MILES.Ruxton Creek to Iron Springs and Hotel1Ute Pass to Rainbow Falls and Grand Cavern1½Red Cañon3Crystal Park3Garden of the Gods3Glen Eyrie5Monument Park by trail7½Monument Park by carriage9Seven Lakes by horse trail9Seven Lakes by carriage road12North Cheyenne Cañon8½South Cheyenne Cañon9Summit of Pike's Peak12
In addition to these well-known localities there are scores of cañons, caves, waterfalls, and charming nooks which the sojourner for health or pleasure can seek out for himself.
The Garden of the Gods has been described and photographed more than any other place of scenic interest in Colorado, but words or pictures fail to give even the faintest idea of its wealth of gorgeous color, or of the noble view which its gateway frames. The portals of the gateway spring from the level plain to a height of 330 feet, and glow with the most brilliant coloring of red. There is an outer parapet of pure white, and there are inner columns of varied hues, the whole suggesting the ruins of a vast temple, once the receptacle of the sacred shrine of the long-buried gods. Within the garden the rocks assume strange mimetic forms, and the imagination of the spectator is kept busy discovering resemblances to beasts or birds, of men and women, and of strange freaks in architecture.
Glen Eyrie is situated at the entrance to Queen's Cañon, and is a wild and romantic retreat, in which is built the summer residence of a gentleman of wealth, whose permanent home is now in the East. Within the glen, which is made sylvan by thickly growing nativeshrubbery, covered with wild clematis, are a great confusion of enormous pillars of exquisite, tinted pink sandstone.
Cathedral Rock and the Major Domo, which have gained a world-wide fame through pictures and descriptions, are to be found in Glen Eyrie, as are also "The Sisters," "Vulcan's Anvil," and "Melrose Abbey." These are all grand and impressive shapes of stone glowing with the most brilliant hues of red and pink, and cream and white, and umber.
Blair Athol is about a mile north of Glen Eyrie, and resembles the latter, with the exception of shrubbery and water. No residence has been erected here, as the difficulty of obtaining water has been too great to be successfully overcome. The quaint forms of rock and their brilliant color, together with the frequent shade of evergreen trees, make this an interesting and attractive spot.
Bear Creek Cañon is reached by taking the road to Colorado Springs and turning to the right just before reaching Colorado City. This is a beautiful drive of five miles, at the end of which the Government trail to Pike's Peak carries the horseman and footman to the summit. The cañon is a picturesque wooded glen, with a dashing torrent and abounding in wild flowers. Bears are still frequently seen here, but they shrink modestly from forcing their attention upon strangers, and retire precipitately when made aware of the vicinity of callers.
The Cheyenne Cañons are favorite resorts for picnic and pleasure parties. Both these cañons give one a good idea of the gorges which abound in the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains. They are deep gashes in the heart of Cheyenne Mountain, and display grand faces of magnificent red granite hundreds of feet in height. The Douglas spruce, the Rocky Mountain pine, the white spruce, andthat most lovely tree of all, thePicea grandis, grow in great numbers in both cañons, while the Virginia creeper, two species of clematis (mauve and white), and other climbers add grace and charm to the scene. A stairway at the Seven Falls in South Cañon leads to the last resting place of "H. H." (Helen Hunt Jackson), who selected this spot for her grave. The stream in North Cheyenne Cañon is larger than that in the southern gorge, but the latter forms a magnificent cascade, descending 500 feet in seven leaps.
Seven Falls is the name given to the cascade referred to above, and it is well worthy the admiration its beauty always excites.
The Cheyenne Mountain toll-road is well worth seeing. It ascends the mountains about one-half mile south of the entrance to South Cheyenne Cañon, winding, with easy grades, through very fine scenery, and at times affording glimpses down in the cañon below.
The Seven Lakes are reached by means of the last described road. The lakes are picturesque, and such sheets of water usually are among the mountains, and there is a hotel for the accommodation of visitors.
"My Garden" is a very favorite resort, discovered by "H. H.," the authoress and poet. Take the Cheyenne road one and one-half miles from Colorado Springs, then follow due south past Broad Moor Dairy Farm half a mile, then through a gate across the "Big Hollow," and "My Garden" is reached, a lovely pine grove crowning the plateau, with an exquisite view of the range behind it.
Monument Park, Edgerton Station, sixty-seven miles south from Denver and eight miles northward from Colorado Springs and Manitou, is a pleasant day's excursion. "The Pines" is a comfortable hotel, situated in the center of the park, one-half mile from the depot, commandinga fine view of Pike's Peak and Cheyenne Mountain Range; is open at all times for the accommodation of guests, and can furnish saddle-horses and carriages on premises. This park is chiefly remarkable for its very fantastic forms, in which time and the action of air and water have worn the cream-colored sandstone rocks which the valleys have exposed, forming grotesque groups of figures, some of them resembling human beings, viz.: Dutch Wedding, Quaker Meeting, Lone Sentinel, Dutch Parliament, Vulcan's Anvil and Workshop, Romeo and Juliet, Necropolis, or Silent City, The Duchess, Mother Judy, and Colonnade. All of these, and many others too numerous to mention, are within easy walking distance of "The Pines."
A very pleasant drive can be taken to Templeton's Gap, which is situated just north of Austin's Bluffs, and is a sharp depression in the surrounding hills, characterized by quaint monumental forms of rock.
Ute Pass leads westward from Manitou over the range into South Park. It is now a wagon road cut in many places from the face of the cliff, the rocks towering thousands of feet above it on one side and on the other presenting a sheer descent of nearly as many feet down to where the fountain brawls along over its rugged channel. The pass was formerly used as a pony trail by the Ute Indians in their descent to the plains and in their visits to the "Big Medicine" of the healing springs—the name given Manitou by the aborigines. No pleasanter ride or drive can be taken than up Ute Pass. The scenery is grand and the view one of great loveliness.
Rainbow Falls are only a mile and a half from Manitou up the Pass, and are well worthy of a visit. They are the most accessible and the most beautiful on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, and are visited by thousands of tourists every season.
The Great Manitou Caverns have added an attractive feature to the diversified wonders of nature surrounding Manitou Springs. The caverns are located one and a half miles from Manitou Springs. They were discovered by their present owner, Mr. George W. Snider, in the year 1881, but were only opened to the public in 1885.
