Read Ebook: The Land of Enchantment: From Pike's Peak to the Pacific by Whiting Lilian
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"The world is built in order, And the atoms march in tune."
These exceptional variations to the established order, however,--these wonderful peaks and ca?ons and forests and gardens of gods,--all these enchanted things lie, naturally, within the Land of Enchantment, within this vast territorial expanse replete with many other attractions. From La Junta let the traveller journey into Colorado with its splendor of resources, and in gazing upon the stately, solemn impressiveness of the Snowy Range he cannot but feel that Nature has predestined Colorado for the theatre of noble life and realize the influence as all-pervading. Infinite possibilities open before one as an alluring vista, and he hears the refrain,--
"My spirit beats her mortal bars As down dark tides the glory slides And star-like mingles with the stars."
With the excursions offered,--grand panoramas of mountain views where the tourist from his lofty perch in the observation-car looks down on clouds and on peaks and pinnacles far below the heights to which his train climbs,--with the cogwheel road ascending Pike's Peak, the fascinating drives through Cheyenne Ca?on, the Garden of the Gods, Ute Pass, and around Glen Eyrie, and with the luxurious ease of life at "The Antlers," the traveller finds fairly a new world, rich in suggestion and wide outlook. This attractive region is, however, only one of the central points of interest in Colorado. Denver, the brilliant and fascinating capital; Pueblo, the metropolis of Southern Colorado; Glenwood Springs, the romantic and fashionable watering place and summer resort high up in the mountains on the beautiful "scenic route" of the Denver and Rio Grande; Boulder, the picturesque mountain town, with its State University so ably conducted; Greeley, the town of the "Union Colony," whose romantic and tragic story is a part of the great history of the Centennial State, and where an admirable normal school draws students from all over the country, even including New England,--these and a wealth of other features offer interest that is coming to engage the attention of the civilized world.
New Mexico has been more or less considered as one of the impossible and uncivilized localities, or has failed to establish any claim to being considered at all; yet here is a territory whose climate is simply delightful by virtue of its altitude,--cool in summer and mild and sunny in winter,--whose mines of amethysts and other precious stones suggest developments yet undreamed-of; whose ethnological interest, in the marvellous remains of Cliff-dwellers and of a people far antedating any authentic records, enchains the scientist; a territory whose future promises almost infinitely varied riches in many directions of its development.
Arizona is simply a treasure land. If it offered only that enthralling feature, the Grand Ca?on, it would be a central point of pilgrimage for the entire civilized world; but even aside from this,--the sublimest vision ever offered to human eye,--even aside from the Grand Ca?on, which dominates the world as the most sublime spectacle,--Arizona offers the fascinations of the Painted Desert, the Tonto Basin, the uncanny buttes that loom up in grotesque shapes on the horizon, the dreamy lines of mountain ranges, the strange pueblos, the productive localities where grains and where fruits and flowers grow with tropical luxuriance, the Petrified Forests, and the exquisite coloring of sky and atmosphere.
Southern California, with its brilliantly fascinating metropolis, Los Angeles; the neighboring city of Pasadena, the "Crown of the Valley"; with an extensive electric trolley-car connection with towns within a radius of fifty miles, and other distinctive and delightful features, almost each one of which might well furnish a separate chapter of description; with mountain trips made easy and enjoyable by the swift electric lines,--all this region fascinates the imagination and indicates new and wonderful vistas of life in the immediate future. The vast and varied resources of the great Southwest will also, as they are developed, increasingly affect the economic aspects of the country.
