"Around the Circle": One Thousand Miles Through the Rocky Mountains

by Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Company

SOUTH WILLOW CAÑON, CREEDE, COLO.

Here is an old stage station, a primitive and picturesque structure of hewn logs, made cool and inviting by wide-roofed verandahs. Not a hundred feet away rolls the Rio Grande river, swarming with trout. A drive of a mile along a winding road, each turn in which reveals new scenic beauties, brings the tourist to the famous springs. The medicinal qualities of the waters, both of the cold and hot springs, have been thoroughly tested and proved equal, if not superior, to the Hot Springs of Arkansas.

Ten miles beyond Wagon Wheel Gap is Creede; nothing yesterday, a city of seven thousand people to-day. Here is Colorado's newest and richest mining camp, bustling with all the activity of an older eastern city. Situated in the heart of a cañon and extending through it and widening out on to the less precipitous hills below, composed of buildings of all kinds, from the temporary "shack" of the prospector to the more pretentious brick store. The mountain side dotted with innumerable prospect holes, with an occasional large building of unpainted pine, rising from which is a volume of steam and smoke giving ocular evidence of the presence of a mine of more than ordinary interest and value. To the tourist desiring to combine business with pleasure, here is the opportunity to buy what at present seems only "a hole in the ground," but which may some day develop into a mint within Itself.

Leaving Alamosa and continuing the circle tour, after crossing San Luis Park, and just before reaching Toltec Tunnel, a sharp curve takes the train into a nook among the hills. To the left are great monumental and fantastic forms of rock, while to the right are cliffs rising to a height of five or six hundred feet above the track. From the quaint and curious formations which rise to the left as this bend is rounded, it has been named Phantom Curve. In half an hour Toltec Tunnel is reached, the great peculiarity of which is that it pierces the top of a mountain instead of its base. For six hundred feet it has been blasted through the living rock, and such is its solidity that no masonry is needed to support the superincumbent rock masses above. When the train emerges from the tunnel it rolls out upon a bridge of trestle-work set like a balcony against the wall of stone. Beneath, to the left, is Toltec Gorge. The traveler looks down fifteen hundred feet and, glancing upward, sees the opposite wall of the gorge rising a thousand feet above him. The scene is one of the most thrilling and unique in the whole journey "Around the Circle." Below, at the bottom of the gorge, swirls and dashes a little stream, whose waters are churned into snow-white foam, and the noise of whose progress comes faintly to the ear, borne upward from those tremendous depths.

RIO LAS ANIMAS CAÑON.

An object of interest to all visitors to Toltec Gorge is the Garfield Memorial, a beautiful monument of granite, raised by the National Association of General Passenger Agents, who held service at this spot on the 26th day of September, 1881, at the time President Garfield was being buried at Cleveland, Ohio.

At Cumbres, the summit of the Cumbres range of mountains, is reached an elevation of 10,115 feet, the journey of the descent is a trip fraught with great variety of scenery and abounding in interest. Here may be seen mountain meadows lush with vegetation, the surrounding hills being heavily timbered and abounding in game.

At Ignacio the Indian reservation is entered, and the rude tepees of the Southern Utes can be seen pitched along the banks of the Rio de las Florida. Occasionally a glimpse can be caught of a stolid brave, tricked out in all his savage finery, gazing fixedly at the train as it speeds by. Frequently there is quite a little group of these aborigines at the station, and they are always ready to exchange bows and arrows, trophies of the chase, or specimens of their rude handiwork in return for very hard cash.

From Durango the tourist has the choice of two routes to complete the "Circle" tour; either via the Rio Grande Southern Railroad, through the Mancos Valley, the Lost Cañon, the Valley of the Dolores and the Dolores Cañon to Rico, over the Lizard Head Pass by Trout Lake and Telluride, down the San Miguel and Leopard Creek to Ridgway; or via the Denver & Rio Grande, through the Animas Cañon to Silverton, over the Rainbow Route (Silverton Railroad) to Ironton, and thence over the famous Ironton and Ouray Stage Road to Ouray.