Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/coloradomagnificOOsteerich --m- ^m^^ THE MAGNIFICENT Special Round Trip Rates ...TO... Colorado and Utah Points Season of 190 t DATES OF SALE \ -^""^ ^^^^ *° ^°^^' ^"^^^s^^^- ( July lOth to August 31st, inclusive. Rate, One Fare plus S2.00 FROM Chicago, Peoria and Missouri River Points; also from stations in Oklahoma and Indian Territories, Nebraska and Kansas, to and including Colby, Kan., TO Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Glenwood Springs, Salt Lake and Ogden. ■nATTTc r»rr CAT ( ^^^y ^^^ ^° 9^^' ^"^^"sive. DATES OF SALE -j September ist to lOth, inclusive. Rate from Chicago, $25.00; from Missouri River, 1 15.00; from Peoria and points East of Missouri River proportionately lower, TO Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo. To Glenwood Springs $10.00, and to Salt Lake City and Ogden ;^i5.oo higher than to Denver. Final Return Limit of all tickets, October 31st. EAST-BOUND. Special round trip tickets will be on sale from Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo TO Chicago, Peoria, Des Moines, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Missouri River, Oklahoma and Indian Territories, St. Louis and intermediate points; also to Memphis, Tenn., at rate of one fare, plus $2 00. Final Return Limit of all tickets, October 31st, 1901. Stop-overs. — Stop-overs will be allowed at and West of Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo, as follows: To Colo- rado destinations, within the final limit; to Utah destinations, thirty days in both directions, not to exceed final limit. COLORADO the MAGNIFICENT JAMES W. STEELE PUBLISHED AND COPYRIGHTED BY THE PASSENGER DEPARTMENT OF THE CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND AND PACIFIC RAILWAY ALONq ,i^^^"^ ^^ GREAT ROCK ISLAND ROUTE ¥ Press of J. C. WiNSHip Company Chicago Ai;V WHY PEOPLE GO TO COLORADO. It is not the wandering instinct, nor merely the desire to go somewhere and the love of change. It is not in the majority of cases even failing health. It is because the name ''Colorado" covers the most remark- able scenic panorama in the civilized world, and at the same time the most accessible. It is difficult, to begin with, to realize even the ex- »tent of this piece of scenery. Colorado contains 104,500 square miles. It is as big as all New England with the great State of Illinois added, and two-thirds of this vast domain is mountains. Real mountains. The American citizen who has not seen these, and whose observations of mountain scenery have been confined to the groups and chains that lie east of the Mississippi, does not yet know his country's capacities in the field of grandeur. All that claim the name of mountains in Maine, New Hamp- shire, Virginia and the Carolinas will seem to him as pretty hills after once he has beheld the Titanic masses that rise and lean against the sky in Colorado. VH/UW;; > •, UMJOhAn :^]j'i For the height of the average Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge is perhaps as much as 2,500 feet above the sea. Timber-Hne and the region of eternal snow are unknown to them. The most famous of them — famil- iar names at a time when Colorado was still unknown — may sometimes attain to 5,000 feet. Kahtahdin is 5,385 feet high. Kearsarge, historic name, has only 3,250 feet. The Peaks of Otter, hi Virgina, climb to 4,200 feet. Famous localities offer but little grandeur by comparison with the elevations at which lie the greater portion of the railway tracks of Colorado. The thirteen peaks of Mount Desert Island and vicinity are from 1,000 to 2,800 feet high. Mount Agamenticus, a familiar name with tourists, is so small a hill with its 670 feet that in Colorado it would have no name and would hardly be thought to block the trail in a moun- tain pass. All these familiar heights and names might be lost in Colorado and never found again. For the State is traversed by the main chain of the oft-quoted ^'backbone of the continent," the huge ridge-pole of the Republic, the prolific mother of rivers born in fields of inaccessible snow, the rock-barred treasure-house of the world's greatest supply of gold. Amid these heights are born the Arkansas, both the Plattes, the Rio Grande, the rivers of Nebraska and central Kansas, and that Rio Colorado that flows at last into the alien waters of the Gulf of California. Out of this jumbled mass of giant peaks arise those special ones beside whom all the others of Eu- rope and North America seem as hillocks. Here are Pike's, Long's, Grav's, Lincoln, Ouray, Grant, Sher- man, and scores of others whose heights are from 12,000 to 15,000 feet. To one who sees them far away, perhaps across eighty miles of hazy distance, they seem clouds rather than mountains. They may at last become to him familiar things. For here more than even elsewhere has human energy conquered, and through these defiles and up these mountain sides long since the railroads have climbed. Colorado has 4,370 miles of railway. If there was nothing else to see, and stupendous beauty had no real charm, these works of men would alone repay the journey from afar. They illustrate the capacity of the material A m e r ic a n genius, un- abashed amid even such heights and depths as these. People go to Colorado because in the best sense it is a strange country. The name means red, and when that is known the visitor, and perhaps the reader, wonders why. One may imagine the ancient Spanish wanderer in these solitudes near two hundred years ago, when he rattled his broken armor around a camp-fire in the canon of the Arkansas, and looked upward between the mighty walls, and remembered ever after that they were of the dull, rich red that human architects try to imitate in cathedral towers. The spires of the wonderful Garden of the Gods are red, and so are the pillars of the colossal gateway that opens from it eastward on the plain. What of the rocks of Colo- rado are not thus red are gray ; the color of the cen- turies. In the Canon. There is here a unique combination of two qual- ities that are said never to mingle — the austere and the beautiful. When one sees in the early morning from a train on the Rock Island line the Rampart range, fencing the eastern rim of this mountain world like a wall, with the vast undulations of the plains around him and these domes and ridges piled against the sky before him, he can see only the magnificent. Grandeur is the overpowering sentiment. He can not imagine that just before him lies Manitou, or the two Cheyenne Caiions ; perhaps the two most beautiful pieces of natural scenery known to world-wide travelers ; or Ute pass, or the Garden of the Gods. So when one sees the mighty dome of Pike's Peak from afar one can not imagine any of the famous scenes that nestle under his flank. At the pretty town of Canon City one does not foresee how soon his train will glide between the jaws of the Royal Gorge in the Arkansas Canon. When he glides over the table lands west of Denver he can not foresee the Clear Creek Caiion just ahead, or imag- ine the contortions that make the indescribable "Loop" at Silver Plume. At Pueblo, dim with smelter-smoke and rattling with the clank of machinery, he can not place himself in the rare, sweet, thin air not far ahead of him at Marshall Pass, or imagine Ouray mountain, bare, sol- emn, silent, whose summit he almost crosses, and so near that he may almost count the huge rocks that lie like pebbles on that gray summit where human beings have rarely trod, and where they have never lived. With thousands of nooks and corners, and water- falls, and grotesque shapes, and hidden valleys, and scenes that are not named on any map or in any guide- book, there is still nothing in Colorado that descends below the grade of actual magnificence. It is all on the 6 scale of immensity. Even the