The cog-wheel railroad to the summit of Pike's Peak, which was completed and put in operation in July, 1891, is the most novel railway in the world. When it reaches its objective point above the clouds, at a height of 14,147 feet above sea-level, it renders almost insignificant by comparison the famous cog-way up Mount Washington and the incline railway up the Rhigi in Switzerland. From its station in Manitou, just above the Iron Springs, to the station on the summit of Pike's Peak, the Manitou & Pike's Peak Railway is just eight and three-quarters miles in length. The cost of construction of the road was a half million dollars. While it could have been built for many thousands of dollars less by putting in wooden bridges and trestles, light ties and light rails, those in charge of the building of the road would not consent to the use of any flimsy material for the sake of saving any sum of money—a substantial road that would insure absolute safety being economical, as well as a guarantee for putting the road from the start on a paying basis. The road-bed is solid and from fifteen to twenty feet wide, leaving fully five feet on each side of the cars. The culverts are solid masonry; the four short bridges are of iron girders resting on first-class masonry. There are an extra number of ties, which are extra heavy and extra long. The rails are standard "T" rails, with a double cog rail in the center. This cog rail weighs 110 tons to the mile, which is unusually heavy. The rail is built in sections, each being put into a lathe and the teeth cut. The contract requires that each toothshall be within the fifteenth part of an inch of the size specified. At intervals of every 200 feet the track is anchored to solid masonry to prevent any possibility of the track slipping from its bed. The cars are designed to hang low, within eighteen inches of the rails. Each engine built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works has three cog and pinion appliances, which can be worked together or independently. In each cog appliance is a double set of pinion brakes that work in the cog, either one of which when used can stop the engine in ten inches, going either way, on any grade and at the maximum speed, eight miles an hour. The cars are not tilted, but the seats are arranged so as to give the passenger a level sitting. The engine pushes the cars instead of drawing them, which is of great advantage. And such is Denver to-day, and its attractive surroundings, changed from a border wilderness to civilization and grandeur within thirty years.
It may not be amiss just here, while writing of this "Land of the Setting Sun," its changes from savagery to civilization, to refer to one who has done so much to aid those who followed the Star of Empire toward the Rocky Mountains.
I refer to Col. W. F. Cody, known in almost every hamlet of the world as Buffalo Bill, one upon whom the seal of manhood has been set as upon few others, who has risen by the force of his own gigantic will, his undaunted courage, ambition, and genius, to be honored among the rulers of kingdoms, as well as by his own people.
Nearly forty years ago, in Kansas, a handsome, wiry little lad came to me, accompanied by his good mother, and said that he had her permission to take a position under me as a messenger boy.
I gave him the place, though it was one of peril, carrying dispatches between our wagon-trains upon the march across the plains, and little did I then suspect that I was just starting out in life one who was destined to win fame and fortune.
Then it was simply "Little Billy Cody," the messenger, and from his first year in my service he began to make his mark, and lay the foundation of his future greatness.
Next it became "Wild Will," the pony express rider of the overland, and as such he faced many dangers, and overcame many obstacles which would have crushed a less strong nature and brave heart.
Then it became "Bill Cody, the Wagonmaster," then overland stage driver, and from that to guide across the plains, until he drifted into his natural calling as a Government scout.
"Buffalo Bill, the Scout and Indian Fighter," was known from north to south, from east to west, for his skill, energy, and daring as a ranger of mountain and plain.
With the inborn gift of a perfect borderman, Buffalo Bill led armies across trackless mountains and plains, through deserts of death, and to the farthest retreats of the cruel redskins who were making war upon the settlers.
Buffalo Bill has never sought the reputation of being a "man killer."
He has shunned difficulties of a personal nature, yet never backed down in the face of death in the discharge of duty.
Brought face to face with the worst elements of the frontier, he never sought the title of hero at the expense of other lives and suffering.
An Indian fighter, he was yet the friend of the redskin in many ways, and to-day there is not a man more respected among all the fighting tribes than Buffalo Bill, though he is feared as well.
In his delineation of Wild West life before the vast audiences he has appeared to in this country and Europe, he has been instrumental in educating the Indians to feel that it would be madness for them to continue the struggle against the innumerable whites, and to teach them that peace and happiness could come to them if they would give up the war-path and the barbarism of the past, and seek for themselves homes amid civilized scenes and associations.
Buffalo Bill is therefore a great teacher among his red friends, and he has done more good than any man I know who has lived among them.
Courtly by nature, generous to a fault, big-hearted and brainy, full of gratitude to those whom he feels indebted to, he has won his way in the world and stands to-day as truly one of Nature's noblemen.
One of the strongest characteristics of Buffalo Bill, to my mind, was his love for his mother—a mother most worthy the devotion of such a son. His love and devotion to his sisters has also been marked throughout his lifetime.
When he first came to me he had to sign the pay-roll each month by making the sign of a cross, his mark. He drew a man's pay, and earned every dollar of it.
He always had his mother come to get his pay, and when one day he was told by the paymaster to come and "make his mark and get his money," his face flushed as he saw tears come into his mother's eyes and heard her low uttered words:
"Oh, Willie! if you would only learn to write, how happy I would be."
Educational advantages in those early days were crude in the extreme, and Little Billy's chances to acquire knowledge were few, but from that day, when he saw the tears in his mother's eyes at his inability to write his name, he began to study hard and to learn to write; in fact his acquiring the art of penmanship got him into heaps of trouble, as "Will Cody," "Little Billy," "Billy the Boy Messenger," and "William Frederic Cody" were written with the burnt end of a stick upon tents, wagon-covers, and all tempting places, while he carved upon wagon-body, ox-yoke, and where he could find suitable wood for his pen-knife to cut into, the name he would one day make famous.
With such energy as this on his part, Billy Cody was not very long in learning to write his name upon the pay-roll instead of making his mark, though ever since, I may add, he has made his mark in the pages of history.
All through his life he was ever the devoted son and brother, and true as steel to his friends, for he has not been spoiled by the fame he has won, while to-day his firmest friends are the officers of the army with whom he has served through dangers and hardships untold, as proof of which he was freely given the indorsements of such men as Sherman, Sheridan, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Generals Carr, Merritt, Royal, and a host of others.
From the dawn of history to the present time, civilization has followed the valleys. From the Garden of Eden which was in the valley of the Euphrates to modern times the water courses have been the highways of civilization, and made the Tiber and the Thames, the Rhine and the Rhone famous in the annals of the world's progress. In our own country this fact has been especially illustrated. The valley of the Rio Grande del Norte was the pathway of the Spaniard in his march to the northward, and it is one of the curious facts of history that, before the Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth Rock, the adventurous cavaliers of Spain had penetrated the center of the continent and discovered the sources of the great river in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Colorado.
