CHAPTER V.

Nooks and Corners.

The State of Colorado contains four thousand three hundred and fifty-seven miles of railroads in a mountain area of a hundred and five thousand square miles. In any other state every mile of this would be "scenic," and the most uninteresting part of it would elsewhere serve to divert extensive travel.

In this area, penetrated in every part by the astonishing railway mileage given, there are a hundred and fifty-five mountain peaks that are over thirteen thousand feet high. That is ten times as many as all Europe holds. One of these, situated so as to be seen sometimes a hundred miles across the plains, is forsooth climbed by a human railroad, and can be scaled and descended and the traveler be far on his way toward home within the daylight hours of one eventful day. When one begins to describe this country he has to deal with all the majesties, mountains, parks, crags, cañons, glens, waterfalls, geysers, lakes, caverns, cliffs, buttes, all spread out on a tremendous scale, none of them small. There are, it is said, seventy-two high peaks that yet stand nameless, waiting for some form of concurrent opinion as to how these colossal sons of nature shall be best called in mere human speech.

There are about five hundred lakes, large and small, some of them distinguished by a famous name, and many still asleep in mountain hollows almost unknown, where every wanderer who finds them is a discoverer for himself.

There are about six thousand miles of running water, born of snow, filled with fish, most of their countless windings still untraced by him who bears a rod and basket and would like to lure to unequal combat and certain death the mountain fishes, all "game" and difficult of capture. In the far recesses of the mountains there are places still unknown to all save one--the prospector--and here linger the mountain lion, the panther, black, cinnamon, grizzly and silver-tip bears, wildcats, lynxes, porcupines, deer, elks, antelope, and all the creatures of the wilds. These are never common; all the hunters' tales do not ever make them that, and they must be hunted. He who finds and slays them is an adventurer, and was always such.

Mineral springs abound. No one knows how many there are, yet there is a long list of them already well known. The names Manitou, Glenwood, Poncha, Pagosa, Buena Vista, Ouray, Idaho, Cañon City, have been heard by all. Every town has its especial waters. At some of these there has been a lavish expenditure of capital and hotel palaces have arisen. Some are so especially endowed with outlying attractions that the waters are a secondary consideration, and of these is Manitou. Others have extraordinary temperatures and volume, so that nature's chemistry is the pastime of hundreds, and of these is Glenwood. Others are the favored of a few. Every prospector knows of one or more, where isolated cases believe that they must drink or die; have drunk, and did not die.

Every railway line in Colorado is truly an excursion line; to ride over it is a pleasure tour, and one that the man in health and seeking rest and recreation alone will enjoy first before he calmly chooses a spot wherein to rest, and which will thereafter be _his_ chosen place before all others. In this way thousands of tastes are gratified every year, and each one wonders why all others cannot see with him in _his_ place advantages incomparable and quite inexpressible. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad can reel off, so to speak, two dozen mineral springs and health and pleasure resorts on its lines in one small publication, not mentioning at all the places that are famous as scenery, passes, heights, cañons, mountains and astounding feats of railway construction. These number scores.

The Colorado Midland road, with less mileage and covering a much smaller extent of country, mentions fourteen resorts, besides twice or thrice as many famous pieces of scenery.

And here it may be remarked that of the famous resorts of Colorado one is reached by both the Denver & Rio Grande and the Colorado Midland. This is Glenwood Springs, sharing with Manitou an almost equal fame. The place is at the junction of Grand River and Roaring Fork, in a valley that is like an elongated bowl. The springs themselves are phenomenal, running out on both sides of the river, and varying from twenty to a thousand cubic inches a second--among the largest in the world. Those on the north side of the river discharge an immense body of water at a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and this stream is made to flow through an aqueduct on both sides of an island. On this island stands the famous bathing house. Here is found every species of bathing arrangement housed in magnificent style. There are twenty-two large two-room bathing apartments for each sex--forty-four in all--and each is supplied with hot, cold or warm mineral water, and the same temperatures of fresh water, and also showers of either. Here in the heart of the mountains will be found all the appliances of the highest grade of civilization, electric lights, smoking, billiard and eating rooms, linen rooms, hair-dressing rooms, laundries, etc. The feature of the place is perhaps the swimming bath. It is a huge out-of-doors oval tank, full of hot water, and ranging in depth from three and a half to five and a half feet. Two thousand gallons a minute of hot mineral water pours into this huge artificial swimming place, the high temperature being reduced by colder water as it enters.

These features--chief among which is, of course, the hot mineral water in immense volume, making the place remarkable among the resorts of the world--are backed by a hotel which takes rank among the palaces. It has two hundred guest rooms, in nearly all of which are open fireplaces, and there is every convenience that pertains to civilization, mention of which in detail is merely tiresome to the accustomed Colorado visitor. One of the features of our national life is seldom mentioned, and there is now only a small class for whom the mention is worth while. It is that wherever the American establishes himself he takes with him all there is. The refinement, the culture, the "style" of Newport and Saratoga are all duplicated at Manitou and Glenwood, housed magnificently of themselves and environed by scenes in comparison with which those of most of the pleasure places of the world are tame.

A third line, the Union Pacific, Denver & Gulf, has all the famous country beyond Clear Creek Cañon, full of scenery, resorts and mines; the South Park line to Leadville and Gunnison--a trip often made by the Colorado tourist for the pleasure of the journey--with the most famous mining "camp" of the world at the end of it.

The Burlington Route has a line running northwest from Denver to Lyons, whence one of the few remaining famous mountain stage rides may be taken to that which is by many--by all who know it well--considered to be the gem of the Colorado parks, Estes.