mesas (table-lands), where there are ranches and farms, all are 4,ocx> to 7,000 feet above the sea; more than twice as high as some of the storied peaks of the Atlantic coast. The word "valley" means a cleft in the mountain world through which some snow-bom stream foams and tumbles, a continuous cataract for miles, yet beside which glitter the steel tracks of a railroad, and which one sits still and looks down upon as one goes by with the su- periority of a demigod. •The trains crawl up the mountain-sides in long curves, and the experiences of such a journey are the most re- markable in the annals of travel. One sees far behind and below him a film of deli- cate lace, tangled and torn amid the branches of the distant pines. He does not recognize it as something he has looked iipward for all his life; a cloud. He looks downward still further into depths that seem immeasurable. He was there half an hour ago, and they seemed high. But from an opposite windows if he looks he will see still up, up, up, and he is climbing slowly the roof of the world. H he were now afoot, and clinging like an insect to the mountain-side, he would see his train as it really is — 3. small brown worm crawling slow^ly in a slanting line upon the leaning mountain wall. It is solely owing to the art of man that it is all there is to do ; to sit still and be carried amid heights and clouds and pines, in a new and unknown world, upon paths that were cut in solid rock where even a 7 On a Horseback TiaiL mountain goat had never traveled. Unknown to fame, the men who did these things have completed the task and have gone away, and one wonders why they have no monuments. They created the most remarkable railway system of the world. It has resulted in an extraordinary fact. All over this majestic scene, with- out any weariness or hunger, without any extreme of heat or cold, without even action, care or thought, the traveler may be carried until his sense of the sublime is satiated and his soul is weary. Besides all this are the special wonders ; the places and scenes that have been described by innumerable writers in many thousands of pages. It is very true that it was mostly for noth- ing that this was done. Words are almost in vain. When one has merely writ- ten that here the mountain torrent roars and foams be- side the track for eight or ten miles one can do no more. The real thing is not to be so easily de- scribed, if it can be de- scribed at all. The restless torrent that lives and dies without a placid moment; the indescribable sound of breaking foam; the long broken stairway between the canon walls down which this brawling water has tumbled for centuries, never for two seconds alike during all the time; the changing shadows as the day passes; the ghmpses of the blue sky above and beyond it all ; the silence in which noth- ing has ever been heard save this roaring that goes on forever, careless of man and the thoughts of all his tribe — ^all these things are left out of the picture that is painted with words, or with the camera, or with the painter's colors. This is why one must he there. There is no knowing but by actual presence. And to be amid such scenes is to live in a new way while one is there, and to go away again with the power of remembering them vividly ever after. To such an end do people go amid the scenes of wonderful, colossal, indescribable Colorado. And every man's Colorado is his own. There is not one place to go, one famous scene to be visited, but hundreds. There are of necessity certain points and places mentioned more than others, because life is too short to enable one to include and remember all that lies between them. The tourist does not pass all the fourteen miles of the Black Canon looking only for the towering red spire that is known as the Curre- canti Needle. He does not wait for the long broken silver skein that is Chipeta Falls. He need not shut his eyes because the guide-book tells him that just ahead stands the special wonder that he almost thought in starting he was making the special journey to see. He can not go astray from, and can not even miss, the charm, new every moment, that pervades the entire endless, solemn, silent chaotic mass everywhere. Where all are but glimpses, fleeting visions each one of which would be remembered for a lifetime were it not for others, there are still scenes that appeal es- pecially to one tourist or another according to temper- ament and time. All teach the one fact; that a man may see and know, and yet be utterly unable to convey to any other man his conception of the facts. All his descriptions seem to him commonplaces. It is a coun- try that sends no messages, writes no letters, and talks even to her visitors only as the sybil did — personally and mysteriously or not at all. Millions, perhaps, have visited these scenes, and millions will yet go and come. They are in the main a silent multitude. When they talk they describe memories and mental effects, not actual scenes. And they end in silence, only saying as a conclusion that which was always true: "I can not describe it — go and see it for yourself." This is what one must do. The mountains are not describable. COLORADO AS A STATE. We think of every state as an entity, almost as an individual of colossal stature and the feminine gen- der. This is the way Colorado appears, unconsciously, to the mind of the intending tourist. He wants to know what it is that he intends visiting. He wants a material mental impression — to think of perhaps in con- nection with the line he is going by and the money he is going to spend. On this subject a few words. It is an error to imagine that Colorado is scenery exclusively. She claims importance as an industrial commonwealth. She produces more than thirty mil- lions in gold every year. She at least feeds herself. Amid all the scenes alluded to under the head of wonderful scenery live the plodding sons of men. Each little mountain nook has its permanent occupants beside the brawling stream. Often there are ranch-houses, and cattle, and haystacks. It is true it no more resem- bles in scenery the rich country traversed on the Rock Island line while going there than it does in vast agri- cultural resources. But it is a land of men and women, and human interests and resources. 10 Leaving these things aside, and understanding that the merely industrial aspects of Colorado are also to be counted among her wonders, the intending visitor can know beside that of all the mountain king- doms she stands first. The mountain system that forms the chief attraction of central Europe, impressed upon the school-child's mind as the highest and coldest and steepest and most romantic of the world, and visited annually by thousands of Americans, covers altogether an area of 95,000 square miles. The mountain sys- tem of Colorado alone, only a portion of the whole, covers an area of at least 500,000 square miles. Mont Blanc, the central figure of this tourist's tramping-ground of central Europe, is 15,784 feet high. Marshall Pass, in Colorado, is 10,850 feet high, and is climbed every day by the Denver and Rio Grande railway. The famous Jungfrau is 13,393 ^^^^ high. The Matterhorn is still lower. The pass of the great St. Bernard is 8,170 feet high. Veta Pass in Colorado is over 9,000 feet high ; another railway route. Even the town of Leadville, a familiar name and the resi- dence of some fifteen thousand people, with two or three railroads, i? 10,200 feet above sea level. Colo- rado has many peaks lacking very little of the height of the crowning eminence of Europe, and there are cities, towns, mines, railroad tracks and ranches as high as Mont Blanc's sister peaks in the famous Alps. Some of the grassy floors of her famous parks are higher than the average height of the Alpine chain. Cattle in Colorado live all the year in