Shoshone, and other western wonders

Preface

I

N the preface to his volume called the " Oregon Trail," — one of the most delightful of his books, by the way, and one which should be regularly sold on the " overland trains " of the Union Pacific, — the historian Parkman describes how, shortly after graduation, he, in company with his cousin and classmate, Quincy A. Shaw, was one day journeying in the then wilderness, which is now Eastern Colorado. He says : —

" I remember that, as we rode by the foot of Pike's Peak, when for a fortnight we met no face of man, my companion remarked, in a tone anything but complacent, that a time would come when those plains would be a grazing country, the buffalo give place to tame cattle, farm-houses be scattered along the watercourses, and wolves, bears, and Indians be numbered

VI PREFACE.

among the things that were. We condoled with each other on so melancholy a prospect, but we little thought what the future had in store."

This was in 1846. The object of the present volume is to describe to the tourist a route beginning where Parkman left off, at the foot of Pike's Peak, passing through the wonderful mountain and desert scenery of Colorado and Eastern Utah to Great Salt Lake, thence northward by the way of the Falls of Shoshone and the great lava bed of Idaho, through which the Snake cuts its way, to the .plateau of the Yellowstone. There rivers which flow to the Gulf pf Mexico, the Gulf of California, and the North Pacific, all find their source. From this mountain birthplace of flowing waters, the tourist w^ould emerge by the gateway of the Missouri.

Travelled Americans are more familiar with Europe than with their own country; and yet it would not be easy anywhere in Europe to find so much that is novel, interesting and beautiful crowded into one short journey. There are historical associations, also, which attach to the trip. It is now familiar ground, but it was the

PREFACE. vii

field of the first explorations ever attempted by the United States Government. As they approach it, most people probably suppose Pike to have been some miner of " the forty-nine " period; and they never know that the name, Pike's Peak, is the familiar monument of a gallant soldier of the United States, a brigradiergeneral of the War of 1812, Zebulon M. Pike, who in his thirty-fifth year met his death at the assault of York as it was then called, now Toronto, in April, 1813. Seven years before, in 1806, he had started from St. Louis, under orders from President Jefferson, to find his way to the head-waters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers. "While toiling thither he first descried, upon the 15th of November, 1806, the blue peaks of the Mexican mountains to the westward ; and accordingly the most prominent among them has from that day to this been known as Pike's Peak.

So, also, the scientific name of Great Salt Lake is Bonneville, after that Captain Bonneville whose life and curious adventures amongthe Indians about the year 1 830 have been

Vlll PREFACE.

vividly described by Washington Irving ; though with Httle actual knowledge of the subject about which he was writing.

As the traveller goes north, following the route laid down for him by Mr. Roberts in this volume, he may enter the Yellowstone Park by the beautiful Canon of the Madison. Here he comes directly upon the trail of the expedition of Lewis and Clarke, sent out by President Jefferson in the year 1803 to find its way through the northern portion of the recently acquired Louisiana purchase to the mouth of the great river discovered by Captain Gray, of Boston, in the ship Columbia, in May, 1792. It was on the 28th of July, 1805, that the two famous explorers, having toiled slowly up the Missouri, reached the point where the great river forked in three directions ; and they say : —

"We were therefore induced to discontinue the name of Missouri, and give to the southwest branch the name of Jefferson, in honor of the President of the United States, the projector of the enterprise ; and called the middle branch Madison, after James Madison, Secretary of State."

PREFACE. IX

Returning the following year, having wintered at the mouth of the Columbia, Lewis and Clarke reached St. Louis on the 23d of September, 1806, about two months after Lieutenant Pike had started on the journey which was to leave him a prisoner in the hands of the Spanish authorities at Santa Fe. The modern traveller, following the itinerary laid down in this volume, will thus go out by the route of Lieutenant Pike, and return by that of Lewis and Clarke, passing on his way through the scene of the adventures of Bonneville.

