CHAPTER IV.

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.

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.

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.

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.