pastures at a height that being merely mentioned seems incredible, and that should belong solely to the domain of the mountain goat. Vegetables and fruits grow in abun- dance at elevations that in Europe would be occupied by the slow-crawling glacier. Timber-line, a well- known demarcation, lies at an elevation of about ii,000 feet. Eternal snow lies at 6,ocx) in the Alps. There are the "parks." There is nothing like them elsewhere. It is. the apt Colorado name for the beauti- ful enclosures that are fenced as the mansions of the blest are builded; *'not with hands." The mountains fence them round. Those of these parks that are considered small are perhaps no bigger than some of the New England states. There are four that are larger, and one of them is as big as Maine. Every reader has heard of these four : North, Middle South and San Luis parks. The ''high plains," a grazing-country rap idly taking its place as among the best of the world, oc- cupy something more than one-third of the area of the state. Extending eastward to the Missouri river this plains country is a vast slanting plateau, rising an average of ten feet to the mile from the river to the foothills of the Ram- long slant the transconti- Elk Creek Canon, Looking Across the South Platte River at Pine, Colorado. this part range. Up nental lines climb. Out at the junction station of Li- mon, seventy-eight miles east of Colorado Springs, where the Rock Island line sends one branch to Denver and another to Colorado Springs and Pueblo, the trav- eler who near here sees for the first time the vague blue masses that are the Rocky Mountains usually has little 12 idea that he is already some five thousand feet in the upper air, or that he has cHmbed so high during the slumbers of a single night. Aside from the plains-country the conception of Colorado must be that of a piled-up succession of the most magnificent panoramas nature has anywhere to show. In tiers and vast successions, far into the purple distance the ranges lie. The valleys that lie between, great and small, number hundreds. There are running through these two hundred and sixty snow-born streams that are large enough to have names. There are nine hundred lakes, and sixty-three streams that are called rivers. There are a hundred and fifty tow- ering peaks that are already named, but there are still some hundred and fifty others yet unnamed, and wait- ing patiently for the great names and the great events in memory of which they shall be called. Half-hidden amid this vastness, in the nooks and corners of a mountain world, lie the scenes that have grown famous. Such scenes and places, it may be fairly said, do not exist elsewhere within the limits of luxurious travel, if at all. Some of them, only a few, are described in succeeding pages. The Good Old Way. 13 THE COLORADO RESORTS. ■?SBi^ One of the Springs, Manitou. Manitou. — There is no other approach to moun- tains that equals that of a railway train from the east. Here is given a sudden view of them from the midst of a scene that is a striking contrast — a wide and silent vastness in which the westward traveler now lives a single night, in which, in times not far gone, he must pass more than a month. First, perhaps, as the palatial Rock Island train glides toward the foothills and the rugged dome of Pike's Peak — and it is one of the wonders of modern times — there is to the traveler a sense of change, a new odor as of distant pines, and later there is a blue and misty glimpse of huge purple shapes against the sky. This eastward edge of the Colorado the tourist first sees is that part which contains most of those places for which the journey was made. In it are sit- uated Colorado Springs, with near-by Manitou, all the resorts and pleasure-places between Colorado Springs and Denver. South of the latter are Pueblo, Trinidad, and Canon City, and to the north Denver, Golden, Fort Collins, Greeley, etc. Their situation with re- spect to each other is on a nearly straight line running north and south along the edge of the plains. And just before, one of the two western termini of the Rock Island line, is the chief resort of the AiM 14 region, and one of the most remarkable of the world- . Manitou. The two western termini of the Rock Island line are Denver, and Pueblo by way of Colorado Springs. The two terminal branches, each running to one of these points, meet at the station of Limon, as pre- viously mentioned. The beautiful city of Colorado Springs occupies in respect to Manitou the place of a port of entry. One place is in sight of the other across some four miles of mesa. (Pronounced "maysah.") [The name is in universal use in Colorado, and in Spanish means a table. It is the name of flat-topped hills, and among Americans designates almost any lands with a level surface.] About the famous place many thousands of things have already been said, yet there will always be something still to say. It is not so much of a place as it is a locality — the nucleus and center of the most remarkable group of attractions in this country, if, indeed, their equals can be found so near together anywhere else in the world. The opening into the plain that runs along the flank of Pike's Peak is Ute Pass. In the three-cornered notch which is the mouth of this opening sits Mani- tou. It is where the plain ends and the mountains be- g^n, in a V-shaped notch precisely on the edge. In this notch bubbled when white men first saw the place three or four rather peculiar springs. They had a faint sweetish taste, were effervescent, and had med- icinal properties. The Indians liked them well, and so have all who have since tasted them. The animals flocked there to drink; buffaloes from the plains, ante- lope, black-tailed deer and elks from the mountains, and the Utes with due precautions against the plains Apache, camped there whenever they came down out 15 of the mountains by the steep trail in the canon that ever since has borne his name. This, it may be easily imagined, was the situation when the tattered soldiers who were with Pike in the year 1806, first saw the place. It is easily imagined that these painted savages named the place ''Manitou." At any rate it is all that is left of \ them and their traditions. The word meant T^aJL . to them the spirit idea — God or Devil — something A Part of the Burro Brigade:— Near Entrance of South Cheyenne Canon. extraordinary and usually something beneficent. They owned these mountains, and liked to come down and hunt the buffaloes on the plains, and this sheltered nook with its sweet waters was to them in their day as much a sanitarium as it is now to thousands of ourselves. But for us there is much more. Near at hand are som.e of the scenic wonders of the world. There 16 are the wind-carved obelisks of the Garden of the Gods, and on the road thither the huge balanced rock that seems to have been waiting through all the ages for a wind, or the hand of a passing child, to overturn it. The gateway of the Garden, opening on the plain, and the most singular and celebrated of natural por- tals, stands flanked by its perpendicular red columns that spring more than three hundred feet upward from the level plain. Likewise near at hand to the south of Manitou are the deep clefts in the range that are called the North and South Cheyenne Cafions. It is a singular fact that these, like the Garden of the Gods and Mani- tou itself, open upon the mesa and are'among the most convenient and accessible of scenes. If they were hid- den in the heart of the mountains they would still be visited by thousands every year. The southern one of these contains the famous and beautiful cascade that falls five hundred feet in seven leaps, the beauties of which have been described in thousands of letters and hundreds of printed pages. This deep canon, whose sides rise hundreds of