THE MINERAL SPRINGS.
THE MINERAL SPRINGS.
Do not imagine, however, that all the boot-tracks mark “the appalling impress of a number eleven.” The Madame tells me they dress as well at Manitou as at Saratoga; to me this seems a doubtful kind of compliment, but she intended it to cover the perfection of summer toilets. At Manitou, indeed, you do all you think it proper to do in the Green Mountains, or at White Sulphur, or any other upland resort, but in far more delightfully unconventional ways, and the enjoyment is proportionately increased.
No Eastern watering-place affords opportunity for so many desirable excursions, each distinct from the other in interest, each superb and of itself a sufficient inducement to come to Colorado. Just overhead towers the glorious old crest of Pike’s Peak, the beacon of ’59, and ever since the type of American mountains. He who does not ascend the Peak (if he is in fair health) can never get a good character fromManitou. Of course all of the present party went. Moreover we went fancy-free and note-book forgotten—a happiness as great as Patti’s when she saw there was no piano on the ocean steamer in which she was to take passage. “How was this?” do you ask? Lillian Scidmore had been there before us, and reaped with her keen sickle every spear of wheat in the whole field. To show our gleanings would amount to nothing; so here is her whole sheaf:
“The tenth of June having left the world upon its axis, a little band of heroic spirits made ready to mount the bony bronchos, and toil upward from the green and lovely vale of Manitou to the rocky height above. The noonday sun was sending down its most scorching rays, and the idlers on the hotel piazza were mopping their brows and repeating the wearisome formula of ‘the hottest day ever known in Colorado.’ The sun was ardent, to say the least, but the crisp breeze that came rustling down from the higher cañons tempered its effects.
“The sympathetic chambermaid of the Beebee House had been hovering in my doorway for a half hour before the start, urging me to take more and more wraps, and relating horrible anecdotes of the Chicago lady ‘who had her nose burned to a white blister and her face so raw, ma’am, that we could hardly touch it with a feather for three days.’ With such gentle admonition there was no struggle when the kind-hearted one proceeded to apply her preventive, and under a triple layer of cold cream, powder and barege veils we made the trip, and returned rather fairer in skin for the bleaching process. The perspiration ran off the guide’s forehead before he had strapped on the first bundle of overcoats, ulsters, shawls, rugs and furs, but the grateful sensation they imparted to us a few hours later will cheer me through many midsummer days. The party included, among others, a gentleman and his wife from St. Louis, and the same wicked Colorado editor who is the author of all the fine spun yarns about the Pike’s Peak volcano and the mountain lions.
“Such horses as we rode can be raised and trained only on a mountain trail, and if they could but speak, what tales of timidity, stupidity and absurdity they might relate. My own Arabian was a tan-colored beast, shading off to drab and old gold, known in the vernacular of the country as a buckskin horse, and rejoiced in the sweet name of ‘Bird.’ It was a veritable misnomer, for birds do not generally sit down and roll at every piece of green grass or cool water that they come to, nor try to shake their riders off over their necks. My sudden flights to earth were heralded in all the turgid and flamboyant rhetoric of the circus ring, and equestrian feats, each outrivaling the other in novelty and unexpectedness, diversified the route. It was proposed to call the creature Jordan, because she rolled; and again it was suggested that as it was ‘sinched’ out of all shape it had mistaken itself for an hourglass, and concluded that it was time to turn. Another horse for a ladyrider answered to ‘Annie,’ and this gentle beast was only kept from lying down in every stream by energetic pullings and vigorous thrashings. The good son of St. Louis, bidden, like Louis XVI at the guillotine, to ‘mount to heaven,’ when he leaped upon his dappled gray, in a linen coat, broad-brimmed hat and full-spread umbrella, had a truly ministerial air as he preceded the line up the road. The editor rode a pensive nag that hung its head and coughed timidly now and then, but chirruped to as ‘Camille’ would push forward and crowd the other horses off the trail, until a kicking and lashing from the heels of ‘Bird’ brought things in order.
“The Pike’s Peak trail is one series of picturesque surprises. All that green cañons, tremendous boulders and turbulent little streams can do for beauty are there, and from the rustic spot where a small bandit on the rock demanded toll, there was a succession of grand and lovely scenes. The trail, worn deep into the grassy places by the procession of horses that goes up and down it from May to October, winds on between great rocks, along the steep and dizzy sides of cañons, past cascades and waterfalls (one of which is the subject of a sketch), and continually upward, opening boundless views out upon the broad plains that stretch like a yellow sea from the foothills of the Peak eastward. With every rise there came a greater one beyond, and above it all, seeming to move and rise further and higher from us, was the rose-red summit, with streaks and patches of snow bringing out its beautiful colors. Over giant boulders, creeping a cramped path beside and under them, or along a narrow ledge of sliding sand with colossal rocks miraculously suspended above our pathway, the panting horses toiled along. Ascending into higher and rarer air it was necessary every few minutes to stop and give the poor creatures a chance to breathe.
