Leadville, Colorado

“ So calm and unruffled was the rarified air that I fancied I could hear the thirteenth assessment on a share of stock at Leadville toiling away at the bottom of a two hundred and fifty foot shaft.
Colorado air is so pure that men in New York have, in several instances, heard the dull rumble of an assessment working as far away as the San Juan country. ”

“ Early-day Leadville sprawled among its mine dumps at an elevation of 10,200 feet. The Sawatch Range, in the background, contained many smaller mining communities, now deserted. Mt. Massive, the state’s second highest peak, forms the crest of the continental divide here. (State Historical Society of Colorado photo)
In 1875 a smelter was erected a few miles downstream from Oro to process cerussite—silver-rich lead carbonate—that occurred in the placer sands. ”

“ The next year gold was found there, a new population rushed in, and it has since become a leading gold producer, its output of fourteen to twenty millions of gold annually almost turning Colorado from a silver 468 to a gold State. There is now a population of twenty thousand, and the town has many substantial buildings. Westward the route crosses the Continental Divide and descends into the extensive South Park, covering two thousand square miles, reaching Leadville beyond, renowned as a mining camp that has developed into one of the highest cities of the world. ”

“ THE ETERNAL SNOWS VIEWED FROM FRYER HILL
When Baby Doe walked to town by the road that led into Leadville’s Eighth Street, this was the view that faced her across the Arkansas Valley. The mountains are miles away but seem close in the rarified atmosphere. They are Elbert (Colorado’s highest) to the left and Massive to the right. Below is the Matchless Mine after its partial restoration in 1953. ”

“ Colorado is a State, not a country, and in that State the mines of Leadville, Aspen, Ouray, Clear Creek County, Telluride, Boulder, Silverton, and Cripple Creek, have yielded up in the last year forty million dollars. If the State has done that much, it can do more; and I could not understand why any one in Colorado should remain contentedly at home selling ribbons when there must be other mines to be had for the finding. A prospector is, after all, very much like a tramp, but with a knowledge of minerals, a pick, rations, a purpose, and—hope. We know how many tramps we have in the East ”

“ From Salt Lake City one travels over the great plains of Colorado and up the Rocky Mountains, on the top of which is Leadville, the richest city in the world. It has also got the reputation of being the roughest, and every man carries a revolver. I was told that if I went there they would be sure to shoot me or my travelling manager. I wrote and told them that nothing that they could do to my travelling manager would intimidate me. They are miners—men working in metals, so I lectured to them on the Ethics of Art. ”

“ Colorado is a vast square, extending from 25° to 35° west longitude, from 37° to 41° of latitude from Washington. It is bounded by New Mexico on the south, Kansas and Nebraska on the east, Wyoming Territory on the north, and Utah on the west. The great mass of the population is concentrated about the middle of the State, at Denver, Leadville, and on the course of the rivers adjacent to the principal mining districts. ”

“ The sea continued to cover most of Colorado after the end of the Devonian Period, well into Mississippian time. Mississippian rocks are characteristically thick, massive gray limestones collectively called the Leadville Limestone. This unit is well known as the host rock for many Colorado ore deposits, notably those around the town of Leadville.
During Mississippian time the western sea, warm and rich in organisms, covered much of North America. Brachiopods and corals flourished, as did many other forms of life. ”

“ Colorado has a County named for him, of which Canon City is the County Seat. There are Counties in Wyoming, Idaho and Iowa, similarly named. Eighteen states of the union have towns bearing his name. "Fremont Basin" covers the western part of Utah, all of Nevada, and a part of the southeastern portion of California—in all, a region about four hundred and fifty miles square. "Fremont Pass" in the Rocky Mountains has an elevation of eleven thousand three hundred and thirteen feet and is in the Gore Range, about ten miles northwest of Leadville. ”

“ Bloomer made her first journey to Colorado, its mountains and magnificent scenery. This was repeated in subsequent years, the last trip having been made in 1894, only a few months before her death. During these tours she spent many days in Denver, Leadville, Idaho Springs, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, and Manitou. All the points round the latter famous watering place were visited. She rode through the Garden of the Gods, Monument Park, and Cheyenne Cañon, and traversed the great caves opened up in the mountains. ”

“ The great Santa Fé (1873) , Burlington (1882) , Missouri Pacific (1887) and Rock Island (1888) systems reached Pueblo, Denver and Colorado Springs successively from the east. In 1888 the Colorado Midland started from Colorado Springs westward, up the Ute Pass, through the South Park to Leadville, and thence over the continental divide to Aspen and Glenwood Springs. The Colorado & Southern, a consolidation of roads connecting Colorado with the south, has also become an important system.
Population.—The population of the state in 1870 was 39,864 ”

“ Exhausting the placer sands of the stream bottoms, they moved higher to mine gold-bearing veins at Central City and Blackhawk. Mining camps sprang into existence overnight, each heralding some new “strike,” each populated by a new rush of fortune seekers. As lower areas were mined out, prospectors moved yet higher—to Breckenridge, Gold Hill, and Empire, Aspen, Leadville, and Cripple Creek. Silver was found as well as gold, then iron, and later tungsten and molybdenum. The metallic ring of mining tools echoed from Colorado’s peaks. ”

