Chapter XX: The Arkansas Valley

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of
corn or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only
one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more
essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians
put together.--JONATHAN SWIFT.

The interest of the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas, though it culminates between the narrow walls of Royal Gorge, by no means ceases there. For many miles after, immense piles of rocks are heaped on each side, great crags frown down, and the river comes tumbling to meet you down a series of green and white cataracts. The walls are highly colored, and the whole scene exceedingly interesting. Toward the western end there is a break in the gorge, through which fine pictures of the Sangre de Cristo peaks present themselves close by, and then the rocks are heaped up again into the grand defile of Brown's cañon, where one of our illustrations was made.

Just before entering Brown's cañon, a branch road can be seen running off to the northward. That is the short road up to Calumet, where the Colorado Coal and Iron Company have iron mines of great value and in constant operation, for the ore is suitable for the making of Bessemer steel. These mines are open, quarry-like excavations, and the ore is therefore more easily handled than is usual. The grade on this branch, four hundred and six feet to the mile, is said to be the heaviest in the world where no cog-wheels are used. Only a few empty cars can be hauled up; and the difficulty is almost as great in descending, for it requires at least four cars, dragging with hard-set brakes, to hold an engine under control in going down. Marble and lumber in great quantities are also shipped down this little branch from the neighborhood of Calumet.

Passing some hot mineral springs, where are bathing arrangements, near the head of Brown's cañon, the train runs into the busy yard at Salida. This town was formerly South Arkansas, and I surprise the Madame by telling her that no longer ago than 1874, I pitched a tent where it now stands upon ground which had no vestige of civilization near it. Salida is a Spanish word, meaning a junction, and is applicable in two ways. It is at the confluence of the Arkansas with its large branch from the south, and it is the junction of the northern system of railway which we are following to Leadville and beyond, with the main line going west from here to Utah and California. It is therefore a lively railway center,--the end of divisions, the headquarters of round-houses, repairing shops, etc. Besides, it is rapidly growing, and increasing in importance as a busy mercantile center.

The valley of the Arkansas north of Salida, we see as we go on again, nourishes much agriculture, which continues to be seen--at least in the shape of hay ranches--as far as Riverside, the first station above Buena Vista. There Mr. Leonhardy has seven miles, more or less, under cultivation, and carries on a highly profitable farm. His extensive hay-barns are close to the track, and his horse-mowers show how scientifically it is cut. All the cereals are grown there, or at any rate have been grown; but wheat, though it becomes very plump and hard, has so precariously brief a season in which to mature, that it is not profitable, and hence no great amount is now planted. Of oats, rye and barley, however, hundreds of acres are cut annually, yielding in each case above the average number of bushels to the acre of eastern crops. I have seen some very fine samples of all these grains, which, of course, find abundant sale close at home, and hence are unheralded outside.

Then in the way of "roots," large plantations are made, and fine results brought about. Potatoes are particularly successful, one hundred and fifty bushels, or about fifteen thousand pounds weight, being the ordinary crop expected to the acre; turnips, beets, onions, etc., doing equally well in their way. The only things that can not be produced here, in fact, are such tender plants as melons, squashes, cucumbers, and the like. Even these may often be brought to maturity if their beginnings are nurtured under glass, but as a matter of regular gardening, they are not considered profitable.

Apart from this locality not much farming is visible, except close to Salida, where the road runs over the top of a dry mesa,--one of the terraces into which the former river has cut the glacial gravels of the valley-margin. Down in the lower "bottoms," where irrigation is very easy, one sees some miles of continuous fields cultivated in hay and grain. The close clusters of ranch-buildings, the stacks of straw, the yellow and green squares of stubble and the black threads of the dividing fences, with the diminutive dots of men moving to and fro with wagons, recall the prairie states. We also note the number of cattle seen all along the lower part of the valley,--and the cheapness and excellence of the beef we bought in all this part of Colorado.

