The Colorado Pleasure Ground--Manitou.
When the Colorado visitor comes for the first time he is fortunate if
his approach is by one of those lines whose trains, like those of the
Burlington, come careering across the high plains from the eastward at
an hour that shows the notched and serrated mountain wall against the
sky. There is no other mountain approach in the world like that to
Colorado from the east. Here is the sudden ending of that wide and
silent vastness in which the modern traveler now lives less than
twenty-four hours, but which the old-time wanderer dwelt in for more
than a month. To reach this mountain world, ending abruptly at the
plain, is a surprise. Let one ray of sunshine lie upon a peak, far in
the distance, and it is known that the fleecy texture of a cloud could
not give back that peculiar glint, cold and bright and half a frown, and
that these huge shapes are, at last, the Rocky Mountains. Such a glimpse
may not occur to the railway traveler once in a hundred journeys, but if
seen it is a suggestion of the spires that Bunyan saw; the Beulah that
lies beyond the river.
More than a quarter of a century ago, before the time of the
transcontinental lines, the present writer, visiting his guard lines
at 4 o'clock in the morning on the banks of the Purgatoire, has seen
one rose-colored spot high up among the fading stars, and wondered
what it was. The mirages of the plains had shown no mountains to the
westward while daylight lingered. It was the sunrise on Pike's Peak,
eighty miles away.
To this eastward edge of the mountains and western ending of the plains
all westward travelers come first, and it is here that the majority
linger. In it are situated Denver, Colorado Springs, Manitou, Pueblo,
Trinidad, Golden, Boulder, Fort Collins, Greeley, etc. These names are
all familiar. Their situation in respect to each other is in a crooked
line running north and south along the edge of the high plains, and
about three hundred miles long. Greeley is furthest north and Trinidad
furthest south. Denver is the center of the line, singularly situated as
the gateway to all that lies to the westward.
It is useless to attempt to occupy attention with a description of this
beautiful and well-known city. It is in reality of the plains, though
standing at an elevation of over five thousand feet. To it all roads
lead, and from it all go out toward the nooks and corners of an
intricate mountain system. The foothills of the real mountains rise
behind it, as high as the average Alleghanies.
Southward and northward from Denver lie the resorts that all tourists
visit, whether or not they go into the interior, whose general aspects
have been sketched in a previous chapter. Chief among these is Manitou.
[Illustration: The road from Manitou to the Garden of the Gods--One
of the most beautiful drives known.]
To visit Manitou it is necessary to take one of three lines running
directly south from the capital to Colorado Springs, a distance of
seventy-eight miles. This city is built on the mesa, and to be a health
resort was not its original purpose. But such it is, and it has a wide
reputation with that class who wish to avoid the activity and merriment
of Manitou, which lies in sight to the westward. The hotels are fine,
and, speaking largely, every day in the year is sunny. To be able always
to see the mountains, and to be able also at any time, and by an easy
railroad or carriage ride, to enter some of their most beautiful nooks,
is an attraction to many hundreds of people. The town has a population
of about twelve thousand, and an elevation of nearly six thousand feet.
Like Denver, it stands on the edge of the plains.
Between Denver and Colorado Springs or Manitou there are several smaller
resorts, all on railroad lines running south from Denver. Among these is
the village of Castle Rock, deriving its name from the castellated cliff
under which it nestles. Perry Park, a little distance away from the
line, is in a park filled with rock formations similar to those found in
the famous Garden of the Gods, near Manitou. Palmer Lake lies in the
midst of good foothill scenery. The peaks of the Snowy Range are visible
from near this point, and the walks and drives of the neighborhood are
fine. Glen Park, half a mile away, is the Chautauqua of Colorado. It is
one of the prettiest glens in this region of nooks and glens, and the
cliff behind it is 2,000 feet high. The Chautauqua assembly is held here
annually, and otherwise the place is used for summer residence and for
outings.
