The Pike's Peak Rush; Or, Terry in the New Gold Fields

These mountains are supposed to contain minerals, precious stones and gold and silver ore. It is but late that they have taken the name Rocky Mountains; by all the old travelers they are called the Shining Mountains, from an infinite number of crystal stones of an amazing size, with which they are covered, and which, when the sun shines full upon them, sparkle so as to be seen at a great distance. — From a Geography One Hundred Years Ago.
NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1917, By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY.

And Certain Others of the Busy Folk That Thronged the Gulches and the Young Denver City. Place and Time: The Pike's Peak Country of the Rocky Mountains, 1859.
Twenty-five thousand people—and more on the way! Think of that! exclaimed Mr. Richards, Terry's father.
It was an evening in early April, 1859, and spring had come to the Richards ranch, up the Valley of the Big Blue, Kansas Territory. Excitement had come, too, for Harry (Harry Revere, that is, the clever, boyish Virginia school-teacher who was a regular member of the family) had been down to the town of Manhattan, south on the Kansas River and the emigrant trail there, and had brought back some Kansas City and St. Louis papers. They were brimming with the news of a tremendous throng of gold-seekers swarming to cross the plains for the new gold fields, discovered only last year, in the Pike's Peak country of the Rocky Mountains.
Do you suppose it's true, Ralph? So many? appealed Mrs. Richards, doubting.
Whew! gasped Terry—the third man in the family. At least, he worked as hard as any man.
I believe it, asserted Harry. Manhattan's jammed and the trail in both directions is a sight!
So are Kansas City and Leavenworth, according to the dispatches, laughed Terry's father. People from the east are flocking across Iowa, to the Missouri River, and the steamboats up from St. Louis are loaded to the guards—everybody bound for the Pike's Peak country and the Cherry Creek diggin's there. It beats the California rush of Forty-nine and Fifty.