A Pilgrimage to the rockies; a souvenir of the 25th Triennial Conclave, Knights Templar, Denver, 1892

BANCROI

THE ROCKIES

University of California • Berkeley

fifflM*

DENVER

"DENVER, COL.
•I89E-

£>PYRIGHT, 1892, by

S. K. HOOPER,

General Passenger Agent Denver & Rio Grande Railroad.

Knight, Leonard & Company,

Printers,
Chicago, Illinois.

Illustrations from Photographs by
W. H. JACKSON.

Descriptive Articles by
FITZ MAC.

In brotherly Conclave assembled at

DENVER,

Beneath the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, in the year of Christ 1892,

THE DENVER & Rio GRANDE RAILROAD

Dedicates this Souvenir Volume
To mark its profound respect for the fraternity, which, through the dark centuries of the past,

Steadfastly resisting the tyranny of creeds and conquerors,

Has linked. together the peoples of the earth in brotherly bonds of

FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY.

COLORADO.

BY VIRGINIA DONAGHE MC CLURG.

"COLORED LAND !" beneath a turquoise sky,-
Sun-kissed from dazzling peaks to opal plains,—
What pulses throb within thy silver veins,
What forces strove in thee for mastery !
The Manitou here dwelt ki days gone by
In crystal springs, to cleanse all mortal stains ;
Here the swart Spaniard strove for golden gains ;
Lone hunters saw thy virgin purity.
Now plenty's garners gild the quiet fields,
And marts are swayed by olive-sceptered peace;
To mighty multitudes her wealth she yields,
As shifting seasons pass and years increase ;
For fair "Columbia," bending towards the west,
Now wears this crimson rose upon her breast.

WELCOME.

HEARTFELT greetings, O Knights Templar, as ye come a noble band,
On a crusade o'er "the desert," now become a blossoming land,—
Where snow peaks their crest uplifting, like the domes of white Mosques stand.

As crusaders, desert-faring, saw some green oasis smile,
Colorado bids you welcome, — after many a weary mile,—
Do us honor, give us pleasure, — rest with us a little while!

THE GARDEN OF THE GODS.

i OBODY ever has or ever will come to Colorado on a pleasure trip without visiting
the world-renowned GARDEN OF THE GODS. It would be like going to Rome without
visiting the ruins of the Colosseum.

The Denver & Rio Grande was the first line to open the way for the traveling
public to this delightful and unique resort. A day of fresh and enchanting ex-
periences awaits every one who visits the marvelous scene for the first time. It is as if a new
window were opened in the soul through which a kaleidoscopic vista, grotesque, enchanting
and benignant, is visioned forth.

When Nature was a young and artless creature this seems to have been her favorite
play-ground, and all the notables of Olympus may be supposed to have gathered here
at the famous and stately GATEWAY OF THE GODS to watch the graceful thing disporting
herself. And the suggestion is irresistible that she must have been suddenly frightened,
leaving all her gigantic and grotesque toys scattered about in artless and delightful confusion.
Take the SCENIC LINE OF THE WORLD from Denver any morning for Manitou. If you have
but a day to spend you can return in the evening. From Manitou the GARDEN is but a
ten-minutes' drive, and open carriages, which make a specialty of the business, are driven
by intelligent guides.

GATEWAY TO THE GARDEN OF THE GODS.

THE FOUNTAINE-QUI-BOUILLE.

HIS is one of the many scenes in Colorado where the beautiful is majestically blended
with the sublime.

The old name, bestowed by the early French trappers and traders, who met the
Indians at this point annually to traffic for their peltries, still clings to it, although it
does not flow tripping from the English tongue.

Here, in the sweltering heat of mid-summer, one may stand cool and comfortable,
shaded by the clambering vines of fragrant clematis, which grows in wild profusion, and
by the umbrageous foliage of grand old cottonwoods (the alamo of the Spaniards), and
gaze through summer air on the majestic spectacle of far-off mountain pinnacles, silent and
sphinx-like in their changeless cowls of snow.

