The land of enchantment from Pike's Peak to the Pacific

Front matter

LIUAN WHITING

PICTURESQUE BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL, GRAND CANON, ARIZONA

THE LAND OF

Contents

Chapter Page

I. With Western Stars and Sunsets ... 3

II. Denver the Beautiful . . . . . . . 15

Chapter I With Western Stars And Sunsets

" The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plains — Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns ? "

Tennyson

" It may be that the gulfs will wash us down.''''

Tennyson

•' My father's kingdom is so large that people perish with cold at one extremity whilst they are suffocated with heat at the other. "

Cyrus to Xenophon

The good American of the Twentieth century by no means defers going to Paris until he dies, but anticipates the joys of Paradise by making a familiarity with the French capital one of the consolations that tend to the alleviation of his enforced terrestrial sojourn. All Europe, indeed, has become the pleasure-ground of American tourists, a large proportion of whom fail to realize that in our own country there are enchanted regions in which the traveller feels that he has been caught up in the starry immensities and heard the words not lawful for man to utter. Within the limits of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California there are four centres of sublime and unparalleled scenic sublimity which stand alone and unrivalled in the world. Neither the Alps nor the Himalayas can offer any parallel to the phenomena of the mountain and desert systems of the Southwest as wrought by the march of ages, presenting unique and incomparable problems of scientific interest that defy solution, and which are inviting the constant study and increasing research of many among the most eminent specialists of the day in geology and metallurgy. The Pike's Peak region offers to the traveller not only the ascent of the stupendous Peak, but also the " Short Line " trip between Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek, which affords forty-five miles of marvellous mountain and canon effects. The engineering problem of the ascent of St. Peter's Dome, — a huge mass of granite towering eleven thousand feet into the air, around which the steel track winds in terraces, glory after glory of view repeating itself from the ascending vistas as the train climbs the dizzy height, — the engineering problem that is here at once presented and solved, has attracted scientific attention all over the world as the most extraordinary achievement in mountain transportation. The Grand Canon of the Colorado in Arizona, two days' journey from the Pike's Peak region, the Petrified Forests that lie also in Arizona, seventy-five miles beyond the border of New Mexico, and that Buried Star near Canon Diablo, make up a group that travellers and scientists are beginning ardently to appreciate. Colorado, New

Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California offer, all in all, a landscape panorama that for grandeur, charm of climate, and rich and varied resources is unrivalled. Imagination falters before the resources of this region and the inducements it offers as a locality in which to live surrounded by perpetual beauty. The air is all exhilaration ; the deep blue skies are a miracle of color by day, and a miracle of shining firmament by night ; the land offers its richly raried returns in agriculture, fruit, mining, or grazing, according to the specific locality ; the inhabitants represent the best quality of American life ; the opportunities and advantages already offered and constantly increasing are greater than would at first be considered possible. This entire Southwest can only be accurately defined as the Land of Enchantment.

" Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world,"

exclaims Tennyson's Ulysses, and the wanderer under Western stars that hang, like blazing clusters of radiant light, midway in the air, cannot but feel that all these new experiences open to him vistas of untold significance and undreamed-of inspiration.

" It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,"

is the haunting refrain of his thoughts when, through the luminous air, he gazes into the golden glory of sunsets whose splendor is forever impressed on his memory.

Every hour of the journey through the Southwest is an hour of enchantment in the intense interest of the scenes. One must not miss the outlook when descending the steep grade down Raton Mountain ; nor must he fail to be on the alert in passing through the strange old pueblos of Isleta and Acoma ; he must not miss Canon Diablo when crossing that wonderful chasm on the wonderful bridge, nor the gleam of the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff on its pine-clad hill-slope, nor fail to gaze on the purple Franciscan peaks on which the lingering sunset rays recall to him the poet's line, —

"Day in splendid purple dying."

Like a modern Telemachus he sees " the baths of all the western stars. 1 ''

Between La Junta in Colorado and Los Angeles in California there lies a journey which, in connection with its side trips, is unequalled, because there is only one Grand Canon, one Pike's Peak with its adjacent wonderland, and because, as a rule, elsewhere in the United States — or in the world, for that matter, — forests do not turn into stone nor stars hurl themselves into the earth with a force that buries them too deep for resurrection. Through the East and the Middle West the mountains do not, on general principles, attempt any competition with the clouds, but content themselves with the gentle altitude of a mile or so ; the stars stay decorously in the firmament and are not shooting madly about, trying fantastic Jules Verne experiments to determine whether or not they can shine better from the centre of the earth than from their natural place in the upper air ; the stars of the Eastern skies " stand pat," so to speak, and are not flying in the face of the universe ; so that, altogether, in these regions it would seem quite evident that

" The world is built in order, And the atoms march in tune."

These exceptional variations to the established order, however, — these wonderful peaks and canons 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 Canon, 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 ; Glen wood 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 Canon, 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 Canon, 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 entensive 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 (classic, or the romance 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 (in Colorado) 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.