Buena Vista is a town of considerable size and seeming solidity, which is prettily placed among the cottonwoods. These give a name to the stream not only, but to the expansion of the valley, which is known as Cottonwood park. The supply point not only for the Chalk Creek mines on Mt. Princeton, but for the remoter settlements on the other side of the range, Buena Vista seems to have a good chance for long life. One sees here the big, trailed wagons in all their glory, and the voice of the burro is heard in the land, complaining of his burdens and bewailing the lost friskiness of his unfettered youth.

Below Granite we pass through almost a cañon. The inclined and splintered rocks of reddish granite and gneiss rise very high at certain points on the eastern bank of the river, and the water itself is in continual ebullition among large bowlders, falling meanwhile at such a grade that the track cannot follow it, but must needs rise away above it. The scene here is one of extreme desolation. There is nothing _pretty_ in the whole landscape short of the small snow-banks that remind us of scattered sheep browsing on the crest of the range. Almost the only relief to the sterility--sterile not only in respect to pleasing vegetation, but in any comfortable suggestiveness--is when the sun shines suddenly straight down some rift-like gulch in the precipitous walls, transmuting what seemed a crystal-clear atmosphere into a golden dust finer than any flakes that ever came out of the gravels.

Now we are rapidly approaching Granite, a town twenty-five years old; and presently we catch sight of the great gold placers that formerly made the fame of this locality. They are still operated in a quiet, scientific method, and one large flume crosses the track at a height of fully fifty feet. The western bank has been ploughed up by water and turned topsy-turvy over a long area, exposing its innermost pebbles and bowlders, all well cleaned and white by their second scrubbing.[A]

[A] If the reader cares to know more about the lively times that used
to occur now and then in Granite, years ago, he can find some
incidents in my "Knocking 'Round the Rockies" (New York, Harper &
Brothers, 1882), on page 70 and following.

Three miles west of Granite lie the charming "Twin Lakes," but we are frustrated in our attempt to reach them on the only day we wished to spare for that purpose.

During all the summer, carriages from the lake meet passenger trains at Twin Lakes station, four miles above Granite, in order to carry visitors to this lake.

"Of all the health and pleasure resorts of the upper Arkansas Valley," I have read, "the Twin Lakes are perhaps the most noted. Water is nowhere too plentiful in Colorado, the largest rivers being usually narrow and rapid streams, that seldom form an important feature in the extended landscapes, and these lakes are all the more prized for constituting an exception. They are fourteen miles south of Leadville. The larger of the two lakes is two and one-half miles in length by one and one-half in width, and the other about half that size. The greatest depth is seventy-five feet. These lakes possess peculiar merits as a place of resort. Lying at an altitude of 9,357 feet,--over one and three-fourths miles,--at the mouth of a cañon, in a little nook, surrounded by lofty mountains, from whose never-failing snows their waters are fed, their seclusion invites the tired denizens of dusty cities to fly from debilitating heat and the turmoil of traffic, to a quiet haven where Jack Frost makes himself at home in July and August. On the lakes are numerous sail and row boats, and fishing tackle can always be obtained. Both lakes are well stocked with fish, and the neighboring streams also abound in mountain trout. Surrounding the lakes are large forests of pine, that add their characteristic odor to the air. The nearest mountains, whose forms are reflected in the placid waters, are Mount Elbert, 14,351 feet in height, La Plata, 14,311,--each higher than Pike's Peak,--Lake Mountain, and the Twin Peaks. Right royal neighbors are these. And across the narrow Arkansas valley rises Mount Sheridan, far above timber-line, flanked by the hoary summits of the Park range. The hotel and boarding-house accommodations are good, and will be rapidly extended. During the summer months there is an almost constant round of church and society picnics and private pleasure parties coming down to the lakes from Leadville, so that nearly every day brings a fresh influx of visitors, enlivening the resort, and dispelling all tendency to monotony.