“As we rose higher on the mountain side more extended views were opened backward over the plains. The lowering sun fell fiercely on the red sandstone gateways of the Garden of the Gods, until they burned in flame-colored light against the yellow-gray grass. The hotels and cottages of Manitou were tiny dots in a green hollow far below, and the courses of the winding streams could be traced for miles over the plains by their green borders of cottonwood and willow trees. Wild flowers grew luxuriantly all the way, and in a little park half way to the summit, where the guides rest by a spring and wait for ascending and descending parties to pass, the ground was thick with big columbines, wild roses, harebells, white daisies, pale lavender geraniums with their petals streaked with maroon, and the beautiful blue-eyed penstemon of early June. At timber-line the wild box covered the sandy slopes with a thick and tangled mat of green, and higher than the hardiest pines stretched a rolling mountain meadow, a mile of emerald turf jeweled with the brilliant blossoms of bluebells, buttercups, dwarf sunflowers and dainty little Quaker-lady forget-me-nots.
“Sixteen people passed us in the half-way park on their way down. The terrified countenance of one lady on a mule would have made the hard-hearted to laugh. She pitched back and forth in her saddle, and shot a pitiful gaze at us as she went by that plainly indicated her estimate of us and mountain climbers in general. The twelve miles of steep, hard riding to the summit is trying to the most practiced rider; and for women, who have never sat a horse before, to attempt to make the trip up and down in one day is a folly that fully deserves the punishment it gets. Twenty-four miles of horseback riding on a level road even is apt to be remembered by the inexperienced. Added to the fatigue is the sea-sickness consequent upon the great altitude, and few who make the ascent escape that ill. It is a certificate of a rock-bound constitution to spend a night on the summit and not be grievously ill. After the mountain meadow come three miles of broken and ragged rock, the most wearisome and discouraging part of the road. The horses’ sides throbbed frightfully, the keen winds made a halt for overcoats necessary, and the scramble over these steep rocks is a fearful thing in a nipping sunset breeze. The rocks of the summit, that seem only reddish brown from below, are of the softest pink and rose-red shades, dotted with black and golden moss-patches until they strongly remind one of the exquisite colors of speckled trout. Above this sea of loose and broken granite a low, square house of stone at last arose, and over the ultimate rock we finally stood on the highest inhabited point on the continent.
“The officer of the signal service, who lives in that lofty house, stood in his doorway shooting at a tin can on a pole, and in that thin open air the pop of the pistol was a short, faint little noise without crash or echo. The red ball of the sun sinking down behind the snowy edges of the mountains beyond Leadville sent strange lights and mists across the tossed and uneven stretch of mountains and parks that lay between it and the gaunt old Peak. The seventy acres of wildly scattered rock-fragments that crown the top afford a vantage ground for views to every point of the compass. Eastward across the vast prairie land there seems no limit to the vision, and beyond the green lines of the Platte and Arkansas rivers we amused ourselves by imagining the steeples of St. Louis in the rose and purple vapors of the horizon. The clouds, mists, shadows and faint opalescent lights on the plains, shifting, changing and fading each moment, are more fascinatingly beautiful than the dark, upheaved and splintered ridges of the mountains. Stretching out over the plains, at first in a blue cone upon the grass, and then sweeping outward and upward to the sky-line, the vast shadow of the mountain was thrown sharply against the sky.
“Wrapped in furs and bundled in all the woolen warmth of heaviest winter clothes, the chill air of evening penetrated like a knife-edge, and we sat shivering on the rocks with pitiable, pinched and purplefaces and chattering teeth. The afterglow in the east, when the sky and the plains melted in one purple line and a band of rose-color went up higher and higher, was more lovely even than the pure crimson and gold and blue of the sunset clouds.
“Around the crackling fire in the station we thawed our benumbed fingers and watched the observations taken from the various instruments and sent clicking off on the telegraph wires to Washington headquarters. The sergeant wound the alarm-clock to rouse us at four o’clock the next morning, and, giving up the one sleeping-room to the ladies, retired with the gentlemen of the party to a bed of buffalo-robes in the kitchen. The awful stillness, the stealthy puffs of wind, and the sense of isolation and remoteness, were distressing at first; but the tobacco-laden air dulled us to sleep. As the fire died out, dreams of Greenland—glaciers and giddy snow-banks on impossible summits—seized and held us, until a shivering voice gave the alarm: ‘It is all red in the east.’
“We had climbed all those miles purposely to see the spectacle of dawn, but there was unhappiness among the pinched and pallid enthusiasts who crept out on the rocks and watched the half-light on the plains deepen. A pale and withered moon hung overhead, and miles away on the plain lay a vast white cloud like a lake, until the rising sun touched it and sent it rolling and tossing like angry waves. A crimson ball sprang suddenly from the outermost rim of the earth, glared with a red and sleepy eye upon the world, and pulled the cover of a cloud above it for a second nap before it came forth in full splendor. The shadow of the Peak projected westward fell this time on the uneven mountains, whose sides and clefts were filled and floating with faint pearl, lilac and roseate mists. The black patch where Denver lay on the plains, the snowy top of Gray’s Peak, the green basin of South Park, and seemingly everything from end to end of the State, could be seen. Shivering, freezing, on that mountain top, with a fur cloak about me, besides all the other wraps, it seemed that there never was a winter day half as cold.