But the tourist who would still like to have a taste, though hardly, perhaps, more than a remote flavor of what is known as '* roughing it" in his journey, has no time to lose. Civilization, with all that the name implies, is rapidly taking possession of the whole mountain region of the West. Down to the days of Parkman, Colorado was much the same as when it was first explored by Pike. The change has come within the last twenty-five years ; and the change which has already taken place is suggestive of the yet greater change to come.

X PREFACE.

For the man or woman who, tired of the cities and of civilization, wishes for a time to get near to Nature, there is still much left west of the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. Neither the steam railroad nor the electric road has yet marred the Yellowstone. The luxury and keen enjoyment of two days' staging even are to be had between Beaver Canon and the Firehole of the Yellowstone.

The trip merits all that Mr. Roberts has said in its commendation. A few months ago Carl Schurz chanced to remark to the writer that of all earthly places his eyes ever rested on, Henry's Lake in Idaho, at the gates of the Yellowstone, seemed to him nearest to a terrestrial paradise. The remark met with a warm response. The day is not remote when at the head of Henry's Lake will be found a large summer hotel to which those residing in our Eastern cities, who are weary of watering-places and of the familiar European trips, will go to breathe in health from the fresh mountain air and to enjoy a scenery and a nearness to Nature which it is not easy anywhere else to find in

PREFACE. xi

equal proportion. That region is still wild. The woods are full of game, and the waters teem with fish. Day after day you can walk or go on horseback through those park-like mountain reaches, and feel that you are wholly away from the haunts of men. And yet in a few years they will be hardly less frequented than the White Mountains or the Catskills now are.

It is still rare to meet any one w^ho has seen the Falls of the Snake ; and people look with mild surprise upon those who, having visited Shoshone, presume to compare it with Niagara. Yet no one possessed of a keen eye for the beautiful and the picturesque can visit the two places without feeling that the Idaho cataract, high up in the great table-land amid its lava beds, and under those wonderful mountain skies and in that mountain atmosphere, is incomparably the more attractive, and, indeed, except in volume of water, the more wonderful, as well as more interesting, of the two.

The proposed trip includes much, though for one starting even from the Eastern or seaboard

Xll PREFACE.

cities it can be made in the course of three or, at most, four weeks. It involves a lasting personal acquaintance, as it were, with Niagara, Chicago, the great plains, the mountainous regions and summer resorts of Colorado, the Canons of the Arkansas and the Gunnison, the Marshall Pass, the Great Salt Lake of Utah, with its strange, picturesque, geological formation and pure, clear, health-giving atmosphere, the Falls of the Snake, the two days' staging across the park-like mountain plateau which leads to the sources of the Madison, the innumerable wonders of the Yellowstone Park, and finally the journey along the head-waters of the Missouri, all ending at St. Paul. No one who makes the trip is likely ever to forget it. That more may realize what it is, and so be induced to make it, is the object of the present

volume.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

Boston, July 20, 1888.