"Twin Lakes is the highest of all the popular Rocky Mountain resorts, and furnishes an unfailing antidote for hot weather. Even in midsummer flannels are necessary articles of apparel, and thick woolen blankets are indispensable at night."

There are mines in the mountains back of Twin Lakes, and gradually a permanent settlement is growing up there, which is reached all the year round by stage from Leadville. This stage passes over Hunter's pass, and carries the mail to some important camps on the other side of the range,--Independence, Highland, et cetera. The main point of interest, I hear, is at Independence, which is said to be much such a camp as Kokomo, and standing at a greater altitude than even Leadville. The veins are true fissures filled with quartz containing free gold, iron and copper pyrites. The Farwell Mining company are the chief operators, and have recently erected what has been pronounced the finest stamp-mill in Colorado. It consists of thirty stamps, and cost $2.87-1/2 cents a hundred pounds for carriage from the railway to its site. This feat required the building and repair of roads to an extent that has been of immense benefit to the public. Besides this mill there is an old one of twenty stamps, and additions are to be made. A few miles further on, is the flourishing camp of Aspen, standing in a beautiful valley 7,500 feet above the sea. This is the locality of the Smuggler mine owned by Mackay and other Eastern capitalists. It is described as "a large lead of fine-grained galena, carrying native silver in wire form." Aspen is a good type of the "magic" town, where lots increase a thousand per cent. in value in six months.

This brings us to Malta, a station in the midst of a wide waste of denuded gravel, where we turn up California gulch to Leadville, bidding good-bye, for a little, to the white crests of the Saguache range,--Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Antlers and others that have been our constant companions. Turn where we will in this region, we can not long escape the sight of snow-smothered peaks. It is impossible to get away from them. This river-valley is a great basin surrounded on all sides by mountains that hasten to bid winter welcome before summer has thought of saying farewell to the valleys. As in that wonderful story, wherein we are constantly reminded that "the villain still pursued her," so here the mountains unceasingly confront us, and every changing mood can be studied by our eager eyes.

Malta seems to be a great place for charcoal, many groups of the white conical ovens being visible on the blackened and denuded side-hills.

Charcoal is an extremely important element in smelting operations, and enormous quantities are made, to the destruction of all the forests, so that the burners have to go farther and farther with their ovens, or else, as most of them are doing, have wood brought from increasing distances. A favorite method is to build a flume and float the timber, in short pieces, down from the higher woods; or else, simply to make a trough, laying it partly on the ground and partly on trestles, so as to secure proper levelness. It is great fun to watch them shuteing wood or ties (for the "tie-punchers" adopt the same expedient) down the slope of the high, steep hills. Little choice is made in the kind of wood burned.

The effect of these charcoal makers is very plain as we climb up the devious track through the hills of California gulch to Leadville.

The trees were cut which once stood dense over the whole of the gulch, and then every vestige of brushwood, grass,--everything was burned away, so that the ash-strewn soil and the charred stumps alone remain of the former verdancy. Into this oddly desolate tract the town has pushed itself without altering it much for the better. The outer suburbs of a town are seldom pleasing, and Leadville is no exception. The burned stumps, thick as the original forest, give a general black aspect to the whole scene. Fences are few, and amount to the merest pretense of enclosures, more than an unbarked pole or two, strung along the boundary, being rare. The streets are mere spaces, for there is no difference at all between the outside and the inside of the fence. The public highway finds itself as best it can among the stumps, and the householder rarely bothers himself to pull one out of his front yard.

This is not mere rough neglect, and, in the center of town, of course does not exist. It shows that the citizens, as a rule, do not care to make fine their surroundings, because they have not come to stay. They are a generation of pilgrims, even though, under endless protest, they may linger, or be held here, all their lives, and be buried in the stony little graveyard, under the yellow fumes of the smelters down the creek, at the last. Inside, though, the houses glow with pretty things and abound in luxuries. Here, men combat the outward roughness and resolve that they will be comfortable in compensation for the inclemency outside.

And so we come to Leadville, the "Camp of the Carbonates."