To the traveller one fact stands out in especial prominence, and that is that the traditional primitive conditions in this region hardly continue to exist. The picturesque aspects of nature form the stage setting to very-much-up-to-date life. The opportunities and advantages already offered and constantly increasing are greater than would at first be considered possible. In isolated homes on the desert the children of the family will be found studying the higher mathematics, taking music lessons, or receiving lessons in languages from some one in the neighborhood who is able to give such instruction. If any traveller expects to encounter the traditional "cow-boy" aspects of life, he will be very much disappointed. There is no refinement of life in the East that is not mirrored and duplicated in the West. There are no aspirations, no ideals, no fine culture in the East that have not their corresponding aspects in the great West. In fact, in many ways the West begins where the East leaves off. For instance, the new towns of the West that have sprung up within the past twenty years have never known what it was to have gas or horse-cars. They begin with electric lights and electric transit. Their schoolhouses are built with up-to-date methods, and the houses, however modest, are constructed with a taste and a beauty unknown in the rural regions of the East. The square white house with green blinds and a straight stone-paved pathway to the front gate, so common in New England, is not seen in the West. Instead, the most modest little structure has its piazza, its projecting bay window thrown out, its balcony--something, at all events, tasteful and beautiful to the eye.
The journey from La Junta to Los Angeles offers a series of enthralling pictorial effects that are invested with all the refinements of civilized life delightfully devoid of its commonplaceness. These long transcontinental trains with two engines, one at the front and one at the rear, with their different grades of the Pullman, the tourist, and the emigrant car service, are as distinctive a feature of the twentieth century as the "prairie schooners" were of the early half of the nineteenth century. The real journey begins, of course, at Chicago, and as these trains leave in the evening the traveller fares forth in the seclusion of his berth in the Pullman. The nights on a sleeping-car may be a very trance of ecstasy to one who loves to watch the panorama of the skies. Raise the curtain, pile up the pillows to the angle that one can gaze without lifting the head, and what ethereal visions one is wafted through! One has a sense of flying in the air among the starry spaces, especially if he chances to have the happy fortune of a couch on the side where the moon is shining down,--a midsummer moon, with stars, and filmy, flitting clouds,--when the panorama of the air becomes the enchantment of a dream.
These splendidly equipped trains of the Santa F? service admit very little dust; the swift motion keeps up a constant breeze, and some necromancy of perpetual vigilance surrounds the traveller with exceptional cleanliness and personal comfort. One experiences a certain sense of detachment from ordinary day and daylight duties that is exhilarating.
Kansas City, the gateway to the great Southwest, might well claim attention as an important manufacturing and distributing centre; Kansas itself, once the bed of an inland sea, is not without scientific interest for the deposits of gypsum and salt that have left the soil so fertile, as well as for strange fossils revealing gigantic animals, both land and aquatic, that have lived there,--the mastodon, rhinoceros, elephant, the crocodile and shark,--many of whose skeletons are preserved in the National Museum in Washington. The prosperous inland cities with their schools and colleges, their beautiful homes and constant traffic,--all these features of Kansas, the state of heroic history, are deeply impressive. But it is Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, with which these pages are chiefly concerned, and the especially picturesque aspects of the journey begin with La Junta.
Entering Colorado, the plateau is four thousand feet above sea level, and constantly rising. This altitude renders the climate of New Mexico particularly invigorating and delightful.
The most romantic and poetically enchanting regions of the United States are entered into on this journey, in which easy detours allow one to visit that mysterious "City in the Sky," the pueblo of Acoma, near Albuquerque in New Mexico; to make excursions to Montezuma's Well; to the mysterious ruin of Casa Grande; to the Twin Lakes ; and to study other marvels of nature in Arizona. The splendors of Colorado, with the myriad mountain peaks and silver lakes, the mysterious ca?ons and deep gorges, the rose-flushed valleys lying fair under a sapphire sky in the luminous golden atmosphere, and the profound interest inspired in the general social tone of life in its educational, economic, and religious aspects, invest a summer-day tour through the Land of Enchantment with all the glory and the freshness of a dream.
DENVER THE BEAUTIFUL
STEPHEN PHILLIPS
Denver the Beautiful is the dynamo of Western civilization, and the keynote to the entire scale of life in Colorado. The atmosphere seems charged with high destiny. "I worship with wonder the great Fortune," said Emerson, using the term in the universal sense, "and find it none too large for use. My receptivity matches its greatness." The receptivity of the dwellers in this splendid environment seems to match its greatness, and expand with the increase of its vast resources. As Paris is France, so Denver is Colorado. Hardly any other commonwealth and its capital are in such close relation, unless it be that of Massachusetts and Boston. Colorado is a second Italy, rather than Switzerland, as it has been called. Over it bends the Italian sky; its luminous atmosphere is that of Dante's country; at night the stars hang low as they hang over the heights of San Miniato in fair Florence; the mountain coloring, when one has distance enough, has the soft melting purple and amethyst lights of the Apennines, and the courtesy of the people is not less marked than in the land of the olive and the myrtle. Then, too, the light--the resplendent and luminous effect of the atmosphere--is like that of no other state. The East is dark by comparison with this transparency of golden light.