CONTENTS,

Chapter

Page

I. First Impressions i

II. The City of Denver . 22

III. Clear Creek and its Surroundings . 53

IV. In the Shadow of Pike's Peak ... 73 V. Through the Heart of Colorado . . 95

VI. Glimpses of Utah 119

VII. Shoshone 142

VIII. A New Route to Wonderland . . . 174 IX. Among the Geysers of the Yellowstone . . 202

X. Homeward Bound 246

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Page

Climbing the Rockies Frontispiece

The Dawn of Civilization 5

A Prairie Town . 15

General View of Denver 25

Fourteenth Street, Denver 29

The State Capitol 37

The Opera House 50

Hanging Rock, Clear Creek Canon 55

Idaho Springs 59

Manitou 75

The Antlers 84

A Spring House %%

On the Road to Pike's Peak 93

Currecanti Needle, Black Canon 103

Castle Gate 113

East Side of Salt Lake City 123

The Temple and Tabernacle, Salt Lake .... 128

Pulpits and Organ 130

The Grand Leap 143 xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Pack

The Great Falls, Shoshone 153

Above the Falls 157

The Twin Shoshone Falls 162

Under the Great Falls, Shoshone 165

Down the Canon from Twin Falls 169

Madison Valley 175

Snake River Crossing .186

Fording the Snake 189

Tyghee Pass 191

Manley's Cabin 196

Falls of the Yellowstone 203

Old Faithful 222

The Giant Geyser 229

Following the Yellowstone 237

Grand Canon of the Yellowstone 241

Climbing the Terraces 251

The Hot Springs Terrace 262

AND

OTHER WESTERN WONDERS.

OTHER WESTERN WONDERS.

Chapter I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS

AT the city of Omaha, overlooking the muddy waters of the Missouri, one is at last face to face with the far West. The city itself affords a striking illustration of the untiring industry that has so materially changed the aspect of the country lying between the Rockies and the Missouri. Surrounding Omaha the progress of later days is most marked ; but in the far distance are still the sea-like plains that were once the terror of a restless army bound across their trackless wastes toward Pike's Peak.

In the *' good old days," as some enjoy calling that period during which the middle West was a veritable terra incognita, " the West " was Buffalo. Later, the distinction was claimed by Chicago. To-day, both these cities have lost such prestige. Even Denver, far away as it is, can scarcely be regarded as on the outskirts of civilization. For beyond it is Salt Lake City; to the northwest are Cheyenne and Laramie ; in the extreme north are Butte and Helena. The growth of the trans-Missouri country has been one of phenomenal rapidity. Every year the changes are marked and important. Denver, Kansas City, Omaha, and other places have grown from villages to towns, and from towns to cities. One need not read to obtain their history ; he can have it told by many a settler. The cities were born and have attained their manhood within a quarter of a century.

In taking his first trip westward one must prepare to be disappointed. He will find less barbarism than he expected, and more civilization. The era which the novels of brilliant hue depict is an era of the past. Much is rough and uncouth, of course, and there are vast areas which, minus the Indian and the buffalo, are much as they were before the advent of civilization. But pressing hard upon neglected wastes, and fast obliterating all traces of that wild West which " Buffalo Bill " delights to illustrate, are the farms and homes of the new-comers. On every hand are seen the results they have accomplished. Study as you travel, and you will find the middle West as interesting as a novel. You can see history created. The cities are monuments to a people who in the future, if not to-day, will be famous for their thrift and energy.

If one's aim is enjoyment, he should take the West in sections. Try to see the entire region in one summer, and you will lose the charm which the more leisurely traveller gains. He who pays a flying visit to Europe, giving an hour to the Louvre, a day to Venice, a night to Paris, returns an ignoramus, confused and tired. So with the West: if too great haste is made the observer becomes confused. No particular spot is photographed on his mind. All is a jumble of prairie, mountain, river, and valley.

In order, therefore, that we may return from our summer holiday refreshed in body and in mind, let us not journey far, nor hastily. At Omaha we can mark our course. It is not so much a question where it shall lead, as it is where it shall not lead. Before us lies the West: close at hand the middle West ; in the far distance the Pacific West. Colorado, of course, is one objective point. Through that State extend the Rockies, ever attractive and alluring; and there too is Denver, the untiring city that to-day is one of the wonders of the country. Then, from Colorado, what more natural than that Utah should be visited, — Utah, the stronghold of Mormonism, the land of sunshine and cultivated valleys and inland salty sea? But there we pause, and stifling the longing for lands still farther westward, turn northward through Idaho, and then eastward through the National Park, our " Wonderland," with its spouting geysers, its gorgeously colored canons, and forests of sweet-smelling trees.