“In all the crevices of the rocks, wherever there was enough powdered granite to form a soil for their roots, were tiny little white blossoms, fairy stars or flowers, with just their heads above the ground, and an exquisite perfume breathing from them. Bidding the guide to sinch up quickly for the down trip, we partook of the signal sergeant’s coffee, and listened to his anecdotes of his lonesome life of two weeks on the mountain and two weeks in town.
“‘You are the best crowd that’s been up,’ said the brave man of barometers. ‘They all get sick when they stay over night. It took me a month to get used to it. You ought to stay until noon and see the tender-feet come up and get sick. Oh, Lord! there was an old lady up here the other day, and she says to me: “Sergeant, don’t people ever die of this sickness up here?” “Oh, yes, ma’am,” says I, “a lady diedthe other day, and as there wasn’t any one to identify her we just put her over in that snow-bank there.”’
PIKE’S PEAK TRAIL.
PIKE’S PEAK TRAIL.
“With a lot more of such mountain horrors he kept his rafters ringing, and then bade us climb the ladder to the top of his house, which would make up the difference of fifteen feet between his abode and Gray’s Peak. We looked at the grave of the imaginary child destroyed by mountain rats, gave a last glance at the enchanted view, and left the chilling region.”
Another entertaining jaunt is a couple of miles or less up the Ute Pass wagon-road to Rainbow Falls, one of the finest cascades in theWest—where such things are more of a curiosity than in wetter regions of the world. The water comes down here with a more than ordinarily desperate plunge, and it is great sport to climb about the angular rocks that hem it in.
Ute Pass leads over into South Park, and before the days of railways it was greatly traveled by passengers and by freight wagons to Leadville and Fairplay. There is less transit there now, but in summer pleasure-parties constantly traverse the Pass, partly for its own sake and partly to enjoy a sight of Manitou Park on the opposite side, whence a magnificent array of the snowy interior ranges is to be seen, northward and westward, while Pike’s Peak presents itself to superior advantage from that point of view. In the park is a good little hotel and dairy, and a trout stream and pond where the Eastern brook-trout has been assiduously cultivated. In the fall Manitou Park is the resort of deer hunters and grouse shooters.
Then there is the already mentioned Garden of the Gods, hidden behind those garish walls of red and yellow sandstone, so stark and out of place in the soberly-toned landscape that they travesty nature, converting the whole picture into a theatrical scene, and a highly spectacular one at that. Passing behind these sensational walls, one is not surprised to find a sort of gigantic peep-show in pantomime. The solid rocks have gone masquerading in every sort of absurd costume and character. The colors of the make-up, too, are varied from black through all the browns and drabs to pure white, and then again through yellows and buffs and pinks up to staring red. Who can portray adequately these odd forms of chiseled stone? I have read a dozen descriptions, and so have you, no doubt. But one I have just seen, in a letter by a Boston lady, is so pertinent you should have the pleasure of reading it:
“The impression is of something mighty, unreal and supernatural. Of the gods surely—but the gods of the Norse Walhalla in some of their strange outbursts of wild rage or uncouth playfulness. The beauty-loving divinities of Greece and Rome could have nothing in common with such sublime awkwardness. Jove’s ambrosial curls must shake in another Olympia than this. Weird and grotesque, but solemn and awful at the same time, as if one stood on the confines of another world, and soon the veil would be rent which divided them. Words are worse than useless to attempt such a picture. Perhaps if one could live in the shadow of its savage grandeur for months until his soul were permeated, language would begin to find itself flowing in proper channels, but in the first stupor of astonishment one must only hold his breath. The Garden itself, the holy of holies, as most fancy, is not so overpowering to me as the vast outlying wildness.
“To pass in between massive portals of rock of brilliant terra-cotta red, and enter on a plain miles in extent, covered in all directions with magnificent isolated masses of the same striking color, each lifting itselfagainst the wonderful blue of a Colorado sky with a sharpness of outline that would shame the fine cutting of an etching; to find the ground under your feet, over the whole immense surface, carpeted with the same rich tint, underlying arabesques of green and gray, where grass and mosses have crept; to come-upon masses of pale velvety gypsum, set now and again as if to make more effective by contrast the deep red which strikes the dominant chord of the picture; and always, as you look through or above, to catch the stormy billows of the giant mountain range tossed against the sky, with the regal snow-crowned massiveness of Pike’s Peak rising over all, is something, once seen, never to be forgotten. Strange, grotesque shapes, mammoth caricatures of animals, clamber, crouch, or spring from vantage points hundreds of feet in air. Here a battlemented wall is pierced by a round window; there a cluster of slender spires lift themselves; beyond, a leaning tower slants through the blue air, or a cube as large as a dwelling-house is balanced on a pivot-like point at the base, as if a child’s strength could upset it. Imagine all this scintillant with color, set under a dazzling sapphire dome, with the silver stems and delicate frondage of young cottonwoods in one space, or a strong young hemlock lifting green symmetrical arms from some high rocky cleft in another. This can be told, but the massiveness of sky-piled masonry, the almost infernal mixture of grandeur and grotesqueness, are beyond expression. After the first few moments of wild exclamation one sinks into an awed silence.”