Almost midway between Colorado Springs and Manitou, and in sight of
both, is the old town of Colorado City. It was the first capital of
Colorado, and in some one of the now dilapidated log buildings,
wanderers in an unknown land called themselves to order after the manner
of the usual American empire builder.
Manitou--About this unique spot there will always be something to say.
But generalities do not describe it. He who has not been there at all
can get from them no conception of the real place. And it is not so much
a place as it is a locality; the center of a group of beautiful places
that have made it, with its surroundings, a spot once seen never to be
forgotten.
Imagine the outward opening of Ute Pass--a cleft in the undulating
mountain wall extending backward and upward. It opened into the plain,
as Pike's tattered wanderers first saw it, in V-shape, and in this notch
bubbled three or four peculiar springs. There was no one there. The
antelope and buffalos from the plains, and the black-tailed deer and
elks from the mountains came there to drink. The Utes trailed down the
rocky cañon that bears their name, single file, afoot, and camped beside
the springs. One of them went out to the edge of the mesa, east toward
Colorado Springs and lay down on his naked stomach and peeped out over
the plain from behind a sage bush, and was on picket duty there to watch
lest the plains Apache catch his kindred unaware.
[Illustration: Car and Engine used in the Ascent of Pike's Peak by
the Cog Railroad.]
The waters bubbled as they rose, and had a faint sweetish taste, and the
savages, and all who have since tasted them, liked them well. They were
"medicine waters," too. There is a pleasant supposition that these
painted savages named the place "Manitou"--a name used by the Indians of
Cooper and tradition to express the idea of a spirit, God or Devil,
indifferently. It is a pretty name in sound, and the legend does not the
slightest harm. In reality, the Utes owned these unknown mountains in
large part, and they also liked to hunt buffalo on the plains, and they
passed this place in their migrations because it was convenient and they
were thirsty. All that is left of them now is their one supposed word,
"Manitou."
Then, as now, the strange wind-wrought obelisks of the Garden of the
Gods stood near at hand, and in the trail the huge Balanced Rock seemed
waiting to be pushed to its fall by some passing child. Then, as now,
the gateway, guarded by its red perpendicular portals, springing more
than three hundred feet straight up from the level plain, stood open.
The clefts in the mountain's flank that are called the north and south
Cheyenne Cañons were there as now, and the cascade that falls in seven
leaps five hundred feet in the southern cañon was there, it is almost
difficult to believe, precisely as it is to-day and as it has been for
ages. All the trees were there; the Douglas spruce, the Rocky Mountain
pine, the Picea Grandis, the creepers, the mauve and white clematis,
and, over all, towering and inaccessible, the red granite walls.
The twin cañon to the northward held its tumbling waters too, and Seven
Lakes, Monument Park, Rainbow Falls, Manitou Park, Williams' Cañon, Cave
of the Winds, Engleman's Cañon, Red Cañon, Crystal Park, Glen Eyrie--all
these were the same as now, but unnamed and almost unnoted. Nothing in
the modern world is ever done until a railroad comes.
Yet there has been a change; as great a change as the ingenuity of man
can make in everlasting things. The Manitou Grand Caverns have been
discovered and opened, precisely as though nature had not been lavish
enough before, and must needs do some other brilliant thing through
man's accident and luck. Wagon roads have been graded in all directions,
and from one famous place to another, until there is no pleasure ground
in America, possibly in the world, so well equipped for out-of-doors
pleasure in a climate that has no vicissitudes, and amid remarkable
scenes that have been clustered around this one favored spot with a
profusion unknown elsewhere in all the civilized world.