As the metropolis of the great West between Chicago and the Pacific Coast, Denver has a continual procession of visitors from all countries, who pause in the overland journey to study the outlook of the most wonderful state in the Union,--that of the richest and most varied resources. To find within the limits of one state resources that include gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, coal, and tin mines; agriculture, horticulture, stock raising, manufactures, and oil wells, sounds like a fiction; yet this is literally true. Add to these some of the most beautiful and sublime scenery in the world, the best modern appliances, and the most intelligent and finely aspiring class of people, and one has an outline of the possibilities of the Centennial State.
Denver is, geographically, the central city of the country, equally accessible from both the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, from the North and the South. It has the finest climate of the continent; its winters are all sunshine and exhilaration, with few cloudy or stormy days; its summers are those in which oppressive heat is hardly known, and the nights are invariably cool. It is a great railroad centre; it has infinite space in which to extend itself in any direction; it has unsurpassed beauty of location. No city west of Chicago concentrates so many desirable features, for all this wealth of resource and loveliness of scenic setting is the theatre of noble energy and high achievement. Denver is only twenty-six hours from Chicago; it is but forty-five hours from New York. Although apparently a city of the plains, it is a mile above sea level, and is surrounded with more than two hundred miles of mountain ranges, whose changeful color, in royal purple, deep rose, amber, pale blue, gleams through the transparent air against the horizon. The business and hotel part of Denver lies on a lower level, while the Capitol, a superb building of Colorado marble, and all the best residential region, is on a higher plateau. The Capitol has the novel decoration of an electric flag, so arranged that through colored glass of red, white, and blue the intense light shines.
The Denver residential region is something unusual within general municipal possibilities, as it has unbounded territory over which to expand, thus permitting each home to have its own grounds, nearly all of which are spacious; and these, with the broad streets lined with trees, give to this part of the city the appearance of an enormous park. For miles these avenues and streets extend, all traversed by swift electric cars that so annihilate time and space that a man may live five, ten, or a dozen miles from his place of business and call it all joy. He insures himself pure air, beautiful views, and an abundance of ground. If the family desires to go into the city for evening lectures, concerts, or the theatre, the transit is swift and enjoyable. They control every convenience. These individual villas are all fire-proof. The municipal law requires the buildings to be of brick or stone, thus making Denver a practically fireproof city. Both the business blocks and the homes share the benefit of the improved modern taste in architecture. The city of Denver covers an area of eighty-nine square miles, and these limits are soon to be extended.
The streets of Denver are very broad, usually planted with trees, and the smooth roads offer an earthly paradise to the motor-car transit that abounds in Denver. One of the happy excursions is that of motoring to Colorado Springs, seventy-five miles distant, a constant entertainment. With the splendid electric-transit system, annihilating distance; with the broad streets paved after the best modern methods; with the wide and smooth sidewalks of Colorado stone and the almost celestial charm of the view, city life is transformed. Telephonic service is practically universal; electric lighting and an admirable water system are among the easy conveniences of this section, which is not yet suburban because of its complete identification with all other parts of the city.
The universality of telephonic intercourse in Colorado would go far to support the theory of Dr. Edward Everett Hale that the time will come when writing will be a lost art, and will be considered, at best, as a clumsy and laborious means of communication in much the same manner that the late centuries regard the production of the manuscript book before the invention of the art of printing. In few cities is the telephone service carried out to such constant colloquial use as in Denver. The traveller finds in his room a telephone as a matter of course, and there are very few quarters of an hour when the bell does not summon him to chat with a friend, from one on the same floor of the hotel to one who is miles away in the city, or even fifty or a hundred miles distant, as at Greeley, Colorado Springs, or Pueblo.
