eight hundred and fifty-eight feet elevation, the route up there
showing, in its abrupt and bold curves, great engineering skill. The
Pass is always covered with snow, and the descent beyond it is to the
mining town of Gunnison. The Gunnison River is followed down through
its magnificent gorge, the Black Canyon giving a splendid display for
sixteen miles of some of the finest scenery of the Rockies. The river
is an alternation of foaming rapids and pleasant reaches, and within
the canyon is the lofty rock pinnacle of the Currecanti Needle. The
adjacent gorge of the Cimarron, a tributary stream, gives also a
splendid display of Rocky Mountain wildness, and below it the river
passes through the Lower Gunnison Canyon, bounded by smooth-faced
sandstone cliffs, and finally it falls into Grand River, one of the
head-streams of the Colorado. The combined magnificence of these
canyons and mountains makes the environment of the Colorado mining
region one of the most attractive scenic districts in America. The
railways have arranged a route of a thousand miles through the
mountains, starting from Denver, under the title of "Around the
Circle," which crosses and recrosses the Continental Divide, threads
the wonderful canyons, surmounts all the famous passes over the tops
of the Rocky ranges, and includes the most attractive scenery of the
district.