The Colorado of Reality.
There are two view-points for Colorado, as there are for a woman who has
two great endowments; wealth and personal beauty. Colorado is like such
a woman. Captivating all comers, she yet claims importance as an
industrial entity; a country with vast resources. In 1897, for example,
she produced something more than thirty millions in yellow gold. She
feeds herself besides, and has fruit, beef, wheat, galore.
But, attracted first by beauty, it is not such statistical, and withal
very pleasant, things as these the casual visitor cares most about. He
wants rather to understand the qualities and characteristics of so
unique a piece of God's creation.
For it will finally come to be understood that of all the mountain
kingdoms she stands first, not even Switzerland and her Alps offering
more than a fair comparison. That crescent chain which forms the
chiefest attraction of Central Europe covers altogether an area of about
95,000 square miles. Its crowning peak, Mont Blanc, is 15,784 feet high,
the most famous and most often named of the mountains of the modern
world. But Colorado has many peaks lacking little of this height, and
they stand amid others much higher than, but not nearly so bleak, as
those the Alpine chain is made up of. The famous Jungfrau is 13,393 feet
high. The Matterhorn is still lower. Vegetation ceases at a lesser
height than it does in Colorado. The pass of the great St. Bernard is
8,170 feet high. Marshall Pass in Colorado is 10,850 feet, and is
climbed every day by the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad and not much said
about it. Veta Pass is over 9,000 feet high--another railway station.
The town of Leadville, a familiar residence for twelve thousand people,
is 10,200 feet above the sea. Some of the beautiful and famous parks of
Colorado have their lowest depths higher than the average height of the
Alpine chain.
Vegetation is less affected by the altitude here than it is in Europe.
Cattle live all the year on indigenous grasses at elevations and in
pastures that figures of height would relegate to the woodchuck and the
mountain goat. Vegetables and fruits are raised in abundance in mountain
valleys wherein in Central Europe the vast, slow-crawling glacier would
lie. Timber line, and just above it eternal snow, mark 6,000 feet in the
Northern Alps. In Colorado 10,000 is not in all cases the limit of
vegetation, and the perpetual snow line is fixed at 11,000 feet, though
on many heights almost unknown.
[Illustration: In Estes Park--James' Ranch--Distant View.]
Nor is the impression correct that Colorado is all mountainous. It is
all of the mountains, mountainlike, but at least one diversifying
feature is the parks. It is a Colorado name for mountain-fenced
enclosures. No other mountain country has it, neither has any other the
especial feature. The Colorado "park" is distinctive and remarkable.
Many of them are of small size, by which it must be understood that they
are perhaps no bigger than Rhode Island or Delaware. Those four that are
named on the map are at least as large as some of the more important of
the New England states. These are North Park, Middle Park, South Park
and San Luis Park in the extreme south.
North Park lies near the northern boundary of the state, and is the
basin into which run the numerous small streams which gather to make a
beginning for the North Platte River, which runs all the way across
Nebraska and into the Missouri a few miles south of Omaha; a good twelve
hundred miles as it turns. It was a famous game country, and now its
streams abound in the dainty-tasting mountain fish. Its surface is
alternatively meadow and forest. It is the highest in elevation of the
four great parks, and one of the loveliest regions in the world.
Middle Park lies next this to the south, separated from it by a range of
mountains; one of the numerous "Continental Divides," and big enough to
be that, as are all others of the same name. Here rise the waters that
finally flow into the Colorado of the West, and at last reach the Gulf
of California; those that flow east, as the Platte, rising on the other
side of the range. This park is fifty miles wide by about seventy long,
and its floor is not a plane, but is traversed by ranges of hills of
about the magnitude of the Alleghanies. There are several distinct and
extensive valleys. But the rim is studded with some of the highest peaks
of the state, among them Gray's Peak, Long's Peak and Mount Lincoln,
rising to an elevation of 13,000 to 14,000 feet.
Beside it on the west lies the smaller basin, called Egerea Park, and on
its northeast side is Estes Park. At its southeast corner lies the wee
county of Gilpin, one of the oldest, longest-yielding and richest gold
districts of the world.
