Twenty-eight miles north of Gunnison the narrow valley lets us into a snug little basin among the hills which border upon the Elk range, Slate river comes winding through it from the north, while Coal creek sweeps abruptly around a lofty spur at the left. Straight ahead, behind a green ridge, a white conical mountain stands challenging our admiration, and on our right a still nearer height rises like a mighty pyramid of gray stone from a richly verdant base.
The Madame gazes at them with delight a moment, but quickly glances with more eager interest to the meadow-land in which we are coming to a standstill, for the lush grass is dyed with innumerable flowers.
“Why Crested Butte?” she asks as the station sign comes in view.
I point, for reply, to the conical gray height which dominates the valley.
“That is neither a butte, nor is it crested,” she says. “A butte properly is not a peak of volcanic or primitive rock even if it is isolated—the proper name for that is ‘mountain’ or ‘spur.’ A butte is a hill of sedimentary rock, not mountain-like in appearance, and standing by itself in a flat region. Moreover there isn’t a bit of crest. Its apex is as sharp and round as a well-whittled pencil.”
“If you could look at it from the other side you might find a very well-marked crest.”
“But I can’t, and nobody does, see it from the other side. However”—and here her prerogative of inconsistency was exercised—“I am glad they adopted the mistake for now the town has a name worth remembering, something you can’t say of too many of these mountain villages.”
Crested Butte had the honor to be the first settlement in the Gunnison region. A recent review of its history says that in the spring of 1877 the Jennings brothers, who were hardy prospectors, penetrated as far as the Butte and were somewhat surprised and delighted at finding coal. Instantly turning their attention to that branch of mining they located some land. The fame of this discovery, blending with that of others, proved an incentive to the overflow from Leadville and the rest of Colorado. In 1877 a few men came in, but no effort was made even to survey the country until 1878. In that year Howard F. Smith dropped in and purchased some coal interests. He soon had the country surveyed, erected a store and advertised so well that within a few weeks a village had been started which is now one of the pleasantest summer places on the western slope, and can boast a hotel that has no superior in the Rocky mountains for comfort. This is the Elk Mountain house, and it is the property of the town-site company, who appreciate that the first impressions of a traveler (and possible settler) are largely colored by his early experiences in the matter of food and lodging.
No mines for gold and silver exist in the immediate vicinity of the village, though many “camps” in the Elk Mountains from five to twenty miles away are tributary to it; and the chief reliance and raison d’ être of the settlement is found in the coal-beds that are adjacent to it. These are of the greatest value and importance, and at night, when the blaze of the coke ovens sheds a lurid glare upon the overhanging woodlands and the snug town, one can appreciate the far-seeing expectations that lead the people there to call their town the Pittsburgh of the West.
Between two great foothills south and west of the town, flows a little creek whose channel is cut through five beds of coal, dipping southward, with the rest of the stratified rocks, at an angle of about six degrees; the lowest is ten feet in thickness, the others six, five, four and three feet. This coal is bituminous, and has been proved to be the best coking coal in the United States, as is shown by the following authoritative analysis: