James W. Steele

“ One cannot get down to the plane of all his life hitherto. The word “valley” is a relative expression; low and high have not their usual significance. Looking back as the train crawls up a mountain side in long doubling curves, one is surprised to see floating far below him a long and trailing film of silver lace; something so near and ethereal and beautiful that he cannot recognize it as that which he has looked up to all his life—a cloud. And on one side the valley sinks away, narrowing and lowering in distance that seems infinite. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Endowed with a beauty of fascinating awfulness, and with still another beauty that underlies the magnitude and sits serene amid the grandeur, the inadequate, word-trammeled idea of it has found endless expression, and yet the scenes of Colorado have never been described. Whoever has visited her ever after turns aside from words; whoever has not, can obtain from them but a faint conception of that which in truth can be imagined only in actual presence—and hardly even then. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The restlessness, the tinkle, the indescribable sound of breaking foam, the overhanging shadow, the glimpse of the far blue sky above and far beyond, the sense that this is nature, careless utterly of you and all your tribe—all these things are left out. To be amid these scenes is to live in a new way during the fleeting time that one is there, and going away again it is to remember more vividly after ten or twenty years than you did the day after you saw them first.
Scores of places are not in the guidebooks at all that strike the casual stranger as vividly as anything that is. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Because the dizzy walls that fence the cataract are in Colorado oftenest of the rich, dull red-brown that even human architecture chooses for its stateliest spires. One may imagine the Spaniard who clanked his broken armor in the Cañon of the Arkansas for the first time, and looked stiffly up at those ruddy walls, and remembered ever afterward, as most men do, what he saw in the land that is red. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The region of the foothills, the land between plain and mountain, and including both, is the natural home of the elk. It is in the more outlying regions, of course, that the big shy game now live. Once, in the days of Indian occupation, all Colorado was a hunting field, perhaps the best known. Natural fastnesses, plenty of food and a mild climate made it so. The encroachments of civilization have naturally restricted the field, but with the result that there is now more game in the places they still occupy than there was in former times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He need not shut his eyes because the guidebook gives him the impression that just ahead somewhere stands that special wonder that he is almost sure he came so far 10 particularly to see. The entire endless, solemn, silent, chaotic mass that fills the view for days has all its entirely undescribable charm.
And amid it all live the plodding sons of men. Each little mountain nook where there is water has its occupant. ”

“ The railroad company plants here each season about two hundred thousand young trout. Platte Cañon, a few hours’ ride from Denver is a favorite ground. The Gunnison River, east of Grand Junction, is another famous fishing stream. There are a great many smaller brooks and streams. Every mountain stream that has not had its waters spoiled by tailings and the refuse of smelters has fish in it. As a rule, the further away from the haunts of many anglers one goes, the more fish there are to be caught. The hunting grounds are fishing grounds as well. ”

“ 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 22 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. ”