This, then, is our course. We will make a circle of it, nearly; for with Omaha as our starting-point, we will make St. Paul the end of our journey; and in the month or more that we are " on the wing," much of the glorious scenery of the middle West will be ours to enjoy. In our path will be cities that cannot fail to command admiration ; views over which our artist will go into ecstasies. W^e shall climb mountains, follow the course of winding streams, loiter at the Shoshone Falls, — higher and wider than those of Niagara, — and, toward the end of our time, wander at will among the curious formations of the Yellowstone.

When it was first proposed to build the Union Pacific Railway, the idea was regarded as visionary, hazardous, and foolish. Now that the road is an accomplished fact, one easily forgets that its construction ever appeared impossible. It is the pioneer line westward from the Missouri ; and to-day, after escaping from its net-work of branches in Nebraska, extends to Denver, Cheyenne, and Ogden. By lease and purchase it has also its Pacific coast terminus, and has penetrated the rich mineral fields of Montana. If only the early disbelievers in the Union Pacific could see it now, how strong would be their desire to hide from the gaze of the world !

The course of the Union Pacific from Omaha to Denver is through Nebraska to Denver Junction, and thence southwest to the famous Colorado city. The river Platte is followed nearly the entire distance, and one is led through a region that is fast becoming famous for its farms and vast agricultural areas.

lO SHOSHONE.

It is often said that the plains are dull and monotonous. He who is alive to the beauties of Nature, or who is interested in whatever is novel, can never agree to this. Their very history gives them interest. Some of the fiercest battles that the pioneers ever waged were fought on the ground that we too often pass over without a thought of the events of twenty years ago. Every inch of the way across Nebraska was contested. Recalling the past, I can still see the long trains of emigrants, bound for the new El Dorado ; and at night, when there are prairie fires to be seen, there comes vividly before me the picture of those guarded halts of long ago, when smaller camp-fires were lighted, and men hardly dared to sleep for fear of lurking savages watching for a chance to begin their work of murder and destruction.

Life on the plains is less hazardous to-day than it was before the advent of the railway; but I doubt if the labor of living is less severe. One is not very apt to give particular thought as to how men gain a foothold, nor to the manner in which they begin their work of making farms out of the duU-hued prairie land. And yet the modus operandi might very likely be

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. IT

studied with advantage. The task is not an easy one, we may be sure, and there arc trials long and severe. There are many foreigners among the Nebraska farmers, and many of the new towns are German in everything but their appearance. That, to be frank, is American and Western ; not interesting to look at, but thoroughly comforting to all who may be interested in the growth of our country. The rapidity with which Nebraska villages grow is most astonishing. The only pity is that with age ^nd size they do not increase in beauty.

Early in the spring the plains are brilliant with carpetings of vari-colored flowers. They are scattered like brilliants over the vast rolling billows of earth, and, in contrast with the green of the grasses, give the country a richness of coloring which is indescribably attractive. As summer draws nearer the delicately tinted visitors of spring-time give way to an universal brownness. By July all freshness, and all coloring save that of brown, are lost. But the blueness of the sky remains, and that, together with the mellow brown of the plains, gives a sufficient contrast of tint to make the scene far from commonplace.

I can never decide which portion of the day I Hke best when on the prairies. Morning is dehghtfuliy fresh. The sun is a ball of fire when its first flashes of golden light come across the unbroken stretches, and the prairie dogs, demurely sitting on their hind legs, give it noisy greeting. Through the night you have been asleep. The dull rumble of the cars has soothed you to a rest such as you have not had for months. Waking refreshed in mind and body, and breathing in the fresh, clear air as you stand on the rear platform looking over the quiet country, life ceases to be a dull reality. You catch the spirit of the scene, and are alert. Then comes the long, idle day. The towns you pass are all in embryo. Some are more rudely built than others, but all are new, and each lays claim to distinction as being the centre of some reg-ion sure to attract in the future an enormous population. Here the railway follows a winding stream, that now hides beneath its sandy bed and again crawls lazily over it, and then passes through fields of growing corn, or, like a ship, rides gallantly over the rolling mounds that have been so often likened to the waves of a noiseless sea.