It is scenes and conditions like these that have given a world-wide fame to Manitou, and it,
still in the infancy of its career, is one of the most fashionable and delightful pleasure and health
resorts on the western continent.

In winter it is a veritable sun-trap, protected from any possibility of winds by the moun-
tain range, which forms a crescent about it, and its summer airs are tempered to delightful
coolness by gravitating down from regions of perpetual snows.

The SCENIC LINE OF THE WORLD was the first to open this charming spot to the world.

8

MARSHALL PASS.

O one should venture to say that he has seen the Continent of North America
till he has stood at the very ridge-pole of its water slopes — on Marshall Pass —
and watched the great Chariot of the Sun come up out of the glowing Orient,
speed through the arc of day and descend into the calm and somber Pacific.
The grandeur of the continent then, for the first time, fully breaks upon his
astonished senses.

A day so given to the silent contemplation of the resistless forces of the universe — a
day so isolated from all the sordid cares and all the vexatious trivialities in which the
livens of men are entangled — a day so consecrated to the silent sublimities of nature must
forever enlarge the mind that has enjoyed it and enrich the memory that embraces it.

No other railroad crosses the continental divide at a point that gives the passenger
anything comparable to the limitless view obtained from Marshall Pass. Here he may
veritably stand with one foot in water that flows to the Pacific, the other in water that
flows to the Atlantic, with a scope of vision east and west limited only by the power
of the eye, and count to the north and south of him a thousand mountain peaks that
lift their icy arms into the blue depths of the sky like the silvered minarets of some
celestial city miraged from above.

Tourists can reach Marshall Pass only by the SCENIC LINE of the WORLD.

MARSHALL PASS.

LAKE SAN CRISTOVAL.

F the scenery along the line of the Denver & Rio Grande had to be characterized in one

word, the word employed would have to be sublimity.

The scenery, however, along this famous route, is so varied that the whole vocabulary

of descriptive appellation is exhausted before the half has been surveyed.

We run down the gamut through stupendous, grand, sublime, magnificent and beautiful.
But at Lago San Cristoval (as old Spanish explorers called it), we pause for a word that meets
the full requirements of the case. That word is loveliness'!' This alluring vision of water is
not so much known as it should be, even among our own people, and it is scarcely known
at all to tourists from abroad, because, until recently, it has been accessible only to those
rugged enough to stand the hardship of a long day's coaching over mountain roads.

Now, however, it may be reached over the Lake City branch and will become one of the
standard summer attractions which the Scenic Line of the World offers to its tourist patrons.

When the San Juan region was a far-off country, the weary traveler who journeyed
thence over the old Los Pinos trail, would draw the bridle on his lagging broncho, leap from
the saddle, and stand enraptured, gazing upon the refreshing loveliness of Lago San Cristoval
that lay below him encircled by its green necklace of pines, with the mountains mirrored in
its limpid depths. It is but a short drive from Lake City. The road to the recently discov-
ered, but now famous, Carson Mining Camp passes Lake San Cristoval.

16

LAKE SAN CRISTOVAL.

EAGLE RIVER CANON.

>EW places in the world can present to the eye of the tourist a more varied panorama
of magnificent scenery than the canon of the Eagle river, which is traversed throughout
its entire length by the broad-gauge tracks of the great SCENIC LINE of the world.

And the locality is not more attractive to the tourist than to the sportsman. The Eagle
river abounds in trout and is the paradise of the skillful angler, but it is hardly the place for
a tyro with the rod. It needs the hand of a master to cast the fly over these waters, but they
richly reward the skill of the strong angler with an instinct for the sport. It is a typical
." mountain stream, of strong volume, and its waters are cool and clear. It is a laughing,
romping, coquettish, dignified, serious stream — laughing over the pebbles in its upper
course, romping among the rocks farther down, swirling away into graceful pools, deep and
cool when it reaches the canon, then striding away with dignified pace, and finally bringing
up with a slow and serious step as it nears its junction with the Grand.