When the Denver woman remarked to the Eastern woman sojourner within the gates that she was unable to be away that autumn on any extended absence, as the campaign was to be more than usually important, the wanderer from the Atlantic shore irreverently laughed. Her hostess endeavored not to seem shocked by this levity regarding serious subjects. She remembered that there were extenuating circumstances, and that the Eastern women had really never had a fair chance in life. Their part, she reflected, consisted in obeying laws and abiding by whatever was decreed, with no voice allowed to express their own preferences or convictions. She remembered that a proportion of the feminine New England intellect consecrates its powers and its time to extended researches in the Boston Public Library and in the venerable records of the Massachusetts Historical Society, in a perpetual quest of information regarding its ancestors, who are worshipped with the zeal and fervor of the Japanese. The Boston woman, indeed, may have only the most vague ideas regarding the rate bill, the problem of the Philippines, the Panama Canal, or the next Governor of Massachusetts; but she is thoroughly conversant with all the details of the Mayflower and her own ancestral dignities. Recognizing the New England passion for its ancestry, a leading Boston journal offers a page, weekly, to open correspondence on the momentous question as to whether Winthrop Bellingham married Priscilla Patience Mather in 1699 or in 1700, and a multitude of similar questions concerning the vanished centuries. The Denver woman realized all this and was discreetly charitable in her judgment of her friend's failure to recognize the significant side of the political enfranchisement of women in Colorado. For despite some actual disadvantages and defects of woman suffrage in the centennial state, and a vast amount of exaggerated criticism on these defects, it is yet a benefit to the four states that enjoy it,--Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.
In a majority of the states of the entire nation there is a conviction that women are adequately represented and protected in all their rights, as things are, and that it is superfluous to increase the vote.
The anti-suffrage argument suggests many reflections whose truth must be admitted, and this side of the controversy is espoused and led by some proportion of men and women whose names inspire profound respect, if not conviction, with their belief. Still, the fact remains that when woman suffrage is subjected to the practical test of experience, the advantages are so obvious, its efficacy for good so momentous, that their realization fairly compels acceptance. In the entire nation there has never been a man or a woman whose clearness and profundity of intellect, moral greatness, and sympathetic insight into the very springs of national and individual life exceeded those of Lucy Stone, the remarkable pioneer in the political emancipation of women, whose logical eloquence and winning, beautiful personality was the early focus of this movement. Mrs. Stone surrounded herself with a noble group,--Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and others whose names readily suggest themselves, and with whom, in the complete companionship and sympathy of her husband, Dr. Henry B. Blackwell, she successfully worked, even though the final success has not yet been achieved. Other great and noble women--Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton--consecrated their entire lives and remarkable powers to the early championship of woman suffrage. The present ranks of women workers--the younger women--are so numerous, and they include so large a proportion of the most notable women of both the East and the West, that volumes would not afford sufficient room for adequate allusion. In Denver the leading people are fully convinced of the responsibility of women in politics. Although the ballot has not been generally granted to women, the very movement toward it has resulted in their higher education and their larger freedom in all ways. The situation reminds one of the "subtle ways" of Emerson's Brahma:
"If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.
"Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame.
"They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings."
Apparently, the principle of woman suffrage has "subtle ways" in which "to pass and turn again." It has recently turned in a manner to compel a new and more profound revision of all opinion and argument.