Nebraska may be said to have already had three distinct epochs in its history. The first was that in which the Indians held undisputed sway ; the second that in which the forerunners of the present civiHzation began to make their memorable overland journeys; and the third that of the present progress. Of the first we have many traditions and some tangible information handed down by the ultra-adventurous who lived for a time among the Indians and studied their mode of life. Of the second we are better informed. In that second period brave old Ben HoUiday had established his famous stage-line to and across the Rockies, and such observing travellers as Bayard Taylor and Samuel Bowles had made pilgrimages to the still doubtful quantity familiarly known as '* the West." The amount of romance crowded into the period immediately preceding that which witnessed the advent of the railways would make many an interesting volume. Who to-day can begin to realize the hardships of the pioneers? If ever chivalry existed in this country, it had its reign while the emigrant trains were slowly traversing our Western plains. Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, and other famous scouts have an unique place in history.

Little can be said of the third great period of Nebraska's history beyond that which is already known. The census will show the rapidity with which the country is being settled ; and one has only to visit the region from year to year to note its steady progress in material development. In the near past Nebraska was chiefly famous as a grazing country. To-day it is one of the great farming regions of the middle West. Time was when the rainfall was insufficient to grow crops ; but now even this disadvantage no longer exists. Year by year the rainfall increases. In explanation of this phenomenon — if it be a phenomenon — various causes are assigned : one theory being that moisture is attracted by cultivation of the soil; another that railroads are followed by rain-clouds ; another that the old-time hardness of the soil no longer exists, so that water is retained in the earth, and, evaporating, creates clouds that formerly had no source of existence. Whatever the reason may be, however, the fact remains that Nebraska, as well as its neighbors, has changed for the better, and can no longer, by any possibility, be regarded as a part of the Great American Desert which in our childhood days was represented as covering an alarmingly large area of our country.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. I7

One truth regarding it is that you do not become acquainted with its best or more interesting features by simply travelling through that portion of the country which the railway has chosen. One has passing glimpses of the many *' prairie towns," which are so sure an indication o( the actual progress being made ; and there are isolated " dugouts " scattered along the way. But the largest and most productive farms are mostly well away from the railroad, and the peculiarities of life in a country so lately settled as Nebraska are only discovered by personal investigation. Study the pioneer Nebraskan, and you will not only be amused but instructed. His life is an altogether strange one, not resembling in the least that of any other man whose progress you have ever chanced to follow. His home is a dugout, or, if fortune has smiled upon him, an adobe, with a roof of sods, and his nearest neighbor lives twenty miles away. And yet I question if you will anywhere find more contentment than exists in these humble abodes. I know not what it is, — the climate, the hope of better times to come, perhaps, — but there is something which gives the homesteader that which few of us ever have, — the power to smile when the outlook is darkest ; a brave heart, no matter what the trials are. You will find lone women in the single-room dugouts, and you will also find whole families there. One can never fail to detect any real progress in the family welfare ; for with better circumstances comes the cabin, — a degree above that of the dugout, — and following the cabin the ugly but still comfortable frame house.

Mr. Frank H. Spearman, in a paper on the American Desert, published in " Harper's Magazine " for July, 1888, says that the " first settler, with rare exceptions, ekes out a half-starved existence until he can make proof on his land ; by this time he is eager to sell to one of the second crop of pioneers, — men who bring a little money with them to fight the battle with. As a rule, though, the necessity of incurring debts to keep things going beats this second class, and they in turn give way to the thrifty farmers who come prepared and able to stay. For it must not be supposed that the original homesteader is necessarily a farmer. You will find all sorts and conditions of men among them, from ministers to cowboys, from bankrupt business men to the latest exile from Russia. All

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. I9

of these, together with professional men and tradesmen in the villages and a fair sprinkling of bona fide farmers, appear in the ranks of the homesteaders."