It was along the Connecticut and the Hudson, the Delaware and the Susquehanna, the Ohio and the Mississippi, that the pioneers of the republic pushed their way westward and planted the civilization which has enjoyed so substantial and prosperous a growth. And when the pioneer resumed his westward march to the Rocky Mountains, his trains lay along the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Platte, thus giving to the valley of the Platte an historic place in the records of the nation's advancement.
The Louisiana Purchase, within whose boundaries lay the great valley of the Platte and its tributaries, was completed in 1804, by President Thomas Jefferson. It was an act of statesmanship worthy of the man who had drafted the Declaration of Independence, and assured the youngrepublic a future little dreamed of by the men of that day, but which we have lived to realize. Two years later, in 1806, Lieut. Zebulon Pike received an order to explore the newly acquired national possessions, and to find the headwaters of the Platte River. In pursuance of the order, Lieutenant Pike marched up the Arkansas to the Fountaine Qui Bouille, discovered and ascended the great peak which bears his name, entering the South Park from the present site of Cañon City by the Current Creek route. Aside from his discovery of the headwaters of the Platte, Lieutenant Pike's expedition was more largely devoted to the Arkansas and the Rio Grande than to this valley.
The second expedition up the Platte Valley was ordered in 1819 by John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War for President James Monroe, and was under the command of Major Stephen S. Long, of the corps of topographical engineers. Leaving Pittsburg, Pa., in April, 1819, Major Long proceeded westward and established his camp near the present site of Council Bluffs, Iowa, to which was given the name of Engineer Cantonment. Thence on June 6, 1820, with a number of scientists and a small detail of regular troops, he marched toward the mountains. On June 30th the party sighted the magnificent range of the Rocky Mountains, a view of which burst upon them in the full glory of the morning light. On July 3d they passed, as Long's annals read, "the mouth of three large creeks, heading in the mountains and entering the Platte from the northwest." These were undoubtedly the Cache la Poudre, the Thompson, and the St. Vrain. On July 5th they camped on the present site of Fort Lupton, and on July 6th on the present site of Denver, at the mouth of Cherry Creek. Thence the party followed the valley to the Platte Cañon, and, proceeding southward along the base of the mountains, returned eastward along the Arkansas.
BUFFALO BILL'S FIRST SITUATION.
Twenty-two years later, in 1842, came Lieut. John C. Fremont, the famous pathfinder, who traversed the Blue toward the Platte, reaching the valley at Grand Island, a portion of the party going up the North Fork toward Fort Laramie, and the larger part marching up the South Fork to Fort St. Vrain, which had then been established a number of years, and had become a noted rendezvous for trappers, hunters, and plainsmen. The following year the intrepid explorer left St. Louis on his second expedition, traveling the valleys of the Kaw and the Republican, reaching the Platte at the mouth of Beaver Creek, and arriving at Fort St. Vrain on July 4, 1843. I quote the words of Lieutenant Fremont as prophetic of the future of the valley. "This post," he says, "was beginning to assume the appearance of a comfortable farm. Stock, hogs and cattle, were ranging about the prairie. There were different kinds of poultry and there was the wreck of a promising garden in which a considerable variety of vegetables had been in a flourishing condition, but had been almost entirely ruined by recent high water."
Between the dates of the expeditions of Long and Fremont three noted trading posts had been established along the Platte in the immediate vicinity of the spot on which we are now assembled. The first of these was Fort Vanquez, built by Louis Vanquez in 1832, at the mouth of Clear Creek, then known as Vanquez Fork of the Platte. The next was Fort Lupton, a portion of whose walls are still standing, and the third was Fort St. Vrain, built in 1840. These forts, as they were called, were trading posts at which a large traffic in skins and furs was conducted, and which became the headquarters of such famous frontiersmen as Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Jim Baker, Jim Beckwourth, and others, who in those days constituted the vedettes of the civilization of the country. I have not time to dwell upontheir exploits, but I note their names as indicating that we stand upon historic ground, and that here in this valley were planted the first germs of the prosperous growth which to-day enfolds it in every department of its social, industrial, and commercial life.
In 1847 the Platte Valley became the highway of the Mormons in their exodus from Illinois to Utah. Two years later its trails were broadened by the California pioneers en route to the shores of the Pacific to share in the golden discoveries of Sutter and his companions.
In 1857 came the expedition of Col. Albert Sidney Johnston marching to Utah to sustain the laws and authority of the United States.
But a greater movement was now organizing to traverse and possess the valley of the Platte. In the fullness of time the crisis of its destiny had arrived. The year of 1859 dawned upon a nation fast drifting into the vortex of a civil war. The irrepressible conflict which for half a century had been going on between free and slave labor was nearing the arbitrament of arms, and absorbed all men's minds to the exclusion of events which were happening on the distant frontier. In the summer of 1858 Green Russell and a party of adventurous prospectors had discovered gold in Cherry Creek, a tributary of the Platte. The news spread, and grew as it spread, until the people living along the Missouri, which was then the frontier of the Republic, became excited over the richness of the discoveries.
They were ripe for adventure, desperate almost in their determination to reëstablish the fortunes that had been wrecked by the financial panic of 1857, which had swept with disastrous effect along the entire borderland of the entire nation. In the spring of 1859 the march of the pioneers began. The Platte Valley was their grand pathway to the mountains, whose summits they greeted withexultant joy, and beneath whose protecting shadows they camped; here to make their homes, here to lay the foundations of the future State.
Thus in a little over half a century from the date of its purchase by the Federal Government, the Platte Valley had become the home of civilized man, and the work of its development begun. As gold was first discovered in this valley, so was quartz mining first begun on one of the tributaries in Gilpin County.
The first pioneer's cabin was erected in Denver; the first school-house was built at Boulder; the first church was consecrated at Denver; the first colony located at Greeley, and the first irrigating ditches taken out, all within the Platte Valley. As the valley had been the route of Major Long and other of the early explorers, so, following in the train of the pioneer, came first the pony express, then the stage-coach, then the locomotive and the Pullman car. And it is a fact which I believe has never yet been published, that the last stage-coach of the great overland line was dispatched from the town of Brighton to Denver, thus associating its name with an act, insignificant in itself, but far-reaching in its importance, when it is remembered that that act marked the end of our pioneer period and ushered in the new growth of the railroad era.