This park was in its time the most famous of the natural feeding grounds for all the Colorado animals. It is largely so yet, though in visiting it there is always a half regret that its location was ever divulged in type, so that it might have remained always a chosen spot for those only who could appreciate its original loveliness and were willing to share it with the animals who live there. It is skirted by mountains nine, eleven and fourteen thousand feet high. Two peaks of granite stand on either side of its only feasible entrance. The interior is shaped irregularly and there is little level ground. It is made up of natural lawns and of slopes and grades. It is but twenty miles in length and is not more than two miles wide in any place. One bright, swift trout stream, known prosaically as the Big Thompson, is born in the snow of Long's Peak and flows crookedly through it from end to end. This is really one of the loveliest streams in the world. There are waterfalls and little lakes, fine groupings of trees, lawns that seem the work of the landscape gardener on a large scale. Nevertheless, sublimity is the dominant feature of Estes Park, after all. There are pinnacles of rosy granite, the streams are lost in cañons almost or quite inaccessible, and the upper end of almost every valley is closed in mystery. There are, though it seems so far removed from the actual heart of the Rockies, seven mountain ranges between Estes Park and the plains.

The lowest part of the park is 7,500 feet high. The summer midday is very warm, but every night is cool, almost cold. People live there and farm and there is no lack of either accommodation or hospitality. Still it is isolated, with the charm of nature utterly unbroken, a good place to fish and near the best remaining hunting grounds, perhaps, after all, the loveliest summer-time resting place in all this wonderland of nature.

All this northern region of which Estes Park is the gem calls loudly to that large class who imagine they have enough of society at home, and who wish for two or three blissful summer weeks to go where the Red Gods call them; to fish, or hunt, or to lie under pines and blink at the mottled sunshine, forgetful of newspapers and telegrams, and stiff collars and polished boots. Of such as these are the churls who build railroads and conduct enterprises and write real books, and torment their days with action and their nights with thinking. Some of these shamelessly bestow their women folk and their young men at Glenwood or Manitou, or elsewhere beneath a mingling of mountain shadows and electric lights, and then abscond with other temporary satyrs like unto themselves to Estes Park and places even further away.

And there is a line of travel thus far, and amid many other enforced omissions, not mentioned at all. It is operated by the Denver & Rio Grande road, and may be said to begin at that point mentioned in a preceding chapter, a little station beyond Salida, where in the early morning a train mysteriously vanishes within a side cañon, seemingly on a prospecting tour amid unknown depths and distances. The tour of this train they call familiarly "Around the Circle"--a circle several hundred miles in circumference.

This journey traverses the San Luis Park. It crosses the southern boundary line into New Mexico and throws out an attenuated and very crooked arm to Santa Fe, in the heart of a civilization that is the oldest and quaintest in America. One would hardly credit the fact that at the moment of disappearance this vanishing train is crossing the huge northern rim of San Luis Park, and that emerging on the inner side it proceeds to make a beeline, without a curve, across this vast mountain amphitheater for a distance of fifty-six miles. While crookedness is a wonder elsewhere, it is straightness that is a wonder here, and this unwonted tangent is deliberately mentioned as a curious thing. The grades immediately precedent were two hundred and eleven feet to the mile, and the look downward and backward through Poncha Pass was something as indescribable as any scene in Colorado. But it may be added that this is the longest stretch of straight railroad track, not alone in Colorado, but in the world.

On this circle route lies the famous Toltec Gorge, where the train crosses the range at an elevation of 10,015 feet. The line passes the corner of the Ute and Apache Indian reservations, and the aborigine has never lost his interest in the still inexplicable power that was the principal indirect cause of his being placed at last in this corner of the realm he once owned. He sits in the sun and waits for the train.

There is a place where the line is laid on a shelf in a cañon that is five hundred feet from the bottom and five hundred feet from the top, and where the cost of construction for a single mile was $115,000.

At Mancos station the ethnologically inclined may stop and visit the ruins of the cliff dwellers in Mancos Cañon. Rico, Lost Cañon, the Valley of the Dolores, Rio de Las Animas Perdidas--"the River of the Lost Souls"--the queer, sharp pinnacles known as the Needle Mountains, Sultan Mountain, Lizard Head Pass, Trout Lake, the celebrated piece of engineering known as Ophir Loop, the Black Cañon, are all places on this "circle" journey.

The mines and mining interests of Colorado are immense. They form a special feature, and about them there is already an extensive literature. It is the richest mineral region in the world, a fact illustrated by the ease with which it can turn from silver to gold, calling itself the "Silver State" for a period of years, and producing in a year immediately succeeding more than thirty millions of gold. Through all these wanderings, in every nook and corner, are the mines. The country is known truly and in detail by but one class--the prospectors. Thorough experts in mining are found in every walk in life. Information in detail would fill a space ten times as large as can be given here. The two largest mining camps, Leadville and Cripple Creek, are both easy of access by rail from Denver, and, while as towns they possess features that are unique, there is little in them outside the lines of average American citizenship and human nature, except the vast interests to which they are exclusively devoted. The home is there as elsewhere; the school, the church and the average man and woman. The frontier story has been told and is out of date. The community of a great mining center is not so strange, nor apparently half so extraordinary in its methods, as that which clusters daily around the shrine in the Chicago Board of Trade.

To the miner, the farmer and the cattle raiser of Colorado the scenery has in time naturally become as is Niagara to him who lives with the thunder of the cataract always in his ears. It is to those to whom these wonders are not a part of daily life that they appeal. The interest involved in industrial Colorado is immense. The capital involved mounts easily into millions. But it is a separate topic, interesting only to business, appealing not at all to the man and woman whose cares and toils are lessened, whose lives are strengthened by the touch of nature once a year; for whom, since the first railroad line was laid across the plains, there has existed no outing like that amid the Springs and peaks and pines of Colorado.