The Colorado Pleasure Grounds, II.
The "Loop" Journey.
In almost the opposite direction from that which takes the visitor to
Manitou, and still near the eastern rim of the mountains, is one cañon
that can be visited from Denver in a day. It lies upon one of the lines
of the U. P., D. & G. road, and is known as Clear Creek Cañon.
This defile in the mountains has been long known. When Colorado was
young it was a miners' wagon road over the range. Tens of thousands have
seen it, and it still remains, especially to one who has no time to see
the overpowering scenery in the interior, an experience not to be left
out.
From Denver it is fifteen miles to Golden, which is the simple name of a
town, one of the original gold camps, over a stretch of country that was
once an inlet of the great plains sea, and is as level as the Nebraska
prairie. It is a fruit, farm and ranch country, suggesting nothing of
the scene that is so near at hand. The basin in which the town lies is
the bottom of this sea, and the rocks around the shore are water worn,
and show where the waves once lapped. But a little distance beyond lies
the opening to this famous gorge and its tumbling stream, and thence the
road follows it for more than twenty miles.
The place, like most cañons, is apparently a cooling crock; a place that
opened in the shrinking of the crust when the white-hot world began to
harden. The projections of one side vaguely fit the indentations of the
other. Very often the red walls come very close together, revealing, as
one looks upward, only a narrow blue streak where the sky is.
Imagination, and a desire to have a place of beginning in detailed
descriptive writing, have given these rugged rock faces peculiar
resemblances, and fantastic names. They become faces, bold profiles,
fairy castles. But the dignity of the place does not bear out any of
these similitudes. Its charm lies in a general massive beauty; a
something that is feebly expressed by the word "grandeur." This is
enhanced by the fact that one is there at the bottom of the gorge, and
can look upward to dizzy heights that are constantly changing before the
eye. There are places where the sun does not shine; others where the
walls widen a little and one catches a glimpse of white peaks far off.
Foaming along the bottom runs Clear Creek--now often of a color far from
clear because of its admixture with tailings from extensive mining
operations far toward its head. It is useless, here or elsewhere, to try
to describe these Colorado torrents. They make a picture upon the inner
consciousness, and one can shut his eyes long afterward and see and hear
them. But they have no _technique_; only some human picture has that;
and they are not the proper subjects of the inadequate things we know as
words. All that a distant reader can be asked to do is to imagine a
plain suddenly estopped by a red wall of rocks. In this wall a narrow
gateway; a square, sheer opening, and into this he glides. After the
entrance the walls grow higher and higher, and for half a day he is
seated in a gliding box with a roaring torrent beneath or beside him,
and these vast walls fencing him in on both sides. There are hundreds of
sharp turns, and often the sides of his upholstered gliding box almost
touch the wall. There is no opening but that which is toward the sky.
For countless ages only these foaming waters broke the silence here. It
is interrupted now only by the feeble clank of the wheel upon the
rail--the wheel and rail that are, after all is said, the only powers
that may not be daunted by such scenes.
In the V-shaped opening at the western end of Clear Creek Cañon lies
Idaho Springs, a mining town, where, if these scenes are new to the
visitor, odd glimpses may be caught of a life and traffic to most of the
world unknown. The surrounding hills are marked with white spots high
up, and these scars are almost countless. Mining is everything, and
everywhere, and scenery is incidental. But Idaho Springs, as its name
might indicate, is also a health resort. The springs consist of both hot
and cold mineral water, and there is a natural vapor bath and boiling
springs. The climate is celebrated even in Colorado.
[Illustration: Country Road Bridge over the Uncompahgre
River--Western Colorado.]
Fourteen miles further westward is Georgetown, and the road thither is
simply an extension of the Clear Creek Cañon, here taking the form of a
sloping-sided and very narrow valley. The town has a population of
nearly four thousand people. These mountain towns, sheltered by the high
ranges, have all a more equable climate than Denver. There is hardly one
that is not both a winter and summer health resort. Strong men who came
to this country many years ago with weak lungs, seeking the one great
desideratum of a climate where they could live all the year out of
doors, have gone wherever occupation and circumstances drew them in the
mountains, and are conscious as a rule of no great difference in
locality within certain well-defined and very wide lines. Winter does
not interfere with any industry of the country. The sheltered valley,
wherever it lies in central and southern Colorado, at least, furnishes a
residence for that large class who would surely die in two years in the
east, who know that fact, and who live here in health until they are
old.
Perched high above Georgetown is the famous "Loop," a wonderful piece of
railroad engineering skill. The mining town of Silver Plume is perched
at the apex of this work. Many eastern roads have "Horseshoe" and
"Muleshoe" curves, and make lithographs of them, and speak of them as
engineering triumphs worthy of the passenger's particular attention. So
they were in their time, but they have been incalculably surpassed in
dozens of cases in Colorado.