Passing through Eagle river canon the tourist is afforded the only opportunity for viewing
silver mining from the train. Perched high up on the cliffs for the entire length of the canon
can be seen mines, shaft houses and mining camps, with their unique tramways, buckets,
etc., for lowering the ore to the trains. Some of the famous mines of Colorado are located
in this canon.

18

EAGLE RIVER CANON.

KING SOLOMON'S TEMPLE.

IHE Scenic Line of the World, it should be remembered, consists of two systems,
a broad-gauge and a narrow-gauge line. These occupy the same road-bed from
Denver to Pueblo, and from Pueblo westward, through the Grand Canon of the
Arkansas to Salida, a total distance of about 220 miles. Here they divide, the narrow-
gauge line striking directly westward over the famous Marshall Pass to Grand Junction,
while the broad-gauge, running northward to Leadville, crosses the continental divide
by Tennessee Pass, and, following down the picturesque and beautiful canon of
Eagle River to the junction of the latter with the Grand, it pursues that noble stream directly
westward past the famous Glenwood Springs to a union with the narrow-gauge system
again at Grand Junction.

The last of the stupendous canons traversed by the broad-gauge system going westward
is that of the Grand River, below the junction of the Eagle and immediately east of Glen-
wood Springs.

Lacking somewhat in the overwhelming sublimity of its depths, it is, nevertheless,
accounted by many the most beautiful canon in Colorado. Unlike all the others, it cuts its
way, most of the distance, through the stratified formations, and this gives to its outline a
curiously castellated configuration, such as is shown in this picture of KING SOLOMON'S
TEMPLE, which occurs about midway of its length.

20

KING SOLOMON'S TEMPLE.

GLENWOOD SPRINGS.

HIS place has conditions which must render it forever unique among the pleasure
and health resorts of the western continent. The efficacy of its hot baths in relieving
many forms of chronic disease have already made it widely known. The alterative
effect of the waters on nearly all morbid physical conditions is both prompt and
lasting, while as a mere idle delight the great artificial swimming pool, covering
an acre of ground, paved on the bottom and graduated in depth from three feet
to five and a half, is a source of never-ending enjoyment and always produces the most
cheering effect upon the depressed spirits of those afflicted, while to the young and strong
it is boundless glee.

A striking peculiarity of the conditions here is, that owing to the effect on the skin
of the medicinal salts which the natural hot water contains, these open air baths in the great
swimming pool may be, and actually are, taken in winter as well as in summer, with the
best results, even by delicate persons. The invigorating character of the water may be
judged by this circumstance. Of course, all do not resort to the swimming pool. There
are extensive private baths of the most luxurious appointments. The great central bath-
house, built of stone and floored and wainscotted with tiles, is the finest thing of its kind on
the continent. Glenwood is about fifteen hours' ride from Denver on the great SCENIC LINE
OF THE WORLD.

22

BATH HOUSE AND POOL, GLENWOOD SPRINGS.

A MOUNTAIN TRAIL ,

O the sensitive imagination there is something infinitely pathetic, as well as much
that is strikingly picturesque, in the conditions that surround the life of the western
miner. And the more one sees of it the more deeply is the pathos of the situ-
ation impressed upon the observing mind.

It was the peculiarly delicate but decided way in which Bret Harte perceived and por-
trayed this pathos, so elusive to the coarser mold, that gave the assurance of poetical genius
in the man and commended his early tales of California life to the inmost heart of the world.
As stories merely, they were meagre and miserable little structures ; but illuminated by
the tender genius of a naive and matchless poesy they disclosed to us the tear-stains on
the cheek of the bawd under the paint and powder, and the lonesome, gentle, yearning
heart of the old-time miner behind the blood-curdling bravado of his lips.

It is in the great San Juan region of South-western Colorado that the conditions of
mining still retain most strongly the picturesque character which the stories of Bret Harte
have ambered in the sentiment of the world. This picture of a lonely mountain trail,
traversed by a "prospector" and his solitary "pack animal" is pathetically characteristic of
scenes that the tourist may witness any day in the mountains of "the San Juan country."