To South Cheyenne Cañon from Manitou it is nine miles; to North Cheyenne
Cañon eight and one-half; from the mouth of the cañon to the Rainbow
Falls and Grand Caverns it is one and one-half miles, and every visitor
wishes it was further, because it is a road of rugged sweetness quite
unequaled; to Red Cañon it is three miles; to Crystal Park, three; to
the Garden of the Gods, three--a drive lovely as pleasure knows, with an
extraordinary scene at the end of it; to Glen Eyrie it is five miles; to
Monument Park by "trail"--which is native for a fine riding road--it is
seven and one-half miles; by carriage road it is nine miles; to Seven
Lakes, again by trail, it is nine miles; to the summit of Pike's Peak,
this time by the Cog Road, it is nine wonderful miles, with an elevation
rarely attained in this life at the end of it; to the same by trail it
is thirteen miles. There are four ways of going up this mountain, to
climb which was a few years ago a remarkable feat--afoot, horseback, by
carriage and by rail. All these ways are practised, according to the
spirit and physical condition of the visitor. The bicycle, for only this
once, is not included.
These are some of the show places, the world-renowned scenes about which
there cannot easily be any exaggeration. People linger among them for
months, and go to them again and again.
But in addition to these there are scores of mountain nooks and corners;
cañons, caves, waterfalls; private places that the visitor seeks out or
casually finds for himself. There are acres, and quarter and half acres
that have been discovered hundreds of times, and are owned, practically
without cost, by the finder for so long as he lingers amid these scenes.
There may be sometimes a pair, to whom the place is a joint-stock
enterprise.
Within the limits of Manitou there are nine springs, all cold mineral
waters. They are of two kinds; the "soda" springs, effervescent and
resembling in taste and quality appollinaris water, and the iron
springs. All are medicinal, and all have records of cures. They are at
least the nucleus of an agreeable supposition: the beautiful scenery,
the crisp mountain air, the out-of-doors, the inducements to activity,
the tiredness that is really rest--these are the health-restoring
facilities of Manitou. The waters are very pleasant, and may be regarded
as a duty, always with the understanding that if the visitor is made
over again in the course of a few weeks, as he often is, he may ascribe
it to the waters if he wishes.
[Illustration: The Colorado Mining Industry. Miner's Pack Train near
Aspen.]
It is manifest that of such a place a volume might be written. The
specific attractions of each attraction cannot here be described. It
would be useless space-writing if they were. Manitou, once visited,
remains ever after a picture of the mind, never put into words. Over
all, always, shimmers the indescribable Colorado sunshine, a light that
is not of other lands.
So far as creature comforts are in question, Manitou has long been
sumptuously equipped. There are five large hotels, capable of
accommodating an aggregate of over twelve hundred guests. There are,
besides, many small hotels, and there are cottages that may be rented
for periods of weeks or months.
One of the notable works of man at Manitou is the Cog Railroad to the
summit of Pike's Peak. It was completed in 1891, and is in many respects
singular even for its kind. It climbs in the eight and three-quarters
miles of its length to a height of 14,147 feet above sea level. It cost
half a million dollars, and the construction is of the very highest
class. There is a cog-rail in the center, between the two other rails,
which weighs a hundred and ten tons to the mile. At intervals of two
hundred feet the track is anchored to heavy masonry. Brakes are so
contrived that the train can be stopped on any grade within a distance
of ten inches. The trucks of the cars and engines are always tilted at
the angle of the ascent, but in the case of the former the seats are
level to the sitter, and the engines are built high at one end and
remain so, even on level ground. The engine does not pull the train, but
pushes it. Three hours are consumed in making the ascent, and a hundred
passengers make a load for the train. Stops are made at interesting
points on the way up.
There are many feats of engineering and in the overcoming of great
physical difficulties that render this the most remarkable of the
climbing passenger railroads of the world. The ascent of this big
mountain was always a feat by the ordinary means; the elevation is one
not usually attained in this life under any circumstances, and the
sensations are indescribable in words.
No attempt is here made to describe in detail the scenes within the
scenes at Manitou. No one who has been there ever attempts this even in
ordinary conversation. They who return from the Cheyenne cañons or the
Garden of the Gods are ever a silent company. That name Manitou should
be applied to the entire region, as indicating vaguely that spirit far
removed from the platitudes and tediousness of ordinary language and
common life that pervades it all.
[Illustration: A famous piece of railway construction--"The Loop,"
above Georgetown.]