We stand to-day at the distance of three-fourths of a century from the date when the foot of the white man first trod the valley of the Platte. The names of Pike and Long are perpetuated by the two magnificent peaks which raise their summits to the clouds and stand as guardians of the plains below. Fremont lived to see his wildest dreams realized in the progress of the West, but whatever fame he may have achieved as a soldier and a statesman, his name will longest be remembered as the pathfinder of the Rocky Mountains. Wheat-fields now flourish where once stoodthe trading-posts of Vanquez and St. Vrain. The trails of the early explorers and of the pioneers of 1859 are almost obliterated, and grass is growing upon their once broad and beaten pathways. A happy, contented, prosperous people possess the land. A great line of railway now rolls the traffic of a continent along the valley where once the stage-coach and ox-trains of Russell, Majors & Waddell wended their slow and weary way. Thriving towns and villages and cities dot the plain, and reflect in the activity of their commercial life the industrial development by which they are surrounded.
In August, 1838, there appeared in the far West a newspaper published at Liberty, in Clay County, Missouri, the only newspaper within many miles, a notice which read as follows: "Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri, at Independence, August term, 1838." Then followed a description of lands now included in what is known as the "old town" of Kansas City. Then continues: "The above mentioned lands are situated in the county of Jackson, one and one-half miles below the mouth of the Kansas River, and five miles from the flourishing town of Westport. The situation is admirably calculated for a ferry across the Missouri River, and also one of the best steamboat landings on the river, and an excellent situation for a warehouse or town site. The terms of sale will be a credit of twelve months, the purchaser giving bond and approved security, with interest at the rate of 10 per cent from day of sale. All those wishing to invest capital advantageously in landed estate will do well to call upon Justice H. McGee, who is guardian for the heirs.
"James B. Davenport,"Peter Booth,"Elliott Johnson,"Commissioners."
The purchasers were William L. Sublette, John C. McCoy, William Gillis, Robert Campbell, and others, and the price paid for the entire tract, extending along the Missouri River from Broadway to Troost Avenue, containing 156 acres, was $4,220.
These gentlemen put their purchase into lots and blocks and called it "Kansas," but very little was done toward founding a city until some eight years later, when a new company was organized by H. M. Northup, who is still living; John C. McCoy, who died within the past few months; Fry P. McGee, Jacob Ragan, William Gillis, Robert Campbell, who have been dead but a few years respectively; Henry Jobe, W. B. Evans, and W. M. Chick, who have been dead much longer.
The first sale of lots was had in April, 1848, at which sale 150 lots were sold at an average price of $55.65 per lot.
The business of the city was confined almost entirely, for a number of years, to the levee, and was of the general character of that done in all river towns in their early history, pretty rough, pretty miscellaneous, and not altogether unmixed with "wet goods." Prohibition was an unknown element in social science, and the proportion of whisky consumed in the retail trade, compared with that of tea or coffee, was very like that described by Shakespeare in referring to Falstaff's "intolerable deal of sack to the half penny worth of bread." But very few men of those days remain nowadays; yet, as I have said, H. M. Northup still lives, vigorous and active. Dr. I. M. Ridge still continues to practice his profession, although less extensively than forty years ago. John Campbell traverses our streets, but has long since turned his well-known and faithful old sorrel mule out to grass. William Mulkey looks hale and hearty, but has discarded his former buckskin suit, though he still maintains a portion of his farm in the center of the city. Once in a long while one of the old French settlers of those early days, or even an old plainsman, ventures into the busy city and looks about him in a bewildered sort of way for a day or two, and then disappears again into thenearest wilderness or prairie, as being far more congenial to his tastes and habits of life. Not all of them, however, are of this character and disposition. It is but a few weeks since I met one of our most noted pioneer plainsmen and freighters across the prairies of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, in the earliest of the days I have been speaking of. In those times no name was better or more widely known than that of Seth E. Ward, the post trader at Laramie.
The descendants of most of the original owners of the "Town of Kansas," as it was first called, or "Westport Landing," as it was nicknamed later, still remain there, and are among its most prominent and respected citizens to-day.
Ten years later the "western fever" struck Ohio, and hundreds of young men of my acquaintance left there for Kansas and Nebraska. Omaha was a favorite objective point, and a town named Columbus was founded still farther west than Omaha, which was almost entirely colonized by people from Franklin County, Ohio. One of my friends, Dr. Theodore S. Case, also holding the rank of colonel, was studying medicine at the time in Columbus, Ohio, and resisted the fever until the following year, 1857, when, with a few books and a sheepskin authorizing him to write M. D. after his name, and to commit manslaughter without being called to account for it, started for the West. He knew nothing of the West, but had a general idea that he would go to St. Louis, or Keokuk, or Des Moines, or Omaha, or Council Bluffs, or possibly to "Carson City," Kan.; for a sharper, originally from Columbus, had been out West and came back with a lithographic map of a city by that name, fixed up very attractively, and with all the modern improvements of court house, city hall, depots, churches, colleges, steamboats, etc., and he bought some $15 worth of lots on one of the principal thoroughfares of the city not far fromthe depot. However, before he got as far west as St. Louis, he had learned the manners and tricks of such gentry, and did not go to "Carson City." By some accidental circumstance his attention was called particularly to the geographical location of Kansas City, and he at once determined to give it a look anyhow. There being no railroad nearer than Jefferson City at that time, he took the steamer Minnehaha at St. Louis, along with some other 299 fellows who were going "out west to grow up with the country," and four days afterward landed at Kansas City, May 1, 1857, almost thirty-five years ago.
The first view of Kansas City was by no means prepossessing, as it consisted principally of a line of shabby looking brick and frame warehouses, dry-goods stores, groceries, saloons, restaurants, etc., strung along the levee from Wyandotte Street to a little east of Walnut Street, the whole backed up and surmounted by a rugged and precipitous bluff, from 100 to 150 feet high, covered with old dead trees, brush, dog fennel and jimson weeds, with an occasional frame or log house scattered between and among them, and a few women and children, principally darkies, looking down at the boats.
To a young man, however, the levee, with its three or four steamers, huge piles of Mexican freight, prairie schooners, mules, greasers, Indians, negroes, mud clerks, roustabouts, Frenchmen, consignees, emigrants, old settlers, tenderfeet, hotel drummers, brass bands, omnibuses, etc., presented attractions not easily resisted. Notwithstanding all the tooting for hotels, there were really but two in the place, one on the levee, then known as the American Hotel, now remembered more familiarly as the "Gillis House," and the other the "Farmers' Hotel," on Grand Avenue, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets. The first was technically known as the "Free State Hotel," having beenbuilt by the New England Aid Emigrant Society, and the other as the "Pro-Slavery," or "Border Ruffian House," as it was or had been the headquarters of the pro-slavery party in the border war of 1854 and 1856 between the free state and pro-slavery contestants for the possession of political control of the Territory of Kansas.