The scene illustrated is familiar and marvelous — old Uncompahgre trail connecting Red
Mountain with Ouray.

24

CASTLE GATE.

F the thousands who cross the Rocky Mountains every month by the Denver & Rio
Grande Route, few will ever forget the impressions of majestic grandeur conveyed to
the eye by the buttressed headlands of CASTLE GATE. They ravish the vision with a
mellowed and oriental luxuriance of color. They touch the imagination with the
magic of things unseen, and, as the stately train sweeps down the curved avenue
of its course toward the narrow portal like a creature conscious of its own grace, one feels
that the enchanting landscapes of a king's demesne are about to burst upon his view. But
only Nature's broad, bald, arid acres greet the eye (this if coming eastward), and, strange to
say, one does not find the disenchantment without a pleasure peculiar to itself — a surprise
that is not a disappointment. The rushing, racing, protesting river (a river only by the
chivalrous courtesy of western speech), is still there. It is calling after you with a thousand
angry protestations against the rocks that impede its foaming course and trip its hurrying
footsteps. Going westward there is no sudden disenchantment. Expectation is sustained.

Passing the towering portals of the gate you enter a winding canon of moderate depth,
broken here and there, giving side vistas through timbered reaches, which are the beloved
haunts of deer and antelope, and in a few hours you are sweeping up to the great city by the
tideless sea.

26

CASTLE GATE.

THE TEMPLE AND TABERNACLE.

CCUPYING an entire block in what was the original center of the present City of
Salt Lake, surrounded on four sides by a ten-foot stone wall, is the 'famous Mormon
Tabernacle, the more pretentious, but less noted, Temple, and the Assembly Hall.
Of these three buildings, more attention will naturally be given to the Tabernacle,
which is to Salt Lake City what the Colosseum was to Rome. Covered by an immense
shingled roof in the shape of half an egg, which comes, seemingly, very close to the ground, it
presents an appearance unequaled by any structure in the world. The interior is severely plain,
but liberal use of evergreens in the immense dome gives it a cheerful aspect and relieves the
great expanse of white walls. The acoustic properties of this unique building are some-
thing wonderful, and the beautiful music of an exceedingly large pipe organ, together with
the large choir, fill every nook and corner with a concord of sweet sounds.

Of the Temple little can be said, as it is still in an incomplete condition, although two
millions of money and forty years of time have already been expended upon it. It is con-
structed of an exceptionally fine quality of white granite, which is brought from quarries
some 80 miles distant. The building is 200 X 100 feet, the center spire being 200 feet from
the ground. The architecture belongs to no particular school, but is of a character within
itself.

The Assembly Hall is of a less pretentious character than either of the other buildings,
and resembles, in general appearance, many religious edifices as seen in eastern cities.

28

THE TEMPLE AND TABERNACLE.

MOUNT OF THE HOLY CROSS.

WILL. L. VISCHER.

HERE Nature's God hath roughest wrought; where spring the purest fountains;
Where long ago the Titans fought and hurled for missiles, mountains ;
Where everlasting snows abide, and tempest clouds are driven
Along the solid granite side of yawning canons riven
Deep in the Rocky's grandest pride that lifts its head to heaven.

Amid the wilds, where awful rise the giant peaks, that fathom
Night's starry depths and day's blue skies, and brood above the chasm
One monarch 'mongst the mighty hills rears high his summit hoary,
Like some grim king whose legend fills a page of olden story,
And heart o'erawes and soul enthrills before his regal glory.

The holy cross of Christian faith, above the royal velvet

In beauty shines, an emblem wraith, high on the beetling helmet;

Its white arms stretching through the sheen of silvery mist, are gleaming:

A talisman, the world to screen, Hope's symbol, in its seeming;

A wonder grand, a joy serene, upon the ages beaming.

30

MOUNT OF THE HOLY CROSS.