feet like walls, and whose abrupt ending is the white sheet of falling water that is the lowest of the seven falls that rise one above the other in a series of gigantic steps, is among the most famous natural scenes of the world, and of all the famous ones is the most accessible. The twin canon immediately to the northward has its tumbling waters too; a rushing, foaming stream without the stupendous and elaborate scenic ar- rangement of the falls. The two canons come together in the form of a huge "Y" where they open on the mesa. A beautiful drive runs up the stem of this from Colorado Springs. Here amid the pines is the head- quarters of the celebrated "Donkey Brigade." The 17 patient gray beasts are saddled and bridled for parties or individuals all summer long, with drivers and guides. Thousands of city women have had their first side-saddle experiences with these ambling ''mokes," and the canons and mountain roads resound with shrieks and laughter through every summer day. ^ All the latest modern con- veniences are clustered here. Between Colorado Springs and Manitou there are both steam railroads and trolley- lines. Between the beautiful little city and the canons there is, besides the road alluded to, a trolley-line that winds up and down steep grades and through ravines, past Broad moor and overiookini^the Valley of the Gunnisou. ^he resorts that cluster along the foaming stream after it has issued from the caiion. fare upon which is ten cents. At Colorado Springs a single dollar and a single day will probable go further than it will anywhere else in the world in giving the tourist those glimpses of famous scenes he will re- member during the remainder of his life. The list of natural attractions that cluster about Colorado Springs and Manitou is not yet exhausted. There are Seven Lakes, Monument Park, Rainbow Falls, Manitou Park, Williams' Caiion, Cave of the Winds, Engelman's Caiion, Red Caiion, Crystal Park, Glen Eyrie; all near by and accessible, to be easily seen again and again, a whole Summer's pleasuring in a semi-circle whose radius is less than nine miles long. Wagon-roads have been graded in all directions where there are not steam roads or trolley-lines. There is no pleasure ground in America, perhaps in the world, so well equipped as this. The climate has in Sum- mer no vicissitudes and in Winter few, and remarkable scenes have been clustered around this favored spot with a profusion remarkable and elsewhere unknown. Besides all that are mentioned there are all the side- scenes ; nooks, corners, cafions, caves, waterfalls, huge rocks, places whence one may see at sunset the moun- tains behind and the wide plains in front. There are innumerable quarter-acres that have been discovered and adopted hundreds of times, and owned for a whole Summer by their finders without cost. There are thousands of girl-made photographs of a single huge bowlder and a tree, or a rustic bridge and foaming water, or a cluster of pines. Manitou itself is the watering-place par excel- lence. Within its limits there are in all nine springs, all cold mineral waters. There are, however, two kinds, the ''soda" springs, that are effervescent and much like Apollinaris, and the "iron" springs. All are remarkably medicinal. Even if they were not so, everything else is. One does not care. There is the beautiful scenery, the unfailing sunshine, the new pine-laden mountain air, the all out-of-doors, the tired- ness that in reality is rest. These more than springs of specific virtue are the health-restorers of Manitou and Colorado Springs. Meantime the facilities for taking care of people have for years been among the foremost of their kind. Manitou is a cluster of first-class hotels, and here, in Colorado Springs, amid tree-clusters by the roads and the trolley-lines, and in every attractive spot, there are hotels, cottages and "camps." Tent-life is followed every Summer by hundreds of visitors, and often this out-doors life is led within half-a-mile of first-class social privileges, and amusements like the Casino at Broadmoor. 19 The rugged dome of Pike's Peak, seen from a distance that gives it its proper place, dominates all that has been described. To climb this mountain at least once was some years ago the ambition of all men and most women, and it was a task of peril and time. Then a carriage road was made to the summit, and to go by this road, either by carriage or on horseback, was for some years the only way of reaching one of the highest accessible elevations known to travelers. But since 1891 there is a railway, known as the ''Cog- Road," that climbs to the summit and as easily returns. It is eight and three-quarters miles in length, and in this distance climbs to a height of 14,147 feet above sea-level. It is a costly and absolutely secure structure, and there is a special feature in the cog-rail between the tracks which alone weighs a hundred and ten tons to the mile. At intervals the track is anchored by heavy masonry. Brakes are so contrived that a train can be stopped on any grade of the line within a dis- tance of ten inches. The cars and engines stand at an angle with the tracks, but the seats are level. The engine does not draw the train, but pushes it. One does not often get so high in the world as this, and the sights and experiences of this little journey above the world are not to be described in words. Climbiug Son-of-a-Guu Hill:— Going up Pike's Peak. 20 THE LOOP JOURNEY/ This excursion is a day's jaunt out of Denver. (Which is the other western terminal of the Rock Isl- and line, as mentioned in a preceding page). It lies upon the lines of the U. P. D. and G. road, and the journey to it lies through the famous Clear Creek Canon. This last-named defile in the mountains has long been known. In the old times it was a pass for a miner's wagon-road. When the time came one of the first railway lines of the State was built through it. An innumerable multitude have since seen it, and it is still, especially to all Colorado visitors whose time is limited, a scene not to be left out. Still beyond the canon, high up on the mountain and reached by the same little journey is the famous "Loop" — one of the celebrated engineering feats of a region where all the railway building is something impossible as a the- ory, and nevertheless is there as an almost incredible practical fact. From Denver to Golden, one of the first mining towns of the region, is fifteen miles. It is, in singular contrast to what is soon to follow, a country as level as a prairie, the bottom of an ancient sea. In the edge of this plateau, which is given over to fruit, grain, cows and bees, is the opening into Clear Creek Cafion — a thing sudden, unexpected and opening upon the plain, like the Cheyenne canons and the gateway of the Garden of the Gods. It is a fissure in the crust of the world. The indentations of one side rudely fit the projections of the opposite wall. In many places the dull red walls 21 come very close together, so that all one sees of the outer world is a narrow ribbon of blue sky as one looks upward. On a narrow level floor at the bottom lies the railroad track. It is very crooked, and has to share its occupancy of the place with the roaring stream called Clear Creek, which the track crosses so many times that the two, the roaring water and the gliding train, leave a mingled and very lasting 'mpression on the memory. Cozy Nook on the Cog-Road up Pike's Peak. There are places where the sun never shines, and others where, beyond the narrow walls, there are glimpses of white peaks afar off. For two hours or more one is seated in a gliding upholstered box, these vast walls closely fencing him on every side, with the boiling torrent beneath him or close beside him. It is quite useless to attempt to describe in detail the sensations of the place. When