Colorado presents a most interesting field for the study of woman suffrage, and from any fair and adequate review of its workings and results there could hardly fail to be but one conclusion,--that of its signal value and importance as a factor in human progress. One of its special claims is of a nature not down on the bills,--the fact of the great intellectual enlargement and stimulus,--aside from its results, which the very exercise of political power gives to the women of the state. It is seen in the higher quality of conversational tone and the tendency to eliminate the inconsequential and the inane because great matters of universal interest were thus brought home to women in connection with their power to decide on these matters. This result is perhaps equally seen among the women who rejoice and the women who regret the fact of their political enfranchisement. For in Colorado, as well as in other states, there is a proportion of women who do not believe in the desirability of the ballot for themselves. They sincerely regret that it has been "forced," as they say, upon them. This proportion in Colorado is not a large one, but it includes some of the most intelligent and cultured women, just as an enthusiastic acceptance of the ballot includes a much larger proportion of this higher order of women. However, welcome or unwelcome, desired or not desired, the ballot is there, and so the women who regret this fact yet realize its responsibility and feel it a moral duty to use it wisely as well. And so they, too, study great questions, and discuss them, and fit themselves to use the power that is conferred upon them. All this reacts on the general tone of society, and the quality of conversation at ladies' lunches, at teas, and at clubs, is of a far higher order than is often found in other states among the more purely feminine gatherings.
Among the women who have successfully administered public office in Colorado was the late Mrs. Helen Grenfell, whose record as State Superintendent of Public Instruction was so remarkable that both political parties supported her. A Denver journal said of her:
"Mrs. Grenfell's term has lasted six years, the last two years having been under a Republican administration, although Mrs. Grenfell is a Democrat. Her most notable achievement has been in her conduct of the school lands of the state, making them valuable sources of revenue. Her policy from the first was against the sale of the school lands, which comprise some three million acres. The income from such sales had been limited, as the investments were prescribed, and the interest rate rather low, as Western interest goes. The leasing system was inaugurated under Mrs. Grenfell's direction, and the result was an increase of school revenues of nearly two hundred thousand dollars a year, with no decrease in the capital. The Land Department of the state shares the credit with the state superintendent of public instruction, as they have administered her policy wisely, but the policy was hers alone."
Judge Lindsay of Denver, giving an official opinion as to the desirability of woman suffrage for Colorado, said:
"Woman suffrage in Colorado for over ten years has more than demonstrated its justice. No one would dare to propose its repeal; and, if left to the men of the state, any proposition to revoke the right bestowed upon women would be overwhelmingly defeated.
"Many good laws have been obtained in Colorado which would not have been secured but for the power and influence of women.
"At some of the elections in Denver frauds have been committed. Ninety-nine per cent of these frauds were committed by men, without any connivance or assistance, direct or indirect, from women; but because one per cent were committed by women, there are ignorant or careless-minded people in other states who actually argue that this is a reason for denying women the right to vote. If it were a just reason for denying suffrage to women, it would be a ten times greater reason for denying it to men.
"In Colorado it has never made women any the less womanly or any the less motherly, or interfered with their duties in the home, that they have been given the right to participate in the affairs of state.
"Many a time I have heard the 'boss' in the political caucus object to the nomination of some candidate because of his bad moral character, with the mere explanation that if the women found him out it might hurt the whole ticket. While many bad men have been nominated and elected to office in spite of woman suffrage, they have not been nominated and elected because of woman suffrage. If the women alone had a right to vote, it would result in a class of men in public office whose character for morality, honesty, and courage would be of a much higher order....
"People have no right to judge woman suffrage in Colorado by the election frauds in a few precincts. The election frauds in Philadelphia, where women do not vote, were never used as a reason why suffrage should be denied to men....
"With women, as with men, it requires more or less public sentiment to arouse them to their civic duties; but when aroused, as they frequently are, their power for good cannot be overestimated. Again, the very fact that the women have such a power is a wonderful reserve force in the cause of righteousness in Colorado, and has been a powerful deterrent in anticipating and opposing the forces of evil.
"It does not take any mother from her home duties or cares to spend ten minutes in going to the polling place and casting her vote and returning to the bosom of her home; but in that ten minutes she wields a power that is doing more to protect that home now, and will do more to protect it in the future, and to protect all other homes, than any power or influence in Colorado.
"I know that the great majority of people in Colorado favor woman suffrage, after more than a decade of practical experience,--first, because it is fair, just, and decent; and secondly, because its influence has been good rather than evil in our political affairs."
Judge Lindsay's words represent the general attitude of the representative people of the state.