The reader must see for himself these grotesque monuments, these relics of ruined strata, these sportive, wind-cut ghosts of the oldregimehere, these fanciful images of things seen and unseen, which stand thickly over hundreds of acres like the moldering ruins of some half-buried city of the desert, if he would fully understand.
Out of the many other sources of enjoyment near Manitou, the visitor will by no means neglect the Cave of the Winds. Though you may ride, if you wish, it is just a pleasant walk up Williams’ Cañon, one of the prettiest of the gorges that seam the rugged base of the great Peak. The walls are limestone, stained bright red and Indian yellow, lofty, vertical, and broken into a multitude of bastions, turrets, pinnacles and sweeping, hugely carved façades, whose rugged battlements tower hundreds of feet overhead against a sky of violet. At their bases these upright walls are so close together that much of the way there is not room for one carriage to pass another, and the track lies nearly always in the very bed of the sparkling brook. You seem always in a cul de sac among the zigzags of this irregular chasm, and sometimes the abundant foliage, rooted in the crevices above, meets in an arch across the brightly-painted but narrow space you are tortuously threading.
Half a mile up the cañon, at the end of the roadway, a trail goes by frequent turnings up the precipitous sides of the ravine to where a sheer cliff begins, about three hundred feet higher. Floundering upthis steep and slippery goat-path, we arrived breathless at a stairway leading through an arch of native rock into a great chimney, opening out to the sunlight above, and found opposite us a niche which served as ante-room and entrance to the cave.
The history of this cave is entertaining, for it was the discovery, in June, 1880, of two boys of Colorado Springs, who were members of an “exploring society,” organized by the pastor of the Congregational Church there to provide the boys of his Sunday-school with some safe and healthful outlet for their adventurous spirits.
The cave, as we saw it, is a labyrinth of narrow passages, occasionally opening out into chambers of irregular size (and never with very high ceilings), into which protrude great ledges and points of rock from the stratified walls, still further limiting the space. These passages are often very narrow, and in many cases you must stoop in crowding through, or, if you insist upon going to the end, squirm along, Brahmin-like, on your stomach. The avenues and apartments are not all upon the same level, but run over and under each other, and constantly show slender fox holes branching off, which the guide tells you lead to some stygian retreat you have visited or are about to see. In remote portions of the cave there are very large rooms, like Alabaster Hall, some of which are encumbered with fallen masses and with pillars of drip stone.
The cave is not remarkable for large stalactites and stalagmites, but excels in its profusion of small ornaments, produced by the solution of the rock and its re-deposition in odd and pretty forms. From many of the ledges hang rows of small stalactites like icicles from wintry eaves, and often these have fine musical tones, so that by selecting a suitable number, varied in their pitch, simple tunes can easily and very melodiously be played by tapping. In some parts of the cave, the stalactites are soldered together into a ribbed mass, like a cascade falling over the ledges. Elsewhere the “ribbon” or “drapery” form of flattened stalactites recalls to you the Luray Caves, though here it is carried out on a smaller scale; while in this particular, as in many others, reminding one of the magnificent Virginia caverns only by small suggestions, in one respect this cave far surpasses in beauty its Eastern prototype. The floors of many rooms are laid, several inches deep, with incrustations of lime-work, which is embroidered in raised ridges of exquisite carving. Again, where water has been caught in depressions, these basins have been lined with a continuous, crowding plush of minute lime crystals,—like small tufted cushions of yellow and white moss. Such depressed patches occur frequently; moreover, the rapid evaporation of these pools, in confined spaces, has so surcharged the air with carbonated moisture, that particles of lime have been deposited on the walls of the pocket in a thousand dainty and delicate forms,—tiny stalactites and bunches of stone twigs,—until you fancy the most airy of milleporic corals transferred to these recesses. Here often the air seems foggy asyour lamp-rays strike it, and the growing filigree-work gleams alabaster-white under the spray that is producing its weird and exquisite growth. In this form of minute and frost-like ornamentation, the cave excels anything I know of anywhere, and is strangely beautiful.
RAINBOW FALLS.
RAINBOW FALLS.