the line was built there was no such place elsewhere in the world. Now the striking incongruity of the work of man and the work of God are made to fit solely by custom and the lapse of time. There is a V-shaped opening at the western end of the cafion, and in this stands Idaho Springs, a min- ing town, where glimpses may be caught of this mining industry and the men who are engaged in it. The scene is new to al- most all visitors, for mines and mining are things apart to the ma- jority of mankind. But the place is also a famous health - resort. The springs are both hot and cold mineral waters, and there is a well-known natural vapor bath and a boiling springs. For people actually ill, and seeking immediate reme- dies, Idaho Springs shares to some extent the fame of Manitou. Certain qualities of the climate and temperature are also similar to ^, 1 ^ ^ /-- 1 J starting up tbe Cog-Road from Manitou Depot:— those prevalent at Colorado Engine Pushes the Car. Springs, the ideal town health-resort of Colorado. The railroad continues to thread the narrow val- ley; a widened extension of Clear Creek Caiion; to Georgetown. This is also a mining town, and one of the first. These high mountain towns, sheltered by still higher ranges, have all a more even climate than ' Denver has on the edge of the plains. It will be found that this mining region is full of strong men who, when they came here, were ''lungers" who got well. The semi-invalid can live all the year out of doors, and many of them almost do, and the invalids have gone wherever circumstances and occupation drew them in these mountains. The sheltered valley, wher- ever it lies in central and southern Colorado, is the residence of hundreds of stalwart men of the class that dies in about two years elsewhere. Above Georgetown is the famous "Loop." The mining town of Silver Plume lies at end of track high above Georgetown. Many eastern lines have "Horse-shoes," and "Mule-shoes," and lesser won- ders in the way of curves, and they call public atten- tion to them as engineering feats worthy of particular notice. This "Loop" far excels in intricacy and dif- ficulty anything the old-fashioned civil engineer ever imagined possible. The doubles and curves are carried to a dizzy extreme. It is a twisted and intricate mountain-climb- ing coil. One can look out of a car window and see at least five tracks below him, and know that he has just been over them all. The work lies about ten thou- sand feet above sea-level. To reach certain mines was the purpose of the building of the Loop, and it is not likely that the builders had any idea of adding their daring work to the mountain view, or of making it a tourist's attrac- tion. But the result is that Clear Creek Canon and the Loop, all included in a one-day journey out of Denver, is a regular item of the Colorado program, and thousands of visitors make the journey every year. There are other places that this journey ought to 24 be made to include. Narrow and shut-in as the place is, there is a railway junction in the Clear Creek Cafion where a side caiion branches off. Trains run down there and ''connect" with all due formality. One can see this connecting train for as much as eighty or a hundred feet as it comes and goes. The junction sta- tion is known by the very matter-of-fact name of "Forks-of-the-Creek," and there is even a very good lunch counter there wedged in between casual fissures of the caiion walls. The Famous "Loop" near Denver:— a Charming One-Day Trip. This branch line runs to the famous mining towns of Black Hawk and Central City. Going on by the main line to Idaho Springs, or coming back after see- ing the Loop and leaving the train at that point, one can go across from Idaho Springs to both Black Hawk and Central City, by stage. It is a ride of only six miles to Black Hawk, and is done in an hour, and Central City is near by. These places are in the famous little Colorado county of Gilpin — after all is said and done almost, if not entirely, the richest and most long-endur- ing of the mining districts of modern times. Russell Gulch, on this stage line, ruins now, is the place where, in 1858, the first paying gold mine east of California was discovered. At Central City one finds that he can walk to Black Hawk easily in a few minutes, while by rail the journey is a distance of four miles. On this line be- tween the two towns is the only permanent railway "switchback" in the world. Once in Black Hawk the train may be taken back to Denver, it being eleven miles down to the junction in Clear Creek Canon, previously mentioned. There are other scenes and places that may be considered before returning to Denver if one pleases. Two and one-half miles from Georgetown is the fa- mous Green Lake. It lies 10,000 feet above the sea. Everything about it has a tinge of green ; water, sand, moss, are all tinted green or greenish. Sometimes, when the mountain shadows are right, the bottom can be seen. There is an ancient forest there, the trees still standing, but they are turned to stone. The lake is full of fishes. If one wants to ride seven miles, one can go over Argentine Pass, which is the highest wagon- road in the world. The view from there is the reward of the journey, which hundreds of tourists make every year One day's ride from Georgetown lies Grand Lake, the largest body of water in Colorado. It is also, with its numerous confluent streams, one of the famous fishing places. In the surrounding region there is game in plentifulness for these late times. As a hunting region the place was a few years ago famous. Lastly, there is Gray's Peak. It is a little higher than Pike's, but it is more accessible. The excursion 26 to the top is often made, either from Georgetown or Idaho Springs, and it is counted one of the most enjoyable jaunts in Colorado. It is not intended here to give more than a brief sketch of the possibilities of this Loop journey out of Denver into one of the most famous of mountain dis- tricts. It is an excursion of one day, or of a week, or a month, or all Summer. There is not, however, a mo- ment's hardship or inconvenience, and the excursion is a frequent one for ladies and mixed parties. The •9^*-" 5?*^ Summit House, Pike's Peak :— Altitude, 14,147 Feet. total expenditure is little, if any, greater than that re- quired in daily life. Glenwood Springs. — This resort is reached by both the Denver and Rio Grande and the Colorado Midland roads, in both cases from Colorado Springs, or from Denver by way of that place. It is usual to go to Colorado Springs and Manitou, and thence to Glen- wood Springs and return, afterwards going to Denver and beyond. It is evident, however, that the process may be as easily reversed. Glenwood Springs shares with Manitou an almost equal fame as a springs pleasure and health resort. 