LEE'S FERRY, ON THE COLORADO.
All travelers, however, who knew the ropes dodged both these hotels and took the omnibus for Westport, where two really good hotels were kept. To show the amount of travel toward Kansas at that time I may say that at the American Hotel alone there were 27,000 arrivals in the year 1856-57.
Such was Kansas City in early days and the experience there of a tenderfoot, but now an honored citizen of what is really to-day a great city.
Many an Eastern city has more dead people than living. Instead of the West being young, the East is growing old. The antiquities of the Eastern cemetery are often more interesting to the Westerner than the life and energy of the living city. How the old names of Concurrence, Patience, Charity, Eunice, Virtue, Experience, Prudence, Jerusha, Electra, Thankful, Narcissa, Mercy, Wealthy, Joanna, Mehitable, on the tombstones of the old Puritan grandmothers have been supplanted by the new names of these modern times! And the old-time grandfathers—well, their names suggest a scriptural chapter on genealogy. These old-time names, with quaint and queer epitaphs, on less pretentious monuments than the costly ones now erected, make an interesting study, for the ancient dates and names show that the cemetery has a history from the earliest settlement. The ancestral bones from the Mayflower down to the present have been saved. It is true that the great Western cities now have costly, beautiful, and often magnificent monuments for the dead, for the modern cemetery is becoming aristocratic.
But for the reason it might be considered almost a sacrilege, the model of a typical New England graveyard, with its odd names and quaint epitaphs, would be an interesting historical study at the World's Fair. In fact it would be as much of a curiosity to millions of people in the West as Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show was in the East.
In all the cities of the West there are more live peoplethan dead ones, which is not always true of the East, where the cemetery population is often larger. With the exception of some of the old Spanish mission cemeteries, those of the West are all new, unless one would wish to explore the ancient homes of the mound-builders and cliff-dwellers. A white man's graveyard is a new thing for the West. There are many thousands among the 17,000,000 people west of the Mississippi River who can tell of the days when Kansas City, Omaha, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake, Galveston, Dallas, Helena, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle hardly had a cemetery. Even St. Louis and New Orleans have been American cities less than a century.
But during all this time many millions have been added to the silent cities of the dead in the East, and the older the cemetery the more there is to it that is new to a Western tourist. One born in the West, on making his first trip to the East, finds almost as much of interest in a New England burial-ground, and often views it with as little reverence as does the Bostonian in gazing upon the mummies and antiquities of Egypt.
It is interesting to contrast the frontier funeral and burial-ground in the West with that of the East. The cemetery, the necessary but last adjunct to the organization of a civilized community, follows in the wake of immigration and empire. No monuments mark the last resting-place of those buried in the first five great cemeteries in the far West. They are in the region of nameless and unknown graves.
Those five historic cemeteries, where thousands from the East and South died and fill unknown graves, are the Missouri River, and the Santa Fé, Oregon, California, and Pike's Peak trails. The trans-Alleghany, and later the trans-Mississippi pioneers, followed, in the main, the water-courses. There was no prairie-farming, and hence theterm, "backwoodsman." It was a kind of a Yankee trick in the West, in later years, to leave the forests and begin plowing the prairies, and save the time that had been hitherto used in log-rolling and clearing the river-bottoms for agriculture. The early trappers, hunters, and fur dealers followed up the Missouri River and its tributaries. Only with great difficulty could a corpse be concealed from wolves and coyotes, the latter animal always having been known as the hyena of the plains country. Hence many an old hunter, when far from the borderland of civilization, has buried his "pard" in the Missouri River! Landsmen and plainsmen with a seaman's burial—a watery grave! The body wrapped in a blanket—when the blanket could be spared—and tied to rocks and boulders, was lowered from the drifting canoe into the "Big Muddy," as that river is commonly known in the West. Many an old hunter and trapper has been buried in the mighty rushing waters of the great Western river, even as the faithful followers of De Soto lowered his remains into the bosom of the Mississippi. When it was necessary or convenient to bury the dead on land, the greatest precaution was taken to protect the body from wolves and coyotes, which were especially dangerous and ravenous when off of the trail of the buffalo. Rocks and large pieces of timber were placed on the newly made grave, but often these hyenas of the plains could be seen scratching and growling at this debris before the comrades of the dead man were out of sight. With these facts so well known, it is not strange that many in those early days preferred a burial in the rivers to that of the land. It seems almost paradoxical to thus find in the old trapper some of the instincts and traditions of the sailor. Far out on the plains cactus was often put in the grave, just over the corpse, as a protection against the wolves and coyotes.
The earlier expeditions starting from St. Louis went up the Mississippi a few miles, to the mouth of the Missouri River, and then followed the latter stream. For some time the old Boone's Lick country, now known as Howard County, Mo., and Old Franklin, was the frontier commercial head.
The town of Old Franklin, where was the original terminus of the old Santa Fé trail, when Kit Carson was only an apprentice to a saddler and harness-maker, is now the bottom of the Missouri River, for there a current of seven miles an hour has cut away the old town site.
But the pioneers became bolder. Instead of following the river they began to venture out from St. Louis overland, about the time of the old Boone's Lick settlement. It was considered a brave and hazardous journey to start from St. Louis overland in those days, for it was a village town, and all of the country to the west was a wilderness. It was about the year 1808 that the Workman and Spencer party started from St. Louis, and far out on the plains, before reaching the Rocky Mountains, one of the party sickened and died.
The Indians rendered what assistance they could in bringing herbs and such crude medicines as they used for fevers. The poor fellow died, and they dug for him a grave, which was among the first, if not the first, burial of a white man on the great plains of the West.
It was a novel sight for the Indians to see the hunters and trappers wrap up their dead comrade in a blanket, and put the body into a deep hole they had dug. They piled up brush and what heavy things they could find, and placed on the grave, carved his name in rude letters, and went on their way. But they had hardly resumed their journey before the wolves began to dig at the grave.
Were it not foreign to the purpose of this article, it would be interesting to relate at some length the fate of this expedition. The most of the party were slain in battleswith the Indians, and Workman and Spencer are reported to have gone through the grand cañons of the Colorado River to California in 1809, but that remarkable feat is discredited by some, leaving honors easier with Major Powell, whose expedition through these cañons was in more modern times.