This cavern, however, is sadly deficient in a proper amount of legendary interest. No human bones have been found, and no lover’s leap has been designated. This misfortune must be remedied; and I have selected a dangerous kind of a place at which, hereafter, the following touching tradition will cause the tourist to drop a tear: Many, many years ago an Indian maiden discovered this cave while eagerly pursuing a woodchuck to its long home; the home proving longer than she thought, she crept quite through into the unsuspected enlargement of a cave-chamber, and a startled congregation of pensive bats. She told no one of her discovery, because she had not, after all, caught the woodchuck, and went without meat for supper. A noble warrior, who had done marvelous deeds of valor, loved the maiden. He wooed and she would but the swarthy papa wouldn’t. Sadness, anger, surreptitious trysting where the fleecy cottonwood waves melodiously above the crystal streamlet, etc., etc. The irate old warrior brings an aged brave, who has spent his whole life in doing nothing of more account than cronifying with the heart-sick girl’s father. This man she must marry, and the young suitor must go. Refusals by the maiden, loud talk by the youth, sneers from the old cronies, flight of the lovers to the woodchuck’s hole, vermicular but affectionate concealment, like another Æneas and Dido. The woodchuck, stealing forth, sees a wolf outside, trying to make him pay his poll-tax; so he sits quietly just inside his safe doorway, obscuring the light. Endeavoring to find their way about in the consequent darkness, the imprisoned lovers pitch headlong over the precipice I have referred to. Guide-books please copy.
Our train bore a pensive party down the valley of the Fontaine, asit headed for Pueblo. The Musician drew a plaintive air from his violin, and as the friendly mountain range receded and dipped away in the West, we fell to wondering when, if ever, we should tread those vales again.
In Steyermark—old Steyermark,The mountain summits are white and stark;The rough winds furrow their trackless snow,But the mirrors of crystal are smooth below;The stormy Danube clasps the waveThat downward sweeps with the Drave and Save,And the Euxine is whitened with many a bark,Freighted with ores of Steyermark.In Steyermark—rough Steyermark,The anvils ring from dawn till dark;The molten streams of the furnace glare,Blurring with crimson the midnight air;The lusty voices of forgemen chord,Chanting the ballad of Siegfried’s Sword,While the hammers swung by their arms so starkStrike to the music of Steyermark!
In Steyermark—old Steyermark,The mountain summits are white and stark;The rough winds furrow their trackless snow,But the mirrors of crystal are smooth below;The stormy Danube clasps the waveThat downward sweeps with the Drave and Save,And the Euxine is whitened with many a bark,Freighted with ores of Steyermark.In Steyermark—rough Steyermark,The anvils ring from dawn till dark;The molten streams of the furnace glare,Blurring with crimson the midnight air;The lusty voices of forgemen chord,Chanting the ballad of Siegfried’s Sword,While the hammers swung by their arms so starkStrike to the music of Steyermark!
In Steyermark—old Steyermark,The mountain summits are white and stark;The rough winds furrow their trackless snow,But the mirrors of crystal are smooth below;The stormy Danube clasps the waveThat downward sweeps with the Drave and Save,And the Euxine is whitened with many a bark,Freighted with ores of Steyermark.
In Steyermark—old Steyermark,
The mountain summits are white and stark;
The rough winds furrow their trackless snow,
But the mirrors of crystal are smooth below;
The stormy Danube clasps the wave
That downward sweeps with the Drave and Save,
And the Euxine is whitened with many a bark,
Freighted with ores of Steyermark.
In Steyermark—rough Steyermark,The anvils ring from dawn till dark;The molten streams of the furnace glare,Blurring with crimson the midnight air;The lusty voices of forgemen chord,Chanting the ballad of Siegfried’s Sword,While the hammers swung by their arms so starkStrike to the music of Steyermark!
In Steyermark—rough Steyermark,
The anvils ring from dawn till dark;
The molten streams of the furnace glare,
Blurring with crimson the midnight air;
The lusty voices of forgemen chord,
Chanting the ballad of Siegfried’s Sword,
While the hammers swung by their arms so stark
Strike to the music of Steyermark!
—Bayard Taylor.
It is a fortunate introduction the traveler, fresh from the Eastern States and weary with his long plains journey, gets at Pueblo to the lively, progressive,boomingspirit of Colorado. Here are the oldest and the newest in the Centennial State—the fragments of tradition that go back to the thrilling, adventurous days of fur-trapping and Indian wars; the concentrated essence of later improvements; and the most practical present, mingled in a single tableau, for a telephone line crosses the ruins of the old adobe fort or Spanish “pueblo,” which gave to the locality its name when it was an outpost for the traders from New Mexico.
In its modern shape the town is one of the longest settled in the State, and a great flurry began and ended there years ago. Then, neglected by men of money, Pueblo languished and was spoken chidingly of by its sister cities in embryo. Now all this has changed, and, perhaps aroused by the prosperity of Leadville, Pueblo began about three years ago to assert herself, and to-day stands next to Denver in rank both as a populous and as a money-making center. No business man or statistician could find a more deeply entertaining study than the investigation of how this rejuvenation has arisen and been made to produce so striking results. Such an inquirer would find several largeindustries claiming to have furnished the turning point; but it is evident that the few who faithfully stood by the comatose town, and steadily struggled toward its commercial revival, were prompt to seize upon the altered flood and take advantage of the tide which led to fortune. The impression once advertised that Pueblo was shaking off her lethargy and about to become a second Pittsburgh, a thousand men of business were quick to catch the idea and make the “boom” a fact. Thus from 5,000 inhabitants in 1875 she has come to over 15,000 in 1883.