27 The place is at the junction of two mountain streams. Grand River and Roaring Fork, and sits in a valley that is shaped like an irregular elongated bowl. The springs themselves are phenomenal, and among the most remarkable in any land. They run out on both sides of the river, and the flow varies between twenty and thirty thousand cubic inches every second. Those on the north side are hot; 140 degrees Fahrenheit; and this stream is made to flow through an aqueduct around a little island. On this island stands the fa- mous bathing-house. In this, forty-four bath-rooms are supplied with hot, warm or cold mineral water, and the same temperatures in fresh water, and show- ers in either kind. Besides these arrangements is the swimming-bath. It is an immense oval tank, out of doors, full of warm or hot water, and graded in depths from three feet to five and a half feet. Besides the cold water used to reduce the temperature, two thous- and gallons of hot mineral water flow into this swim- ming-place every minute. These remarkable features, the equal of which are not known to exist elsewhere among the innumer- able watering-places of the world, are supplemented by a hotel that takes rank among the very best. There are two hundred guest-rooms, in nearly all of which are open fire-places, and there is every convenience of heat, electric light and attendance known in a city hotel of the first class. The refinement, culture and "style'* of Newport and Saratoga are at least duplicated at both Glenwood Springs and Manitou. RAILWAY JOURNEYS IN COLORADO. The unequalled scenic qualities of the railway lines in Colorado have been mentioned in preceding pages. It is a tourist's custom to use them for scenic purposes, and hundreds of travellers every year start on these mountain journeys with no destination or with be- tween-trains stopping places only, in their minds, going and coming back to some chosen stopping-place for the mere purpose of, as one might say, looking out of a car-window at the country. Taking any one of the lines the journey is well worth the cost and trouble, though the custom of so travelling is something almost unknown anywhere else in the world. A list of what one sees would make an extensive catalog. There are a hundred and fifty- five mountains near these lines that are over thirteen thousand feet high. That is more than ten times as many as there are in all Europe. One deals with all the majesties during every moment of his journey; mountains, parks, crags, canons, waterfalls, pinnacles, cliflfs, buttes; all spread out on a scale of almost in- conceiyable magnificence. In the recesses of the mountains there are scenes one finds for oneself; places unnamed and known in detail only to the wandering prospector. Vast and broken stretches of forest still hold the game of the old times; panthers, mountain lions, four kinds of bears, deer, occasional elks, antelope ; and porcupines, lynxes and wildcats as smaller varieties. There are six thousand miles of running water, and in these streams all the fishing-places are by no means yet usually visited. There are some five hun- 29 dred lakes in all, many of them as beautiful as any of those where the hotels are. Mineral springs are nature's specialty here. No one knows how many there are besides those well- known and constantly visited, such as Manitou, Glen- wood, Poncha, Pagosa, Buena Vista, Ouray, Idaho, Caiion City, etc. Every stopping place has its especial waters, and at many of these there has been a lavish expenditure of money. Others, destined to fame in the future, are visited now only by the animals and the old prospectors and ranchfolk who know their virtues. Of the known places the Denver and Rio Grande road alone can list some two dozen springs and health resorts. The Colorado Midland line has less mileage and covers a much smaller extent of country, but it easily names fourteen known resorts, besides twice or thrice as many famous pieces of scenery. A third line, the Union Pacific, Denver and Gulf, has the Clear Creek canon line and the country beyond, which has been partially described. The line to Leadville and Gunnison is often taken by tourists, partly for the scenery and partly because the most famous gold-mining "camp" in the world lies at the end of it. Of how easily the tourist places himself amid the wonders of the mountains on a railroad train the trip through Clear Creek canon, described above, may be taken as an instance. Another is the Denver and Rio Grande south from Colorado Springs to Pueblo and thence eastward to Caiion City and beyond. An hour's ride places the traveler between the walls of the Royal Gorge — the cooling-crack that opened in its crust when the world was young — and through which now run the waters of the Arkansas river. It shares this nar- 30 row bed with the railway-track, and the traveler looks upward half a mile at an awe-inspiring scene that has often been attempted to be described. Up to Marshall Pass after this it is an upward climb amid scenery that is unequalled in magnificence, and on a road whose crooks and turns are bewilder- ing. It is not a singular fact at all that this journey has never been really described. You sit still in a rail- Cog-Road and Traiu in Ruxton Canon:— Eu Route to Pikes Peak. way car and catch striking glimpses of it for a day, and after that you do not even want to talk about it. ''around the circle.'' There is a Colorado railway journey so far not mentioned, that is usually spoken of as "Around the Circle" — a circle of several hundred miles in circum- ference. 81 This line traverses the largest of the Colorado parks; San Luis; and reaches the ancient capital of Santa Fe in the center of the oldest civilization of the continent. Some of the grades are 211 feet to the mile, and yet as the train leaves Poncha Pass, a scene as indescribable as any in Colorado, and begins its jour- ney across the rim of the great mountain amphitheater, it has a bee-line of fifty-six miles — the longest piece of railroad track without a curve not alone in America, but in the world. On this circle journey lies the famous Toltec Gorge, where the train crosses a range at an elevation of 10,015 feet. The line crosses the Ute and the Apache Indian Reservations, and all the now gentle savages who are near enough come every day to the nearest station to see the train pass. There is a place on the line where there is a cliff a thousand feet high. Half way up there is a shelf; a kind of colossal bracket against a mountain wall. On this shelf the track is laid, and trains run there be- tween heaven and earth, five hundred feet from the top and five hundred from the bottom. The road at this point cost $115,000 for a single mile. Some of the scenes of the line are the ruins of the strange houses of the ancient cliff-dwellers at Mancos caiion, near Mancos station, of which a description is given on another page. Rico, Lost Cafion, the Valley of the Dolores, the sharp pinnacles of the Needle moun- tains, Sultan mountain. Lizard Head pass, the cele- brated piece of engineering known as the Ophir Loop, and the Black Canon, are all seen on this "circle" journey. 32 THE CLIFF DWELLERS. The ancient cliff-dwelling region of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona furnishes scenic gran- deurs of thrilling interest, awakening in the visitor desires to study from evidences at hand the laws and customs of this supposed lost race. The district where with great' profit and interest this research can be prosecuted is about 150 miles CLIFF PALACE.— Mesa Verde, Colorada. seven stories high, containing 1,100 rooms. Overhanging cliff, 300 feet. long and 70 miles wide, and lies in two territories and two states above mentioned, the starting or base point being Mancos, a small town on the D. & R. G. R'y, near the south-west corner of Colorado. Tours through this region can be made covering three, five, ten or twenty days, and the expense is within the possibilities of all tourists, being but $5.00 per day, which covers all expenses for guides, horses, 33 camp and meals, and your choice in duration of trip is granted you. Possibly the most popular one occupies about three or four days, and includes a trip from Mancos to Cave Houses and back to the Aztec ruins, then north to the railroad town Dolores on the D. & R. G. R'y, and the Famous Cliff Palace is visited on this trip. It- is perched several hundred feet above the valley on a ledge just large enough to hold it, and was prac- tically a two-story fiat; the lower one contained one htmdred and twenty-seven rooms. On one of the short tours other Aztec ruins are inspected, and here we find several large buildings that were each seventy feet square, and many stories in height. This was the point reached by Valdez Coronado and his command, in 1540, while he was searching for the supposed seven cities