The word "Loop" is in this case largely a misnomer. It is a railroad
_coil_. The doubles and turns are carried to an extent to the date of
its building unknown to railway engineering. There are places where one
can count five tracks below him from his window, apparently having no
connection with each other. The entire entanglement lies about ten
thousand feet above sea level. Still higher above the uppermost turn
there are working mines, the little square openings to which are like
dormer windows let into the immeasurable sloping roof of the world. The
casual traveler does not understand, the present writer does not know,
how these openings are reached from the lower world. There are said to
be lateral paths, not seen from the railway, where the patient and
remarkably clear-headed burro hath his mission as a very common carrier.
It was once thought beneath the dignity of the average American to use
this plodding beast as his assistant, but the exigencies of steepness
bring him at once far to the front. All over Colorado he is a factor,
eating little, working much, patient, plodding, long eared and long
lived, content as always with thistles and sunshine.
[Illustration: Glimpse of the Valley of Grand River--A
characteristic Colorado valley scene.]
Two and one-half miles from Georgetown is the famous Green Lake. It is
10,000 feet above the sea. It is full of fish, largely mountain trout,
not now, however, as easily caught as they were in early times. It is a
huge basin full of perfectly clear, deep water, but there is a
prevailing tint of green; water, sand, moss, and even the oar drippings,
are all green. At certain hours in late afternoon, when all the shadows
and reflections are right, it is possible to catch glimpses of its great
depth. There is a forest there, the trees still standing, but turned to
stone.
Seven miles away is Argentine Pass, where the highest wagon road in the
world is. From this pass there is a view that is remarkable, and for
this alone, the delightful road excursion to the pass is made by
hundreds of people every year. Four miles from Green Lake is Highland
Park, a resort and famous place for picnics. One day's ride by stage
takes the tourist to Grand Lake, the largest body of water in Colorado.
This lake is also full of trout, and its numerous tributaries afford
fishing in plenty to those who like running water. The surrounding
region has grouse and large game in plentifulness quite remarkable for
these late times.
In Clear Creek Cañon, coming up, a rather remarkable railway junction is
found. It is called "Forks of the Creek," and there does not seem to be
much room for car yards and switches, since the place is merely the
running into the main cañon of a lateral one, with its walls little less
steep and high than those of the main gorge are. But the branch line
from here goes to Black Hawk and Central City, famous mining towns.
These places can be reached also from Idaho Springs--by stage across the
six miles intervening, done in one hour. On this stage road lies Russell
Gulch, where in 1858 the first paying gold east of California was
discovered by a man named Russell from Georgia, one of the original
pioneers from that state to Colorado. The gulch was a great camp thirty
years ago, and the remains are there to-day. Three miles further on is
Central City, crawling up the mountain side. It is in the little rich
county of Gilpin, previously mentioned. Mining industries abound in
every direction.
A few minutes' ride or walk down the cañon brings one to Black Hawk,
though by rail it is four miles--a slight illustration of the exigencies
of railway building in this country. On this four miles still further
exigencies are illustrated by probably the only permanent "switchback"
now in use. While going backward and forward down the sloping
mountain--five hundred feet of descent in the four miles--one can look
out of the car window and see, hundreds of feet below, the winding cañon
down from Central City.
From Black Hawk the train may be taken back to Denver, going eleven
miles to the junction mentioned in the heart of Clear Creek Cañon.
Gray's Peak, one of the highest in Colorado, and its ascent by horses is
an excursion often made either from Georgetown or Idaho Springs. The
ride, to the beginning of the ascent by carriages, is one of the
choicest of Colorado excursions. It is past Silver Plume to Graymont, at
which point one may stop if scenery and views are the sum of his
desires. Gray's Peak is a little higher than Pike's, but the ascent is
easier. It is not unusual to start the horseback journey so early in the
summer morning that the summit may be reached in time to see the sun
rise. It is, of course, true that a description of this scene does not
lie within the power of language, of colors, of the camera, or within
any field but that of the remembering imagination. Painters, poets and
writers come back discouraged. It changes the current of thought for the
remainder of a lifetime, and tinges the creeping sordidness of the
common world with a color that hereafter never entirely fades. To all,
in whatever estate, this sordidness is an enveloping fog; accustomed
unseen. There does not live a man or woman to whom the heights of
Colorado are not necessary, once in their lives if no more.
[Illustration: End of the Stage Ride from Terminal of the Burlington
Route--Estes Park.]
It will be understood that it is not intended to do more here than give
a sketch of an easy journey out of Denver into a celebrated mountain
region. This little journey may be made over the "Loop" and back in one
day. It may last a month or all summer. It is one of the remarkable
features of Colorado travel that this trip among the heights and
fastnesses of nature, and all other delightful journeys here, can be
made without a moment of hardship, or even of inconvenience.
Civilization is everywhere. Roads, railways, bridges, towns, dot the
mountain world. Yet that world remains unchanged, lovely and magnificent
in single phrase, and capable of being seen and enjoyed with an
expenditure little greater than that which is always necessary at home
or elsewhere.