As illustrative of the rapid rate at which Nebraska is now being settled, Mr. Spearman quotes from an address delivered at the Cheyenne County, Nebraska, fair in the fall of 1887. '' General Morrow," he writes, " instances eighty-three thousand acres of land entered by homesteaders in a single county during three months of 1887. All the land officers of the West tell the same story ; their statistics sound like fables. The United States Land Office for the extreme southwestern part of Nebraska, embracing but a few counties, remitted last year to Washington $500,000 to pay for homesteads and pre-emption." Continuing, the writer says that Omaha, Kansas City, and other large centres are " simply a reflection of the farms of Kansas and Nebraska, and are dependent entirely on the desert for their business."

It is a little startling — because showing into what errors of prophecy our ignorance may lead us — to notice, as Mr. Spearman does, that in 1858 the "North American Review" said that our people, at that date, when there was scarcely a hamlet forty miles west of the Missouri River, '* had already reached their inland frontier." Before the end of 1880 the population of Nebraska numbered half a million. To-day, Mr. Spearman says, the State has twice that many people, and the cities of from three thousand to fifteen thousand inhabitants that have attained their present size within the past few years are evidence in themselves of the substantial development of the new West.

The average altitude of the country bordering the Missouri River is from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. At the base of the Rocky Mountains the elevation has increased to nearly six thousand feet. The slope from mountain to river is gradual and hardly perceptible. You are every day conscious of certain atmospheric changes and of the fact that the sunshine has at length become continuous. But no hills are climbed, and at a casual glance your surroundings are always the same.

" Nebraska is noted for the great number of its sunshiny days," says the writer whom I have so often quoted. "The catarrhs and rheums, the neuralgia and the consumption, of the East are unknown, except such cases as were contracted elsewhere. Although in summer the thermometer ranges very high, sultry heat is, of course, an impossibility at such an altitude. To be perfectly comfortable in the hottest weather, it is necessary only to keep out of the direct rays of the sun ; the nights are always cool." The soil of the State is easily cultivated, and is of surprising richness. It extends to a great depth, and is most easily tilled. Trees are fast being planted in and around every new town, and irrigating canals have been dug to convey the waters of the numerous " creeks," or small streams, to wherever the soil needed moisture. The destructive Dakota blizzard sweeps down upon the open prairies at times, but such visitations are rare. As a rule the winters are mild and invigorating. One rarely feels fatigue ; and life, to those once initiated, has charms which we, perhaps, noting so carelessly, cannot appreciate nor understand.

It is an all-day's journey from Omaha to Denver. Leaving the former city in the morning, you retire at night with the consciousness that all around you — to the north, south, east, and west — there is only the rolHng prairie, brown, far-reaching, restful to one whose eyes are tired of other sights. In the morning the scene has changed. Before you — a dark-blue wall cutting its way north and south — are the Rockies, the Alps of America. Their higher peaks are white with snow, and glisten like pinnacles of purest ice.

How beautiful they are, these mountains of stupendous height, how grandly outlined, of what overpowering size, only he who has looked upon them from the plains can understand. They are as fascinating as is, to many, the ocean. You long to reach them, to be near enough to study their contours, to see their ever-changing lights and shadows. In the early morning they are softened by a thin blue haze. They seem as light as air, and one doubts if the snow patches are not clouds. When first sighting the higher peaks you are forty or sixty, even a hundred, miles east of Denver; and yet the air is so clear, the distance so deceptive, that you cannot realize how far away you are from what you see. Many a worn-out pioneer, trudging beside his wagon with its painted sign, '' Pike's Peak or Bust," has thought his journey ended when the snow peaks first flashed their Hght upon him. And yet I venture to say that many a hope was doomed to disappointment, and that, even within sight of the long-sought goal, the journey of life was ended.