of the seven churches. The Bonito ruins on the San Juan river, a short trip from Durango, are the most wonderful in New Mexico. They are half moon-like, or rather crescent, in shape, 600 feet front, and once contained 2,000 rooms. A very interesting point in these short tours is the monument that marks the corners of the four states and territories. It is a mound of stone four feet square at base, six feet high, and name of each state or territory is carved in the appropriate side, as it stands at an angle, and each full side is in its respective state. If one lays their hand on the center of apex, that hand temporarily rests in two states and two territories. There is no other place on earth that these conditions attain. It is impossible to describe these trips, as each day reveals facts of great value to the student or scientist. Ladies and gentlemen both join these excursions, and particular care is taken to provide for the ladies in a manner that they will be especially pleased with this form of roughing it. 34 THE MINING TOWNS. The mining interests of Colorado are of course immense, and there is a special literature on the subject. The two largest ''camps" are Leadville and Cripple Creek, and both are very easy of access by rail from either Denver or Colorado Springs. As American towns they possess features that are unique, both in situation and in the features of their exclusive indus- tries. But the "wild and woolly" is now an ancient story, much exaggerated even when to some degree the phrase was current. There is in the orderly life of these great mining towns little that is outside the usual lines of Amer- ican citizenship. The home and the woman, the church and the school, are there as elsewhere. But the story of gold in Colorado is a great romance, whose cen- ters are in Leadville, Crip- ple Creek, the mines of Gil- pin county, and the lonely camp of the prospector in the mountains. Between the scenes of a Colorado mining town and the glittering double-Eagle of the U. S. mint there is the greatest difference that ever existed between an industry and its product, and this difference is what the visitor to Leadville and Cripple Creek comes to see. Tents in the Outskirts of Mauitou, and Common Everywhere in the Locality. 85 THE HUNTER AND ANGLER IN COLORADO. It may be said in this field that the term "hunting country" no longer means what it once meant, because in later times men have gone everywhere for other purposes than hunting, but with the killing instinct still upon them. But if there is any region that now answers to the term at all it may be found in the north- ern portions and outlying districts of Colorado. If it is a hunting country at all it is the one most easily reached by rail and in a Pullman car. The cli- mate in the hunting season is much milder than that of the northern hunting fields that extend from north- ern Wisconsin into Canada. There is always here a ranch, a mine, a little town, a settlement or a pros- pector's camp not very far away ; something to eat, a fire, good women, kindly men. There have always been a certain number of men to whom this mountain region is familiar. They pros- pect in summer and hunt and trap in winter. All these know where large game is to be found. If the eastern man comes here to hunt the first thing is to find the man, and later he will find the game. It may be remarked in this connection that it will not in these times be profitable to come hither to learn, for the first time, how to hit a gray or a light brown spot some hundreds of yards away. Pine forests still cover a large portion of Colorado. Some of these are almost as they were when the Utes hunted in them. Any prospector will affirm that there is nothing more common than game-tracks near the streams. Often elk and deer are seen by people not hunting. Ranchmen often have them as visitors. 36 For men who can kill when they find, the favorite hunting grounds are in Routt, Garfield and Grand counties, in the northern and northwestern portions of the state. If there is not large game there — and some say there is, while others declare the days of hunting to be gone everywhere — it will be little use to expect to find it anywhere in the west. The region where there are foothills, the land lying between plain and mountain, is the natural home of the elk. Now, the further one goes from human sights and sounds the surer one is to find the big shy game that is rapidly disappearing in all localities. In the times of the Indians Colorado was the best hunting field known. The encroach- ments of the white men since that time have had one nat- ural consequence. They have narrowed the range of the game, but they have driven it in greater numbers into the special localities where natural conditions remain. This un- occupied region is still in the aggregate an area as large as the state of Illinois. It is useless under such circum- stances to prescribe given localities to an accomplished hunter. Scores of men in Colorado are still hunting every winter, and to some of them it is an occupation. Every one of them knows, if he would always tell, of more than one good hunting field. A companion or guide is necessary to every stranger. When this per- 37 Summer House on tbe Cog Uoad up Pike's Peak. son is found there is no question of big-game hunting, and in a large region. The best hunting, here and else- where, is obtained only by him who departs deliberately out of the haunts of civilization, lives in a cabin, does nothing but hunt while so engaged, and stays long enough to become familiar with the ways of the game and the geography of the locality. All this is not so easy as it v/as, even in Africa, and the time is rapidly Near Aspen, Colorado. approaching when the hunting field will be a game- preserve, as it is in Europe. In fishing the situation is very different. Colorado has always been, and remains, a kind of angler's para- dise. There are eight principal rivers, flowing in all directions from their sources in the mountains, and constantly increasing in volume from innumerable tributaries. In all these streams, numbering several hundred, the mountain trout is a native. In their head- waters he still exists by thousands. But he has had his troubles. To begin with, for many years the native mountain trout has been angled for by all the natives and all the visitors. Fishing for him has been as much the pastime of the Colorado boy as angling for sunfish and suckers and bullheads has been that of the youth of lowland countries. Among the early miners trout for breakfast was expected in every min- er's shack. As a natural consequence, in all fre- quented places and eas- ily accessible streams, the mountain trout are grow- ing every year harder to get. The recipe for still getting him is to go further and into more secluded wa- ters. In these they are still caught very success- fully. But now the California trout is propagated in these streams, and also the rain- bow trout of the east. The ^^^ ^'^'«- exchange is not detrimental. The mountain trout is a dainty and capricious little fish, having ideas in- compatible with the least degree of civilization. On the contrary the rainbow trout grows to a great size in these streams, specimens weighing several pounds be- ing often caught. He is game enough to please the average angler, rapid in growth, and many times more prolific than the mountain trout. At the Foot of the Seven Falls South Cheyenne Canon. The fish-supply of the Colorado streams may be depended upon because of the precautions taken. There is a government hatchery at Leadville, and the laws respecting the times for angling are rigidly en- forced. The railways assist. A notable example is the South Platte, once one of the natural trout streams. Here every year the railways plant about 200,000 young trout. Platte Caiion