The Hon. Henry M. Teller, senior senator of Colorado, is one of the most interesting men in the Centennial State, and the traveller who may meet and talk with him is impressed with his quiet sincerity, with the sense of reserved power with which he seems endowed, and the refinement and directness of his methods. He is by birth an Eastern man, and a graduate of Harvard; but his mature life has been passed in Colorado. As a lawyer his law office claims much of his time and thought, even with all the great tide of national interests with which he is identified. He is a thorough and, indeed, an astute politician; not in the "machine" sense, but with a very clear and comprehensive grasp of the situation and a large infusion of practical sagacity. Senator Teller is in no sense an enthusiast. He is responsive to high aims and high ideals; he knows what they are, so to speak; he recognizes them on sight; he never falls into the error of under-valuing them; but he is not a man to be carried away by an ecstatic vision, and he would have no use for wings at all where he had feet. He would regard the solid earth as a better foundation, on the whole, than the air, and one more suited to existing conditions.
Senator Teller has had more than a quarter of a century's experience in political life and in statesmanship. For two years he was a member of the Cabinet. For twenty-seven years he has been in the Senate, where, with Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, he shared the highest honor, and the most absolute confidence, in both his flawless integrity and conspicuous ability, that the Senate, and the nation as well, can give to him.
Senator Patterson, the junior senator from Colorado, is a man whom, if he encounters an obstacle does not grant it the dignity of recognition. He instantly discovers the end,--the desired result,--and declares, per saltum, "It is right; it should be done,--it shall be done." Senator Patterson is a man of very keen perceptions and one with whom it is easy to come into touch instantly; he is responsive, sympathetic, full of faith that the thing that ought to be accomplished can be accomplished, and therefore that it shall be. Senator Patterson has the typical American experience of successful men lying behind him. He was on familiar terms with the intricacies of a newspaper office in his youth; he studied in an Indiana college without an annual expenditure of that twenty thousand dollars which some of the latter-day Harvard undergraduates find indispensable to the process of securing their "B. A.," and tradition records, indeed, that the junior Colorado senator, in the prehistoric days of his youth, set out for the fountain of learning with a capital of forty dollars; that he frugally walked from Crawfordsville to Indianapolis that he might not deplete his financial estate which was destined to buy a scholarship, and that in this unrecorded tour in the too, too truly rural region of his early life, he cleaned two clocks on the way in payment for lodging, and that he cleaned them uncommonly well. Of all this traditionary history who shall say? Senator Patterson is a man who would always keep faith with his aims and convictions. He is sunny and full of wit, and full of faith in the ultimate triumph of good things in general, and is, all in all, one of the most genial and delightful of men--and senators.
It is related that Senator Patterson first dawned upon Denver in its primeval period of 1872, when its municipal affairs were conducted by two prominent--if not eminent--gentlemen, one of whom was the champion gambler, and the other the champion brewer of the metropolis. There were eleven thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight other citizens in this municipality besides the brewer and the gambler , and the eleven thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight, like "The Ten" of early Florentine history, decided that would "reform the town." Their united effort was to elect Mr. Patterson as Mayor. And a good one he proved; and he has gone on and on, in the minds as well as in the hearts of his fellow-citizens, until now he is the colleague of Senator Teller, and he offers another typical illustration of true American integrity and honorable ambition and success. Personally, Senator Patterson is one of the most winning men in the world, and one delights in his success and the high estimation in which he is held.
The development of Colorado and other parts of the great Southwest during the past half-century has created a new order of employment in that of the government expert,--the specialist in upland or hydraulic irrigation, in engineering and mining problems. The government surveying work has also increased largely, both in extent and in the greater number of specialties now required. The Geological Survey and the Agricultural Department, both included under the Department of the Interior, are rapidly multiplying branches of work that require both the skilled training and ability for original research and accomplishment. These positions, which command government salaries at from some eighteen to twenty-five hundred dollars a year, afford such opportunity for the expert to reveal his value that private corporations and business houses continually draw on the ranks of the government employees. Of late years the demand for the expert irrigation engineer has been so great in Colorado as to seriously embarrass the government forces by drawing some of the best men for private service. Denver is an especial centre for these enterprises, as being the natural metropolis for the vast inter-mountain region and the plains country of the Missouri River. This vast territory will support many millions more of population. In fact, the dwellers within this described territory at this day are but pioneers on the frontier to what the future will develop, although they already enjoy all the benefits of the older states, with countless advantages beside which they cannot enjoy.
