Three months after the completion of the line to Creede, each train brought to the camp from two hundred to three hundred people, all the side-tracks were blocked with freight and a ceaseless stream of silver was flowing into the treasury of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company. The lucky prospector built a cozy cabin in the new camp and saw a city spring up almost in a day. Just where the trains pulled in, you might see him sitting by the cottage door, smoking a cigar, while the little old dog who had just finished a remarkably good breakfast, trotted stiff-legged up and down the porch and wondered why they didn’t go out any more and hunt in the hills.
THE RISE AND FALL OF CREEDE.
A thousand burdened burros filled
The narrow, winding, wriggling trail.
An hundred settlers came to build
Each day new houses in the vale.
An hundred gamblers came to feed
On these same settlers—this was Creede.
Slanting Annie, Gambler Joe
And Robert Ford; Sapolio—