South Park is thirty miles wide and about sixty long; a basin that
furnishes the headwaters of the Arkansas and South Platte rivers. It is
the best known of all the parks, as the discovery of rich mines in early
times opened roads and established settlements. The scenery is charming,
and fine pasturage and water offered superior inducements to those who
were in Colorado at a time when a man could much more easily have what
he fancied than he can now. The three hours' ride across the southern
edge of this park on a clear afternoon, on the Colorado Midland road, is
an event to one new to these scenes. Here the South Platte River loses
entirely the character one learns to think is that of every mountain
stream, and has not even banks. The clear stream, entirely unruffled,
lies in innumerable bends--almost coils--along this level floor, without
any willow fringes, or even tall grass, just bank-full and no more. But
it makes up for this preternatural quietness when it breaks into its
foreordained cañon at the eastern edge, and begins its journey of some
hundreds of miles into Central Nebraska, where, in Lincoln County, it
joins its twin, which rises in North Park. Looking at the map one
wonders what mysterious affinity brings these two divergent branches
together at last, across distance, high mountains, wide plains and every
obstacle possible to running water.
[Illustration: Hell Gate, on the Colorado Midland Railway.]
The San Luis Park is the last and largest of these unique mountain
amphitheaters, and lies in the southern portion of the state. It
surrounds a beautiful lake of the same name, some sixty miles in length,
and into which run nineteen streams. The San Luis Lake has no known
outlet, but in the respect of being fresh and not salt it departs from
the usual rule of lakes with no outflowing waters. This area of about
18,000 square miles, included in San Luis Park, is among the choicest
known for the uses of civilization. It was the only portion of what is
now Colorado that was to any great extent permanently occupied by the
Mexicans. About 25,000 of them lived here when our occupancy began, and
fully that number of their descendants are there still. It was into this
region that one Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike, of the United States army,
blindly wandered while he was surveying interior Louisiana--how
strangely the matter-of-fact old story reads now--and was politely taken
in and escorted to the capital, the opulent and ancient Santa Fe, and
much further elsewhere. He died in battle at last, a soldier and the son
of a soldier, and this little excursion into wilds absolutely unknown so
short a time ago gave him the most colossal and enduring of
monuments--Pike's Peak.
In this beautiful region--where, besides the nineteen streams that feed
San Luis Lake, sixteen others flow into the Rio Grande, here a little
white mountain stream newly born--it is surprising how little great
elevation affects trees, grass and flowers. It is an all-the-year cattle
country at almost any height. Big trees grow 10,000 feet above the sea.
Cereals and the tender vegetables thrive at 7,000 feet, and potatoes at
8,000. Beautiful flowers and all the grasses are found at 11,000, and
the pines and firs are of fair size at 11,500 feet.
It is singular the discriminating eye for a good thing the early
Spaniard had, here and in California, especially the padres. They knew
it when they saw it, and took it and kept it for a considerable time.
And then we got it--always. And they accept us as neighbors and
fellow-citizens and lawmakers without any ill-will, and keep on doing
just as they always did, and as their ancestors did in Spain four
hundred years ago.
When the reader has assimilated the idea of these Colorado parks he is
left only one other mental task--to conceive of all the rest as a
piled-up succession of panoramas. Behind each other, far into the purple
distance, the ranges lie tier upon tier. The valleys that lie between,
great and small, number thousands. There are in Colorado two hundred and
sixty snow-born small streams, but large enough to have each a name.
There are nine named lakes. There are sixty-three rivers. Besides some
seventy peaks that are still unnamed there are about one hundred and
fifty towering domes that have names already given.
Amid these general scenes lie half-hidden those that are particularly
beautiful; the nooks and corners where one wonders grudgingly when one
comes upon them if they have lain there through the ages, and have been
as beautiful as they are to-day, wasted, so to speak, in a world where
gems are so very rare. There is an impression, held without warrant, but
natural, that these places have charms, yes, but that they are overrated
and overwritten after the manner of western efflorescence and the
frontier desire to surprise. The truth is that quite such scenes and
places do not exist elsewhere in all the world; that when white men
first saw some of them they were unable to convey to others any adequate
idea of them by means of even their own picturesque vocabulary. Since
then, and always, the same difficulty exists, because in the inadequacy
of mere descriptive words the idea becomes confused, and exaggeration is
taken for granted. There is a natural reason why hundreds of men and
women should go to Colorado, should meet there a revelation of natural
beauty that leaves them permanently affected, and yet should speak of
their experiences only to each other. It is useless to talk, or, alas!
to write.
[Illustration: Sopris Peak, near Aspen, as seen from the Valley.
12,972 feet high.]