This lonely and desolate grave dug by the Workman and Spencer party is supposed to have been somewhere in what is now Kansas or Nebraska. It was the beginning of making graves on the plains and in the mountains, but time, wind, rain, and sand made them unknown.
Many thousands perished on the old-time trails to Santa Fé, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Coast. Exposure, sickness, thirst, starvation, and massacre were the dangers the immigrants had to face. Many of their graves were marked with slabs, but the inscription was soon effaced. These graves are as unknown in the great ocean of plain, prairie, and mountain as though the pioneer dead had been buried at sea.
The most fatal days was when the cholera raged on the Western trails. Sometimes an entire train would be stricken and the captain would be compelled to corral the wagons until aid could be obtained from other caravans on the desert, then so called, or the teamsters recovered to continue the journey. Women sometimes helped to dig the graves and assisted in burying the dead, and have then taken the dead teamster's place at the wagon, driving the oxen until men could be employed.
With the opening of the Western trails for wagons, a larger number were buried in boxes made from rude pieces of lumber, or sometimes a part of the sideboard of the wagon was utilized for that purpose. The earlier expeditions were on horseback, and hence at that time the best that could be done would be to roll the body in a blanket. Only those in the East who have seen a burial at sea,although they may never have been on the plains, can realize the sadness and desolation of those who left their friends in the nameless graves of the old-time American desert. Many of the babies lived that were born on the California and Oregon trails, but the saddest of all was when the pioneer mother and babe were added to the thousands of nameless graves. The death-couch was a pile of straw and a few blankets in an old freight wagon. If the angels ever hover over the dying, there never would have been a more appropriate place for their ministrations. Nameless graves! Unknown! Only the drifting sands and the ceaseless flow of the mighty Western rivers know the place of their nameless dead. These are the famous cemeteries of the far West. There are no granite shafts or beautiful emblems carved in marble. Heroic men and women! They died unknown to fame and honor, but they gave their lives that a new civilization and a new empire might be born in the far West. The brave men, North and South, who fell in battle, have their graves marked "unknown" when they could not be identified, but no one knows where sleep the thousands who died on these trails. Even a slab to the "unknown" could not be placed, for who knows the grave? Farm-houses, fertile fields, cities and towns, and the rushing railway car now mark the spot. The path of civilization and the rapid building of empire in the West is their only living monument.
During the cholera days there was a heavy loss of life on the Western steamboats. On the Missouri River some of the old boats had a burial crew. At night-time, when the passengers were hardly aware of what was going on, the boat would stop near a sand-bar. The bodies of those who had died during the day were taken to the sand-bar, where they were quickly buried. What would have been the use of putting up even a pine board, for the rising waters would soon have washed it away?
But this is not simply Western history. It is a part of the history of the North and the South, for those who came never to return were from those sections. In many an Eastern and Southern home it is as unknown to them as to the people of the West where sleep their dead on those old trails of the Western empire.
The emigrants and gold-seekers were population in transit. Their burial-places were as fleeting. With the building of new towns and cities were established cemeteries, but there still continued to be the thousands of unknown graves. A father, brother, husband, or son dies away from home. His name may not have been known, or if it was, the pencil-marks on the pine board soon lost their tracing in the weather-beaten changes that time brings. How often in my own experience in the mining camps I have seen men die far away from the tender and loving care of mother, wife, and sister. How terrible then is the struggle with death! The desire to live and to see the old home-faces again becomes a passion. In their delirium the passion becomes a reality. In their feverish dreams I have seen the dying miner in his cabin fancy he was home again. He talks to his wife, and with words of endearment tells her that he has found a fortune in the mines. I never knew of a miner who, in the delirium of death, when he was talking of the mines, but what he was rich. He had struck the precious metal. He tells his people at home about it, and many a poor fellow has seemingly died content, founded on the fancy that he had a mine and that his wife and family would always have plenty. Out of many instances I will relate but one.
A young man from Galena, Ill., eleven years ago, was taken sick and soon the fever was upon him. He grew rapidly worse, but bravely fought the pale reaper, for he wanted to see home again. But courage was not equal tothe task. The poor fellow had to die, and when the fever was at its height, he imagined that he was with his wife and baby. How tenderly he spoke to his young wife. He thought he had a rich mine, and told her where it was located. Then he imagined that his pillow was his baby, and that he was running his fingers through the child's curly hair, and would fondle the child up to his bosom. As I gazed on the bronze and weather-beaten faces of those present in the cabin, I saw tears come into the eyes of some when the dying man was murmuring child-love talk to the baby.
At the time of the great Leadville rush, many came who never returned. Unknown, many of them sleep in their last resting place—in the gulches, on the mountain sides, and under the shadows of the pine trees and granite peaks. Exposure and not being prepared to guard against the sudden changes of climate caused many to die of pneumonia and fevers. The writer went through a hard attack of typhoid pneumonia in one of the mining camps. After the worst was over and I was conscious again, one of the boys said to me, "Hello, pard, when you were in the fever you thought you had found enough gold mines to have bought out the Astors and Vanderbilts."
The greatest number of deaths for a while seemed to come from what was known as the "sawdust gang." In the wild excitement of a new mining camp boom, people rush in by the hundreds and thousands. Many have only enough money to get there, and are compelled to sleep on the sawdust floor of the saloons. Thus they caught cold, which turning into pneumonia often proved fatal. And the cowboys—how often on the long Texas-Montana drives they have dug a hasty grave and with the lassos lowered their dead pard into it.
The sporting and theatrical element always have a swellfuneral in the booming mining camps. The musicians from the dance-halls turn out, play dirges, and with due pomp and ceremony the funeral is conducted. The band returns from the new cemetery usually playing some lively air. The deceased has had a fine funeral and a good sendoff, and now to business. The dance-halls are crowded again, the music goes on, and men and women gamble, dance, and drink, unmindful of what has occurred.
Those were days of death, hell, and the grave. But what will not men undergo and dare for gold? They have braved anything for it in the past, and will in the future. Friendships and home ties are broken, and in the wild, mad rush for fortune, thousands of gold hunters have lost their lives, and fill nameless and unknown graves in the far West. There is something of romance in the death of a humble prospector searching for wealth on the mountain side. Whether rich or poor the old gold hunter often sees wealth ahead in his last hours. And, perchance, through the fading light on the mountain peaks, may he not see a trail leading to a city where the streets are golden? Who knows?