The smelteries in Denver, of which the Grant is the largest, treat millions of pounds of copper and lead, and great quantities of silver and gold, while there are also extensive ones in Pueblo, Leadville, Durango, and other places. There is also a good proportion of Colorado ore which is not treated at all at smelteries, but is of a free-milling order. The revenue from mining has exceeded fifty millions of dollars annually of late years, but the revenue from agriculture exceeds that of the mines, and to these must be added some twenty millions a year from live stock during the past two or three years. In the aggregate, Colorado has an internal revenue of hardly less than one hundred millions a year, and this largely passes through Denver as the distributing point, constituting the Capital one of the most prosperous of young cities. Denver stands alone in a rich region. One thousand miles from Chicago, six hundred miles from Kansas City, and four hundred miles from Salt Lake City, Denver holds its place without any rival.
The ideal conditions of living have never been entirely combined in any one locality on this sublunary planet, so far as human history reveals; and with all the scenic charm, the rich and varied resources, and the phenomenal development of Colorado, no one could truthfully describe it as Utopia. There is no royal road to high achievement in any line. Difficulties and obstacles are "a part of the play," and he alone is wise who, by his own determination, faith, and persistence of energy, transforms his very obstacles into stepping-stones and thus gains the strength of that which he overcomes.
Northern Colorado has great resources even beyond the coal fields that will make it the power centre; with its prestige of Denver, and such surrounding towns as Greeley, Boulder, Fort Collins, Golden, and others, all of which fall within a group of social and commercial centres that will soon be interconnected by a network of electric trolley lines. For the electric road between Greeley and Denver Mr. J. D. Houseman has secured a right of way one hundred and fifty feet wide, the rails being midway between the Union Pacific and the Burlington lines. Mr. Houseman is one of the noted financiers of the East who came to Denver to incorporate and build this road, and his is only one of three companies that are now in consultation with the power company negotiating for the supplies which will enable them to build the proposed new roads.
The Seeman Tunnel, which is to be constructed near Idaho Springs, at a distance of fifty miles from Denver, and which is to be twelve miles in length, although at an elevation of eighty-five hundred feet, is yet to extend under Fall River and the Yankee, Alice, and the Lombard mining districts. It will be one of the marvels of the state, and will penetrate a thousand mining veins. The Continental Mines, Power and Reduction Company, recently incorporated with a capital of three millions, of which Captain Seeman is the president, owns many of the mining veins which will be touched by this tunnel. Many of the veins to which this tunnel will afford approach have not been accessible heretofore for more than four or five months in the year. For the remaining six or seven months travel is practically impossible in these mountains; the "claims" cannot be reached, as they lie in the region of perpetual snow. When the Seeman Tunnel is completed the owner of any claim that is tapped by it can, by paying a certain royalty per ton for each ton of ore mined, obtain the right to work it in the tunnel, thus being able to proceed through the entire year and at a far less cost in production than at present. Regarding this gigantic enterprise, Captain Seeman said, in June of 1906, that the work would be pushed as rapidly as men, money, and machinery could advance it, and, he added: "I consider it one of the greatest tunnels ever attempted, and one that will hold the record for mining tunnels. I am confident that we will strike enough ore within the first two or three miles to keep us busy for years." The Leviathan is one of the first veins that the tunnel is expected to tap,--a vein three hundred feet wide on the surface,--and while already traced for more than three miles, it holds every promise for as yet uncalculated extension. The Lombard is another vein of leading importance which promises to be a bonanza. Gold is the principal mineral that appears in these veins, although silver, lead, and copper are found. Another ore, tungsten, used for hardening in armor plates, large guns, and the best mechanical implements,--an ore valued at six hundred dollars per ton,--has been discovered in these veins. The Seeman Tunnel is located directly under James's Peak.
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