It is, literally, " such stuff as dreams are made of," and when one drops off into slumber, he utilizes it for his fancies of the night. Miss Harriet Hosmer, the famous sculptor, once related a story of a night journey she took with a party of congenial spirits on horseback between Rome and Florence. By way of " a lark " they rested by day and rode by night, and the beauty of the effects of light and shade sank into her mind so that she drew on them thirty years or more later for the wonderful designs in her great " Gates, 1 '' which even rival those of Ghiberti. " The night hath counsel " and suggestion of artistic beauty as well, and the effects that one may get from a flying train are impossible to obtain under any other condition. After all, is it not a part of the fine art of living to take the enjoyment of the moment as it comes, in whatever guise, without lamenting that it is not something else ?

These splendidly equipped trains of the Santa Fe 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 Jnuta.

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 Montesuma's Well ; to the mysterious ruin of Casa Grande ; to the Twin

Lakes (which lie on a mountain crest ) ; and to study other marvels of nature in Arizona. The splendors of Colorado, with the myriad mountain peaks and silver lakes, the mysterious canons and deep gorges, the roseflushed 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 15 CHAPTER II

" I will make me a city of gliding and wide-way ed silence,

With a highway of glass and of gold; With life of a colored peace, and a lucid leisure.

Of smooth electrical ease, Of sweet excursion of noiseless and brilliant travel,

With room in your streets for the soul. "

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 summer 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 it 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 Capitol has an enchanting mountain view ; it also contains a fine museum of historic relics found in Colorado from cliff-dwellings and other points. A million dollars has been offered — and refused — for this state collection. The City Park, covering nearly four hundred acres, with its two lakes, its beds of flowers and groups of shrubbery ; its casino, where an orchestra plays every afternoon in the summer, while dozens of carnages and motor cars with their tastefully dressed occupants draw up and listen to the music, is a centre of attraction to both residents and visitors. This park is to Denver as is the Pincian Hill to Rome, or as Hyde Park to London, — the fashionable drive and rendezvous. Great beds of scarlet geraniums contrast with the emerald green of the grass, while here and there a fountain throws its spray into the air. Far away on the horizon are the encircling mountains in view for over two hundred miles, the ranges taking on all the colors of fairyland, while a deep turquoise sky, soft and beautiful, bends over the entire panorama. From this plateau four great peaks are in view : Pike's Peak, seventy-five miles to the south ; Long's, Gray's, and James's peaks, all distinctly silhouetted against the sky, rising from the serrated range which connects them. During these open-air concerts in the park there is a midsummer holiday air over the scene as if all the city were en fete.

The architectural scheme of Denver's residential region harmonizes with the landscape. The houses are not the palaces -of upper Fifth Avenue and Riverside drive, or of Massachusetts or Connecticut avenues in Washington ; but there is hardly an individual residence that has not legitimate claim to beauty. The tower, the oriel window, and the broad balcony are much in evidence ; and the piazza, with its swinging seat, its easy chairs, and table disposed on a bright rug, suggest a charm of vie intime that appeals to the passer-by. Books, papers, and magazines are scattered over the table : the home has the unmistakable air of being lived in and enjoyed ; of being the centre of a happy, intelligent life, buoyant with enterprise and energy, and identified with the social progress of the day. On the greenest of lawn a jet of water or, in many cases, a fountain plays, the advantage of an irrigated country being that the householder creates and controls his own climatic conditions. The rain, — it raineth every day when irrigation determines the shower ; roses grow in riotous profusion on the lawn, and the crimson " rambler * climbs the portico ; lilies nod in the luminous gold of the sunshine, and all kinds of foliage plants lend their rich color to these beautiful grounds that surround every home. To the children growing up in Denver the spectacle of dreary streets would be as much of a novelty as the ruins of Karnak. The line that divides the past from the present is not only very definite, but also very recent, as is indicated by the question of a five-year-old lad who wonderingly asked : " Mamma, did they ever have horses draw the trolley cars ? " The mastodon is not more remote in antiquity to the man or woman of to-day than was the idea of horses drawing a car to this child. Between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries the gulf of demarcation is almost as wide as between the fifteenth and the nineteenth.

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.

" How are you to-day ? " questions the friendly voice. " Did you see so-and-so in the morning papers ? And what do you think about it ? and can you be ready at eleven to go to hear Mrs. lecture? and at one will you lunch with Mrs. ? the entire conversation to be

in Italian ? and could you go at about four this afternoon to a tea to meet an Oriental Princess who will discuss the laws of reincarnation ? and will you also dine with us at seven, and go later to the Woman's Municipal Club that holds a conference to-night ? " All those lovely things fall upon one with apparently no thought of its being an unusual day — this is Denver ! This is twentieth-century life. This is an illustration of what can be done when the non-essential is eliminated from the days and that which is essential is felicitously pursued.

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 (unsuccessfully) 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 (and one not without its claims) that women are adequately represented and protected in all their rights, as things are, and that it is superfluous to increase the vote.