In 1849 and 1850, all along the trail of the overland freighters' route, were scattered unknown graves, clear into California, my dear father being one of the pioneers who died and filled an unknown grave. In the fall of 1850, on the east bank of the San Joaquin River, he died of cholera, and was buried, and his grave is unknown.
Another instance that I recall was of the death of one of the women of the party. She was buried at the South Pass, and they built a pen of cottonwood poles over the grave, placing her rocking chair to mark the spot, and which had her name carved on it.
My son Benjamin and I worked as contractors almost a year in 1868, upon the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, and we were present at the Promontory when the Union and Central Pacific roads met, and saw the gold and silver spikes driven into the California mahogany tie. It was regarded at that time as the greatest feat in railroad enterprise that had ever been accomplished in this or any other country, and it was a day that will be remembered during the lifetime of all that were present to witness this great iron link between the two oceans, Atlantic and Pacific. My calling as a freighter and overland stager having been deposed by the building of telegraph lines and the completion of a continental railway, I was compelled to look after a new industry, and as the silver mining at that time was just beginning to develop in Utah, I chose that as my next occupation, and my first experience in prospecting for silver mines was in Black Pine District north of Kelton some twenty-five miles, and I believe in the northwest corner of Utah. The district proved to be a failure, but leaving it, I met with Mr. R. C. Chambers, who, upon acquaintance, I found to be a very pleasant gentleman. I left the camp and went to Salt Lake City, and wrote Mr. Chambers that I thought mines in the mountains were a better show for prospectors than the Black Pine District, and in a few days he came to Salt Lake City, and we then engaged in prospecting in the American Fork and Cottonwood districts, which lay in the Wasatch Mountains,twenty-five or thirty miles southeast of Salt Lake City. We had some success, but were not able to find anything in the way of bonanzas. We were connected with each other more or less until 1872, when a gentleman came to me one day in July of that year and told me that he had a bond upon McHenry mine, in Park District, and that the mine was a remarkably rich one. He desired me to telegraph to Mr. George Hearst of San Francisco to come to Salt Lake City and go and see the mine. He said that he wanted me to send the message because he knew Mr. Hearst, with whom I had become acquainted through Mr. Chambers, would come for my telegram, when he would perhaps pay no attention to his. I sent the message, and received a reply forthwith that he would start at once for Salt Lake City. He arrived in due time, and we together went to the McHenry mine. Upon arrival we found it was not what was represented. We were thoroughly disappointed in our expectations. But while sitting, resting on a large boulder, a man by the name of Harmon Budden (who a day or two before had discovered and located the Ontario mine) approached us and spoke to Mr. Hearst. Mr. H. said he did not remember him, but Mr. Budden said he had previously met him in some mining camp in Nevada, and remarked that he had a prospect that he would like us to look at, only a short distance away. We went with him to the location. His shaft was then only about three feet deep, and when Mr. Hearst jumped down into the hole that he had dug, the surface of the ground was about as high as his waist, and he could jump in and out by putting his hands on the earth. I saw that he was very much interested in the appearance of the ore, which at that depth and at that time did not show more than a streak of eight or ten inches of mineral. I was at that time what they called a "tenderfoot," and had not been in the mining business longenough to be an expert, and to my inexperienced eye there was nothing unusual in the appearance of the ore, but Mr. Hearst did see something, and he determined then and there to purchase the Ontario prospect, and arranged when we returned to Salt Lake City with Mr. Chambers to keep a watch over its development, and purchase it when he saw an opportunity to do so. Mr. Budden and his associates asked $5,000 for the prospect when we were there, but Mr. Hearst thought it might be bought for less, as it was nothing but a prospect. But as the development of the mine progressed they raised their price for it $5,000 every time they were asked the terms, until at last it was up to $30,000, when Mr. Chambers purchased it for Mr. Hearst and his associates in San Francisco, Messrs. Tebis and Haggin. Mr. R. C. Chambers was made superintendent of the mine, and has remained its manager from that period until the present, he being one of the stockholders, as well as the superintendent. The mine has grown and developed until it is one of the great mines of the Rocky Mountain region, and under Mr. Chamber's supervision has been extremely successful and profitable to its owners. Its output, up to 1892, has been over $26,000,000, over $12,000,000 of which has been paid in dividends to the stockholders. This showed that Mr. Hearst was an expert, for he was really one of the best judges of minerals I ever met.
Utah has furnished the mining industry with some very remarkably rich silver mines, among them the Eureka, in Tintick District; the Eureka Centennial; the Chrisman Mammoth, a large gold and silver mine, and the Beck and Hornsilver, in the Frisco District; the Crescent; the Daly, in Park City District; and Ontario, as well as a great many smaller mines in the various parts of Utah. In Montana we have one of the greatest copper mines in America, called the Anaconda. It is the leading mine in Butte City,though they have many other remarkable mines in that district. Then there is the Granite Mountain, the Drumlummen, in Marysville District, also in Montana. But the greatest output from any mine yet discovered was the Comstock, in Virginia City, Nev. It has produced more millions of dollars than any other silver mine in the United States, its output being about one-third gold. The mining industry of the Rocky Mountain States and Territories is only in a fair way for development. The State of Colorado furnishes some very rich mining camps; also New Mexico and Arizona.
In Colorado there is the Central City and Black Hawk, and the adjacent mining district, from which there has been millions of dollars in gold extracted; also the Leadville, which has produced its millions in silver and lead; the Aspen District, with its Molly Gibson and other immensely rich mines. Then there is the Crede District, with its Amethyst and others, now producing large amounts of silver and some gold; the Silverton, where there are a great many rich mines being opened; the Ouray District and Cripple Creek, a newly discovered gold camp, with various others in that State too numerous to mention. Nearly all of the entire mining camps of the State produce both gold and silver in greater or less proportions, and with more or less galena or lead contained in the ores with the precious metals, and this great mining industry, when it is allowed to go on as it did before the demonetization of silver, will prove to be among the greatest and best paying industries in the whole Rocky Mountain region.
The Black Hills mining district of South Dakota is a very large mining camp, where millions and millions of dollars in gold and silver have been taken out, and where, no doubt, hundreds of millions more will be produced.
Idaho has also proven to be a very rich State in mineralwealth, both gold and silver, with many places where gold is washed out of the sands and gravel of the valleys.
Silver City, in New Mexico, has produced a great many millions in gold and silver, and at present seems to be a mining camp of great merit.
