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

by Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Company

RIO GRANDE SOUTHERN ROUTE.

Leaving Durango via the Rio Grande Southern line, the tourist is whisked across the Rio de Las Animas up Lightner Creek, past the silver and gold smelters with their seething furnaces and smoke and dust-begrimed workmen, and shortly past the famous coal banks where the black diamond is dug from the bowels of Mother Earth, and from there hauled to the smelters where it is used for the reduction and refining of its more exalted, but not more useful brethren.

Up through the valley the train speeds along among huge pines which thus far have escaped the woodman's axe, and which will be free from such invasion as long as Uncle Sam claims this particular spot as the especial reservation for the military post at old Fort Lewis.

From Fort Lewis the line passes through seemingly endless forests of pine trees, and after the reservation is passed an occasional saw-mill is sighted from its emitting unearthly screeches, which the knowing ones say is merely the head sawyer sharpening up.

CLIFF DWELLERS.

Descending the mountain into the valley, the beholder looks out on a broad expanse of fertile, well-watered country, surrounded on all sides by snow-capped mountains, and dotted with the rancheros of the hardy pioneer, who has been well repaid for his daring in locating in this far-away but beautiful valley, by its productiveness, and now that the railroad, that greatest of all civilizers, has come, he has abundant opportunities for the disposition of his produce.

In the center of this valley lies Mancos station, which is the junction with the main line of the proposed extension of this road into Arizona.

To the south of Mancos station within a day's drive, and easily accessible, are the ruins of the strange habitations of an extinct and mysterious race known as the Cliff Dwellers. To those seeking curiosities and wonders, the great Cañon of the Mancos, the great Montezuma Valley, the McElmo Cañon, the Lower Animas Valley and the Chaco Cañon are the wonderlands of the world. They contain thousands of homes, and a town of the ancient race of Mound Builders and "Cliff Dwellers," that has attracted the curious ever since the discovery of America. The great Mancos Cañon contains hundreds of these homes which were built and occupied hundreds of years ago. Yet many of them are in a good state of preservation, and in them have been found hundreds of specimens of pottery, and implements of husbandry and warfare. This cañon is twenty miles south of Mancos, over a good wagon road. The cañon is cut through Mesa Verda, a distance of thirty miles, and the walls on either side rise to a perpendicular height of two thousand feet. These cliff dwellings are built in the sides of this cañon, as shown in the illustration. Fifteen miles farther west from the Mancos is situated the great Montezuma Valley, where thousands of fine specimens of pottery have been found among the ruins of that ancient people. On the west side of this valley is the great McElmo Cañon, also full of the ancient homes of the "Cliff Dwellers." Thirty-five miles south of Durango, in the valley of the Animas, are some extensive ruins of the Aztecs, and fifty miles further south are the wonderful ruins in the Chaco Cañon. These ancient Pueblos are, without doubt, the most extensive and the best preserved of any in the United States. Of these Prof. Hayden, in his report of the Geological Survey of the United States for the year 1866, says: "The great ruins in the Chaco Cañon are pre-eminently the finest examples of the works of the unknown builders to be found north of the seat of ancient Aztec Empire in Mexico." There are eleven extensive Pueblos in this cañon, nearly all in a good state of preservation, and their appearance indicates that they were once the home of fifteen hundred to three thousand people each. They are the most accessible from Mancos of any point on the line of railroads. From the thousands of ruins of cities, towns and families found throughout this great San Juan Valley, it is evident that once this great valley was the home of hundreds of thousands of this extinct race. That they were a peaceful and agricultural race of people is evidenced by the large number of their implements of husbandry and specimens of corn and beans found in these ruins, besides irrigating ditches and reservoirs for the storage of water.