remains indefinitely a favorite fishing- place. The Gunnison river is an- other famous fishing stream, carefully preserved, and there are many smaller brooks and streams in all parts of Col- orado. As in hunting, the further one goes away from the ordinary haunts of men the better. The hunting grounds are therefore as well the best fish- ing grounds. The tailings of mines and the refuse of saw mills spoil the fishing naturally, and without any question. But the broad statement may be made that nowhere else in the world are there so many game-fish streams as still remain in Colorado, and that every stream that has not had its waters spoiled by mines and saw mills is still a fishing-water. There is no actual truth in the statement that the days of angling in Coloraao are at an end because in most places there are no longer any mountain trout. Any one who loves the pines and mountains may combine the rest and the 40 scenery with angling. One cannot catch trout in Clear Creek now, or have luck with the rod and line in a mountain stream behind a palatial hotel at Manitou, but a fisherman can find the fish, and besides the places where everybody goes he can easily reach a domain where he and the fishes can come to an understanding with respect to bait. The Half- Way House:— Going up Pike's Peak. The statutes of Colorado permit the killing of game birds between August 15th and November ist. Waterfowl may be killed between September ist and May 1st. Deer and elk are in season between August 1st and November ist. The killing of any buffalo or mountain sheep is absolutely prohibited. It is lawful to take fish, with the hook and line only, from June 1st to December ist. Seining, netting, and all use of poison and explosives are positively prohibited under heavy penalties. 41 ABOUT THE JOURNEY To the traveler to Colorado, whether business man or tourist, the GREAT ROCK ISLAND ROUTE offers a train complete in all the requirements, con- veniences and luxuries of modern travel. This short chapter will briefly describe this train and its route and explain why the ever popular ''BIG FIVE" should 1 i i ^ v^ Hl ^ mmwk iii'ift ii ii...,.ij ' ' '' ; ■* ^ri^-ii^ '■'■-iWI&fl^A-' W^^ a|v:;_ _ ^ Rock Island Route:— New Broad Vestibuled Cars. be preferred in a journey to Colorado the Magnifi- cent. BIG FIVE leaves Chicago io:oo p. m., an hour which permits the use of the entire business day in Chicago and also ensures through connections with all principal trains from the East. But one daylight day is taken for the journey; Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo being reached early the next morning. The tourist, upon arrival, can connect with morning trains to interior Colorado points, while the man of commerce has an unbroken business day at his disposal. 42 Leaving Chicago, the BIG FIVE passes first through a part of the charming IlHnois Valley with its thriving cities, thence crossing the Mississippi at Rock Island (where connection is made from Peoria) and Davenport, from whence the rails stretch across the fertile fields of Iowa, passing through the state capital, Des Moines. Shortly after noon the train steams over the Missouri River bridge between Council Bluffs and Omaha. Leav- ing Omaha, south- eastern Nebraska is traversed, a stop being made at another state capital, Lincoln, and shortly after the great corn-growing state of Kansas is entered. At Belleville connection is made with train from Kansas City, and in the gathering dusk BIG FIVE sweeps over the wide-stretching prairie and into Colorado, where the morning finds the newly-arisen passengers gazing eag- erly at the cloud-like peaks in the western sky. At Limon the train divides, one section going to Denver, the other to Colorado Springs and Pueblo. The ROCK-ISLAND is the only line running into Colo- rado Springs from the East. The train was built expressly for this service, and all conditions have been shaped to satisfy the most fastidious passenger. From the electric light of the 43 Interior. New Broad Full-Vestibuled Sleepers. Private State-Room engine to the rear platform of the last coach there is perfect equipment. The train is broad-vestibuled throughout. Its interiors are spacious and handsomely decorated, while wide windows of heavy plate glass, convenient for observation, line the sides. Let us examine this moving hotel in which the passenger from Chi- cago eats, sleeps and en- joys life for two nights and a day. Entering the Buffet Library Car we find a main parlor or smoking room, provided with movable easy chairs, writing-desk plen- tifully supplied with fine stationery, illustr a t e d periodicals, the daily newspapers and a select library of recent fiction. Beyond this, the Pullman Sleepers pre- sent views of interiors charming in superb appointments and richly elegant furnishings, the evidence and a promise of luxurious travel. The Dining Car in which all meals are served makes more manifest the perfection of BIG FIVE, while its position in the middle of the train renders it easy of access from sleeper and coach alike. Its main apartment is exceedingly commodious, the effect of the handsome decorations being increased by the sheen of linen, the glitter of glass and silver and the fragrance of flowers. The Rock Island Dining Car Service is the best in the world. Breakfast and supper are served a-la-carte, and an excel- lent noon luncheon is supplied for fifty cents. The Chair cars follow- ing are equipped with comfortable free reclin- ing chairs, and fitted with lavatories and smoking and toilet rooms. The Eastbound run of this train is also sched- uled for economy of time and convenience to the passenger, leaving Pu- eblo 7:05 p. m., Colo- rado Springs 8:40 p. m., Denver 9:30 p. m., and arriving Chicago 7:59 a. m., thus consuming but one full business day in the return journey. Travelers desiring to go via Kansas City or St. Joseph can leave Chicago on No. 1 1 at 5 45 p. rh., connecting with the BIG FIVE at Belleville. This train is also excellently equipped with broad vestibuled Pullman Sleepers, Free Chair Cars, Buflfet Library Car and Dining Car to Kansas City. Toilet Room. Additional Colorado Service from Missouri River points is given in the "Colorado Flyer," a very fast train leaving Kansas City at 6:30 p. m., St. Joseph 5:00 p. m., and Omaha 5:20 P- ni., arriving Denver 11 :oo and Colorado Springs 10:35 "^-^^ morning. East- bound the "Colorado Flyer" leaves Colorado Springs 2:35 P- ^-y Denver 2:35 p. m., arriving Omaha 9:50 a. m., St. Joseph 10:40 a. m., Kansas City 9:15 a. m. As shown by the time, this service is excellent, while the equipment is surpassed by none, a combination which renders this train deservedly popular. The excellent Colorado train service spoken of in the preceding pages has been very greatly improved this season by the addition of a new fast train, only one night out between Chicago and Colorado common points. This new train, known as the Rocky Moun- tain Limited, will be equipped with latest improved sleepers, buffet-library-smoker, chair cars ( free reclining) and diner for all meals west of the Missis- sippi River. It will leave Chicago at 1:00 p. m. daily, and arrive at Colorado Springs at 4:30 p. m., Denver, 4:45. Note particularly the convenient hours of departure and arrival. This train with its connections, which can be made by various lines from the East, will furnish the very best service to Colorado that can be obtained. East-bound this train will leave Denver at 1:15 p. M. and Colorado Springs at 1 130, arriving at Omaha at 6:00 the following morning, Des Moines 10:06 a. m., and Chicago at 7 :oo that evening. The Rocky Mountain Limited, with Big Five from Chicago and Colorado Flyer from Omaha and Kansas City, offers a variety of Colorado service that cannot be surpassed. 46 Dining Car. "Big Five" and Colorado Flyer. 47 ^^.