The mining industry of the mountains has, of course, been the means of influencing the building of numerous railroads through and into some of the most difficult mountain ranges; in fact wherever there has been a flourishing mining district the railway people have found a way, with capital behind them, to build a road to it, and it has now become apparent that a rich mining camp will have a railway connection sooner or later, no matter how difficult of access it may be. I think the men and the companies who have had the building of roads through and into the Rocky Mountains, and the interests of the country at heart, are deserving of great praise. No doubt, as many camps are discovered, it will be necessary to build many more roads than are now in existence, without which the mining industry could not be conducted with profit.
I may, in concluding this chapter on mining, speak of the great future there is for both Washington and Oregon as mineral States.
It is still within the memory of boys when it was almost universally agreed that nothing was more impossible than successful fruit raising in Colorado, with the exception of certain varieties of small fruits. It is easy to see how such a belief grew up, for even now in many places it requires ocular demonstrations to convince that, in parched valleys where frequently even cactus and sage-brush are but sparsely represented, fruit can be grown that in lustrous bloom and richness of flavor can not be surpassed in any country or climate. That such is the case, however, has already been so thoroughly proven, and the proof is being so persistently repeated year after year, and in widely separated localities, that to longer disbelieve or cavil is sufficient evidence either of ignorance or determination not to believe.
When travelers first crossed the prairies and followed the sandy or adobe river bottoms they could hardly be expected to think of the barren tracts as covered with orchards and gardens within a few years. Yet there were indices even then, and had not every mind been wholly absorbed in the search for gold, some one might have drawn a lesson from the laden plum and cherry trees that lined every foot-hill, cañon, and ravine, sometimes following the stream far out on the prairie. In the mountains, too, were raspberry patches, sometimes covering thousands of acres and yielding almost incalculable quantities of luscious fruit that, having no more appreciative pickers than bears and birds, annually decayed among the rocks and fallen logs.
There were, and still are, countless numbers of huckleberries, and in every part of the mountains grow more or less wild strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, thimbleberries, huckleberries, and numerous varieties of cherries, plums, and nuts. Considering these things it would not have required a great stretch of imagination of some old fruit man from the East to have foreseen something of the possibilities now beginning to be almost phenomenally realized in every part of the State.
A history of horticulture in the Centennial State has not yet been written, and it is impossible to say when and where the first domestic fruit was grown, or to whom is due the honor of having taken the initial step in the industry that from its rapid development and the enthusiasm already enlisted bids fair to outstrip all other pursuits in the State. In rapidity the growth has been much like that of our magic capital city, and as fruit is one of the things with which a luxury-loving people will not dispense, it may fairly be predicted that the infant industry, without any protection or coddling, will keep pace with the State and city.
It is not difficult to find good reasons for believing that its progress will not only exceed that of any other industry in the State, but that it will be out of proportion to that of the State itself. Irrigating is an expensive process, and whatever crop will bring the greatest return for the least outlay in that direction is the one to which the energy of the Colorado people should logically be directed. Not only can fruit be raised with much less water than any other crop, but a good yield in a single year after the trees are fairly well developed will reimburse the purchase price of the land and the other expenses, besides leaving a handsome profit.
If any one argues that only the southern half of the State can be relied upon for fruit, a visit to Larimer Countywill promptly and effectually convince him of his error. If he believes only in the western slope, let him follow the Arkansas River from several miles above Salida to where it enters Kansas, or the Platte from the foot-hills to Nebraska, examining the embryo orchards that enrich nearly every farm on his journey.
It is readily conceded that certain locations are, by nature, better adapted than others to certain kinds of fruits. To fit the varieties to the localities most suitable to their respective natures requires years of experiment. The fruit industry of Colorado is now in that experimental stage. To conduct the experiment so as to secure the best results, men of skill, long experience, and indomitable energy are necessary. Such men do not at present average one to the county. This fact does not reflect discredit on the men who are growing fruit. No one could realize the truth more fully than they do themselves. Hundreds of them who are succeeding with orchards scarcely knew one tree from another until they began putting them out on their farms.
The fact that so much has been accomplished without the experience and skill so essential to success in every country is the strongest possible evidence that the natural elements are here in the right combination and ready to do their part, and more, to win for the Centennial State a greater distinction as a fruit producer than has for years been hers as the silver queen. Just as sure as the conditions of climate and soil remain as they are, will this new industry eventually hold first place in every respect. In the immediate vicinity of the capital city, where only a few years ago was nothing but barren prairie, there are now hundreds of acres in orchards and vineyards. Apples, pears, plums, cherries, and numerous varieties of grapes are grown in abundance, and with such success that thefruit acreage is annually increasing. Up and down the Platte, on Cherry Creek and Clear Creek, on the prairie wherever water can be had for irrigating, farmers are putting out more and more in standard and small fruits. The never-failing demand for good fruit, to fill which California annually ships thousands of car-loads, is encouragement enough, for it insures good prices without the trouble and expense of shipment.
Westward the same conditions are manifest, and the limited area of tillable land shows a yearly increasing number of fruit trees. Here close to the foot-hills a single acre, mostly in cherry trees, has yielded a cash return of $1,000 from one year's crop just harvested. It is but a matter of a few years until many another acre will yield as much or more, either English Morello cherry trees, as in this case, or from other varieties of standard fruits.
Boulder County has long been known as the home of small fruits. Last year the county furnished 184,300 pounds of grapes and 304,810 quarts of berries. In a walk through the streets of Boulder more grapes of the finer varieties, such as Delaware, can be seen than in the market of any other city in the State, without excepting even Denver in the present year. Nor is the county's output confined to small fruits, for in last year's report were 25,622 bushels of apples, 102 of peaches, and 143 of pears, besides 4,745 quarts of plums and 1,905 of cherries.
The same condition prevails in all the counties in the northwest part of the State, though, with the exception of the Greeley neighborhood and the Platte Valley, the country is too recently settled to have made much progress in the culture of fruit. In the last few years the blight has been causing considerable discouragement in the Platte Valley and up the tributary streams in Larimer and Boulder counties. Like other diseases, it has struck hard in a few speciallyvaluable places, and in the riot of its march has caused more annoyance through fear than through actual ravages. It may thin out a few susceptible varieties of trees, but when it shall have run its course, the orchards that remain and those that will grow up in the future will be practically impregnable to its attacks. There are many varieties of fruits that will flourish just as well as apples and pears, and which the blight never touches. Men who are ready to drop the business when the fruit pest appears are not the ones who will win success. Many of the trees from which the finest apples are picked this year were badly blighted last year or the year before.