“ I am sure that the underground view of Leadville would be better than that which the sun looks upon. It is not an inviting-looking place. It lies on the great top surges of the mountains, having all the bleakness of a plain, and the rarefied atmosphere of the mountain summit, which it really is.
It is always a weird thing to look at the scenes of early mining days in Leadville, when the fame of the fabulous wealth therein, entered into men's brains, with an intoxication, like that of some Oriental drug. California Gulch looks like the dried bed of a mountain torrent. ”

“ It now has a population of 15,000 inhabitants and is the county seat of Lake County. Leadville has an elevation of 10,200 feet, enjoying the highest altitude of any city of its size in North America, if not in the world. It lies amid some of the grandest and most magnificent scenery to be found anywhere, and is surrounded by towering, snow-capped mountain peaks, whose glistening summits almost pierce the sky. We find the atmosphere cool and bracing, but so exceedingly rare that a brisk walk or short run will make you pant for breath. ”

“ After leaving Buena Vista the route was along the Arkansas River, through somewhat less rugged scenery, and on by Leadville, a city whose life is drawn from the bowels of the mountain. The whole territory is speckled and dotted with engine houses, and derricks, and flumes, and cavities, where the cupidity of man has laid a tribute upon the everlasting hills, and is collecting it by the sweat of his brow and the exercise of his genius. ”

“ Several trappers, like Pattie and Carson, had gained a considerable knowledge of the general course and character of the river as early as 1830, but to Major Powell and his two parties undoubtedly belongs the high honour of being the first to explore and explain the truth about it and its extraordinary canyon environment. If danger, difficulty, and disaster mean romance, then assuredly the Colorado of the West is entitled to first rank, for seldom has any human being touched its borderland even, without some bitter or fatal experience. ”

“ From the tiny rivulets of its snowy birth to the ferocious tidal bore where it dies in the sea, it wages a ceaseless battle as sublime as it is terrible and unique. Such is the great Colorado River of the West, rising amidst the fountains of the beautiful Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, where also are brought forth the gentler Columbia and the mighty, far-reaching Missouri. Whirling down ten thousand feet in some two thousand miles, it meets the hot level of the Red Sea, once the Sea of Cortes, now the Gulf of California, in tumult and turmoil. ”

“ Now, if Colorado is a hunting country at all, it is one most of whose preserves can be nearly approached in a Pullman car. The climate, even in midwinter, is mild. There is always a town, a mine, a ranch, somewhere within tramping distance ”

“ 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. ”

“ But there is a larger class, that portion of our population throughout the East and South suffering from some pulmonary trouble, which should be much more interested in Colorado than either the pleasure-seeker or the money-getter. For such there is a wealth of life stored up in the dry, sunny climate of this State, more precious than the hidden treasures which the mountains contain. ”

“ So it is that beauty and grandeur have never been so nearly akin elsewhere as they are in Colorado. Of nooks and corners and little valleys and waterfalls grotesque shapes there are almost thousands. One may sit at a car window all day, not knowing precisely where he is, or caring, and catch them as they pass and come and go, until his soul is tired. Yet it is all on a scale of inconceivable immensity. Even the mesas and tablelands, where the grass grows as on a lowland farm, are 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea—more than twice as high as Mount Everett. There is nothing low. ”

“ The most available towns for the invalid who has to earn his support are Denver and Pueblo, but there is a moderately wide field from which to choose when health and comfort, and not money, are the main considerations. Colorado Springs combines so many favorable conditions of climate, good accommodations, pleasant society, and natural objects of interest, as to render it, in addition to its sanitary condition, an almost ideal resort for phthisical invalids. ”

“ And the beautiful undulating meadows continue, sprinkled over with shrub-like trees, and populous with rabbits and prairie-dogs and chapparal hens. Here and there we come upon small companies of cattle and horses, most contented with their pastures; but what an utter desolation this vast tract seems to be! The "stations" are, as yet, mere single houses, and we hardly see a human being in an hour. And then comes Colorado, a queer makeshift-looking town, with apparently only one permanent place of habitation in it—the jail. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The State's population is highly concentrated in the urbanized eastern edge of the foothills, while farther to the east lies that agricultural area of Colorado which is a part of the Great Plains. The area lying to the west of the Continental Divide is largely mountainous, with two-thirds of the population living in communities of less than 2,500 inhabitants or on farms. Livestock raising, mining and tourism are the dominant occupations. ”

“ This immense domain, thus acquired by purchase from France and Mexico, has been occupied by an intelligent and enterprising population, and divided into states and territories, each an empire in its dimensions, and has been cultivated, developed, and embellished by all the arts and inventions of the most progressed civilization. One portion of this domain is Colorado, destined by her position, resources and climate to enjoy an immortal precedence among the States of our great Republic. ”

“ We next visited Pueblo, where this giant was exhumed, but were not at all pleased with the town or its surroundings, and suffered greatly from thirst rather than drink the offensive water for which the residents are so heavily taxed. It was so apparently poisonous in odor, that if it had been in the malarious climate of Chicago, instead of the exhilarating atmosphere of Colorado, all would have died from its effects.
We have never visited a State which held such diversified interest as that of Colorado, a fitting resort for the invalid, the pleasure seeker, artist, scientist or poet. ”

“ Newberry, the eminent geologist who had been with Ives, was one of this party, and he has given an interesting account of the journey. The region lying immediately around the place they had set out for is one of the most formidable in all the valley of the Colorado. Looking about one there, from the summit of the canyon walls, it seems an impossibility for anything without the power of flight to approach the spot except by way of the river channels. Macomb and Newberry succeeded in forcing their way to within about six miles of the junction, there to be completely baffled and turned back. ”