It is undoubtedly true that the Denver and Rio Grande railway has done more to aid this advancement than any other one agency; but an important impetus was given to Pueblo in 1878, when a company of gentlemen decided to build a smelter here. The work was put under the charge of its present superintendent, and ninety days from breaking ground the furnace was in operation. There was only a single small one at first; but fourteen are running now. Then there was a diminutive shed to cover the whole affair; now there are acres of fine buildings. Then a dozen men did all the work; now from 380 to 400 are employed, and the pay-roll reaches $375,000 per annum. That’s the way they do things in Pueblo.
This smelter is on the northern bank of the river, just under the bluff. From a distance, all that you can discern over the trees is a collection of lofty brick and iron chimney-stacks, and wide black roofs. Coming nearer, the enormous slag-dump discloses the nature of the industry, and testifies to the quantity of ore that has passed through the furnaces. Though on the banks of a swift river, the works are run by steam, which can be depended upon for steady service, and on which winter makes no impression. A thousand tons of coal and seven hundred tons of coke a month are used, the cheapness and proximity of this fuel forming one of the inducements to place the smelter here. Cañon City and El Moro coals are mixed, but the coke all comes from the latter point. At the start an engine of 60-horse power supplied all needs, but a new one of 175-horse power has been found necessary, and Denver was able to manufacture it. As for the machinery, it is not essentially different from that in other smelters, except in small details, where the most approved modern methods are made use of. There are great rooms full of roasting-ovens, immense bins where the pulverized and roasted ore cools off, elevators that hoist it to the smelting furnaces, and all the usual appliances, in great perfection, for charging the furnaces, drawing off and throwing aside the slag, and for casting the precious pigs of bullion. All walls and floors are stone and brick; everywhere order and neatness prevail. This plant has already cost the firm $200,000, and they have enough more money constantly put into ore and bullion to make $750,000 invested at the works. The ore is bought outright, according to a scale of prices which is about as follows: Gold, $18.00 per ounce; silver, $1.00 per ounce; and copper, $1.50 per unit.
GARDEN OF THE GODS.
GARDEN OF THE GODS.
This is reckoned by “dry” assay, being two per cent. off from “wet.” For the lead in the ore, 30 cents per unit up to 30 per cent., 40 cents up to 40 per cent., and 45 when over 40 per cent.; but both lead and copper will not be paid for in the same ore. From the total is deducted $20.00 as fee for treating it. For the assaying a capital laboratory of several rooms is provided, where two assayers and two chemists are continually busy. Every lot, as purchased, is kept separate and subjected to a homeopathic process of dilution, until a sample is obtained that represents most exactly the whole. The arrangements for crushing and sampling the ore are very complete, and a large number of lots can be handled at once. When the final sample has been reached it is subjected to a very careful assay, not only to determine what shall be paid for it, but to find out what are its qualities in relation to the process of smelting. This process requires a certain percentage of lead, a certain amount of silica, and a certain proportion of iron and lime ineach charge. It is the duty of the assayers and chemists to ascertain precisely the proportions of these ingredients in the ore under consideration, in order to know how much lead, iron, lime or silica, to add in order to make a compound suitable to fuse thoroughly, even to the dissolution of the desperately refractory zinc and antimony; and which, also, shall yield up every particle of silver and gold. The iron and lime have usually to be added outright in this smelter; but the proper proportions of lead and silica are obtained by combining an ore deficient in one of these elements, but containing an excess of the other, with ores oppositely constituted. It is one of the advantages of the smelter at Pueblo, that, being centrally placed and down hill from every mining district, it can draw to its bins ores of every variety; thus it is able to mix to the greatest advantage, and in this economy and the attendant thoroughness of treatment, lie the possibilities (and actuality) of profit.
The lime for flux is procured three miles from town, and costs only $1.00 a ton, while every other smelter in the State must pay from $2.50 to $5.00. Its building-stone is a splendid quality of cream-tinted sandstone procured in the mesa only a short distance away. So widely satisfactory have been its results that the Pueblo smelter does the largest business of any in Colorado. I saw ore there from away beyond Silverton; from Ouray and the Lake City region; from the Gunnison country and the Collegiate range this side; from Leadville (competitive with Leadville’s own smelters); from Silver Cliff and Rosita; and, finally, from numerous camps in the northern part of the State. The last was surprising; for it meant that all that weight of ore had been brought hither past the furnaces at Golden and Denver, because the owners realized more for it, in spite of excess of freight, than they could get at home. The superintendent told me that they handled more ore from Clear Creek county than all the other smelters of the State; and he explained it by showing how his nearness to fuel, and consequent saving in this important item, with his cheap labor, permitted him to bid and pay more than any other smelter could for choice ores, for which a premium is given. These facts were held in mind when, encouraged by the railway, the smelter was placed here, and the expectations of its projectors have been more than gratified. The present capacity of the establishment is 125 tons of ore a day in the fourteen blast furnaces, and 100 tons a day in nine large calcining furnaces. Expensive improvements, and of the most solid character, are being made constantly in all parts of the works. The most important of these has been the erection of machinery for refining the bullion, which has a capacity of twenty-five hundred tons a month, and is constructed on the best known principles. It has been customary in the West to send to New York the lead which results from silver refining; it is made into sheet-lead and leaden pipe, in which form it is bought by wholesale houses in Chicago and St. Louis, to be again sent to Colorado, at the rate ofperhaps a thousand tons a year. Now it is proposed to keep at home the profits and freightage of this costly and heavy material in house construction. Machinery has therefore been added to make up all the lead into sheets, bars, and piping. This is done so cheaply, that Pueblo can now send it across the plains and undersell Chicago and St. Louis in the Mississippi valley. The supply largely exceeds the home demand, and a new export for this State has thus been created. Utah will henceforth yield a large portion of the bullion to be refined. Another experiment will be the refining of copper. There are various mines in New Mexico and Arizona—many of them worked in ancient days by the Spaniards—which supply a base form of metallic copper. This crude copper is now nearly all sent to Baltimore, and there refined and rolled. The New Mexico division of the Denver and Rio Grande will soon penetrate the region of some of these mines, while the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe makes others accessible. Side-tracks from both these roads run into the smelter’s enclosure. To bring the copper here will therefore be an easy matter: and it can be produced in shape for commercial use much more cheaply than any Eastern factory is able to turn it out.
Another large factor in Pueblo’s revival was the establishment there of the steel works. These are the property of the Colorado Coal and Iron company, composed of the leading men in the Denver and Rio Grande railway, so that, though the two corporations are distinct, their interests are closely allied. This powerful association was formed in 1879 by the consolidation of two or three other companies having similar aims, and it became the owner not only of the steel and iron works here, and of a great deal of real estate, but also of nearly all the mines of coal and iron now being developed in this State. Its capital is ten millions, and its principal offices are located at South Pueblo. It employs over two thousand men in its various enterprises, and is constantly enlarging its operations and perfecting its methods. Many of its coal banks will be referred to in other paragraphs of this volume. The ore derived from all its iron mines is exceptionally free from phosphorus, and therefore well adapted to the manufacture of steel. The subjoined analyses exhibit the character of these ores:
A conservative estimate places the amount of iron ore the company has developed at over two millions of tons. Besides these high-grade ores, there are others of an inferior grade, which, being mixed with mill-cinders, will produce the commoner sorts of pig-iron, suitable for foundry-work. Limestone, valuable as flux, is quarried from a ledge within seven miles of the furnace, with which it is connected by rail,and the supply is practically inexhaustible. Gannister and fire-clay, also, are found in abundance in the vicinity. With coal, coke, iron and all the furnace ingredients radiated about this point, which, at the same time is nearest to the Eastern forges whence must be brought the massive machinery to equip the works, it requires no second thought to perceive that South Pueblo offers altogether the most profitable site for vast factories like these.
Immediately following this decision, in the spring of 1879 a large tract of mesa-land was secured, beside the track of the Denver and Rio Grande railway, about a mile south of the Union Depot, where not only the foundations of the mills, but a village-site was laid out and numerous side-tracks were put down. Very soon the tall chimneys of the blast furnaces began to rise into the ken of the people of Pueblo. Simultaneously a large number of fine cottages were built as homes for workmen, and other structures were set on foot, among them a commodious hospital, for joint use of the mills and the railway company. It is a very pleasant, well-ordered and growing little town, known as Bessemer, and even now the space between it and the city is rapidly filling up. The present daily output of the blast furnaces is one hundred tons of pig-iron, but soon a twin furnace will double the productive capacity of the works. Besides the furnaces, the plant includes Bessemer steel converting works, a rolling and rail mill, 450 by 60 feet, a nail mill, a puddling mill and foundry. All of these establishments are in every way equal to the best of their kind in the East. The blast furnace is fifteen feet base and sixty-five feet high, with fire-brick, hot-blast stoves, and a Morris blowing engine. In the steel-converting works the arrangement of the plant is similar to that of the new Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Company, which has given exceptionally good results. The rail mill plant consists of Siemen’s heating furnaces and heavy blooming and rail trains, and the puddling and nail mills are equipped with the best modern machinery. At Denver the same company owns a rolling mill, where bar and railroad iron and mine rails are manufactured: these in the future will mainly be supplied from South Pueblo. The effect upon Colorado of this forging of native iron for home consumption must be very important. All iron and iron ware is nearly doubled in value by the necessarily high rates of freight across the plains. Manufacturing, now that the crude material can be obtained on the spot, is cheaper than importing, and in the wake of the blast furnace must follow a long train of iron industries. Already negotiations are on foot for the establishment of extensive stove works (a million of dollars was sent East last year from Colorado in payment for stoves alone), and the erection of car-wheel shops is also contemplated. Indeed, in this mining country, which also is a region that is rapidly filling up with large towns, the demand for manufacturediron of all sorts is very large. It is another step in the gradual movement of trade-centers westward.
ENTRANCE TO CAVE OF THE WINDS.
ENTRANCE TO CAVE OF THE WINDS.
A still clearer idea of the great value of its interests to the State, and of its local works to Pueblo may be obtained from the report of the productions of the Colorado Coal and Iron company for the year 1882 which, briefly summarized, aggregates as follows: Coal, 511,239 tons; coke, 92,770 tons; iron ores, 53,425 tons; merchant iron, mine rails, etc., 3,883 tons; castings, 2,752 tons; pig-iron, 24,303 tons; muck bar, in four months, 1,253 tons; steel ingots, eight months, 20,919 tons; steel blooms, eight months, 18,068 tons; steel rails, eight months, 16,139 tons; nails, four months, 16,158 kegs; and spikes, six months, 5,022 kegs.
The economy of location, and the successful results attending the establishment here of the great enterprises referred to, are attracting many others. During the past season one of Leadville’s largest smelters, having been destroyed by fire, has been rebuilt at Pueblo, and more will naturally follow.
The mercantile part of the community, however, while admitting all the claims of the steel works and the smelter to their great and beneficent influence upon the destiny of the new town, puts forward its own claim to the credit of commencing the progressive movement. When, by the extensions of the railway into the back country of Colorado, merchants began to perceive that at Pueblo they could buy goods of precisely such grades as they desired a trifle more cheaply, and get them home a trifle more expeditiously, than by going to Denver or Kansas City, Pueblo began to feel the impulse of new commercial vigor. When it came to reckoning upon a whole year’s purchases, the slight advantage gained in freight over Denver, to all southern and middle interior points, amounted to a very considerable sum. Here, far more than in the Eastern States, the freight charges must be taken into account by the country merchant; particularly in the provision business, where the staples are the heaviest articles, as a rule, and, at the same time, those on which the least profit accrues. This consideration, impressing itself more and more upon the good judgment of the mountain dealers, is bringing a larger and larger trade to Pueblo, until now she is beginning to boast herself mistress of all southern and middle Colorado and of northern New Mexico. She can not hope to compete with Denver for the northern half of the State, but she does not intend to lose her grip upon the great, rapidly-developing, money-producing San Juan, Gunnison and Rio Grande regions. And as the visitor sees the railway yards crowded with loaded freight trains destined for every point of the compass; notes the throng of laden carts in the furrowed streets; observes how every warehouse is plethoric with constantly changing merchandise, often stacked on the curbstone under the cover of a canvas sheet because room within doors can not be found; witnesses the temporary nature of so many scores of buildings for business and for domiciles, and learns how most of their owners are putting up permanent houses, multitudes of which are rising substantially on every side;—when he has caught the meaning of all this, he finds that Pueblo has an idea that her opportunities are great, and that she does not propose to neglect them in the least particular. There is much wealth there now, and more is being introduced by Eastern investors, or accumulated on the spot, not only in trade, but in the very extensive herds of cattle and sheep that center there. Yet this seems to be but the incipience of her prosperity,—a prosperity which rests on solid foundations, existing not alone in the industries I have catalogued and the trade which has centered there, but in the fact that values are not inflated and that the real property of the city is mortgaged to a remarkably small degree.
Pueblo, though I have treated it as a unit, really consists of two cities, having the rushing flood of the Arkansas between them. Each has water-works, and civic institutions separately, but I have no doubt this cumbersome duality will be done away with in time. It is on the South Pueblo side that the railways center at the Union Depot. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe sends hither daily its trains from Kansas City, and hence the Denver and Rio Grande forwards its passengers northward to Denver, westward to Silver Cliff, Leadville, Salt Lake City and Ogden, and southward to El Moro, Alamosa, Del Norte, Durango, Silverton and Santa Fe. It is on this side, also, that the factories are, and that others will stand. Here, too, are being placed the great wholesale depots.
There is too much rush and dust and building and general chaos in the lowlands, where the business part of the town is to make a residencethere as pleasant as it will be a few years later; but upon the high mesa, Whose rounded bluffs of gravel form the first break upon the shore of the great plains that extend thence in uninterrupted level to the Missouri River, a young city has grown up, which is admirable as a place for a home. Here are long, straight, well-shaded streets of elegant houses; here are churches and school buildings and all the pleasant appurtenances of a fine town, overlooking the city, the wooded valley of the Arkansas, the busy railway junctions, and the measureless plateaus beyond. One gets a new idea of the possibilities of a delightful home in Pueblo after he has walked upon these surprising highlands.
Nowhere, either, will you get a more inspiring mountain landscape—the far scintillations of the Sangre de Cristo; the twin breasts of Wahatoya; the glittering, notched line and clustering foothills of the Sierra Mojada; the great gates that admit to the upper Arkansas; and Pike’s “shining mountain,” surrounded by its ermined courtiers, only a little less in majesty than their prince.