Ouray is—what shall I say? The prettiest mountain town in Colorado? That wouldn’t do. A dozen other places would deny it, and the cynics who never saw anything different from a rough camp of cabins in some quartz gulch, would sneer that this was faint praise. Yet that it is among the most attractive in situation, in climate, in appearance, and in the society it affords, there can be no doubt. There are few western villages that can boast so much civilization.
Ouray stands in a bowl-shaped valley—a sort of broad pit in fact—hollowed out of the northern flank of that mass of mountains which holds the fountains of so many widely destined rivers. A narrow notch in the bowl southward lets the Uncompahgre break through to the lowlands, and furnishes us with a means of ingress; otherwise the most toilsome climbing would be the only way to get into or out of town. From this point diverge three or four short but exceedingly lofty, and several lesser ranges, like the spokes of a wheel from its hub. Eastward stretches the continental divide of the Sierra San Juan proper; southward the Needles and the circling heights that enclose Baker’s park; westward the Sierra San Miguel; northward the spurs of Uncompahgre; and the diminishing foothills and mesas that sink gradually into the Gunnison valley.
MARBLE CAÑON.
Yet the first comers—it is only seven years ago, but the mists of antiquity seem to gather about it—did not enter that way, but came over the range from the south. Prospectors for precious metals, they ascended the Rio Las Animas from Baker’s park, until they found its head, and stood upon the dividing crest of the range. Here a streamlet trickled northward, and they followed its broadening current down the unknown gorges into which it sank. The walls were often too steep to allow any foothold for them, and then they would wade in the icy water and stumble over the slippery bowlders that had fallen from above. When a dozen miles of this work had been accomplished, they found themselves entering a cañon so narrow, that by stretching out their arms they could almost touch both of its walls; and so irregular that a few rods before and behind was all the distance that ever could be seen at once. Uncertain when they would be brought to a standstill by some pool or precipitous fall, and compelled to struggle back against a torrent which scarcely allowed them to move downstream in safety, they pushed on until they suddenly emerged into a beautiful round valley, filled with copses of trees and sunny glades. In this haven the chilled and weary prospectors rested for the night. While one man—there were no more than three, I believe,—built the fire, sliced the fat bacon and molded the bread; the second went to the river with his fishing-line, and the third started out with his gun. By the time the bread was baked the angler came back with eighteen trout and the hunter returned for help to bring in a bear he had killed within a couple of hundred yards. So runs the tradition, and there is no reason to discredit it.
Now, where the bear was shot and the trout caught, stands a town of fifteen hundred people, which forms the center for supplying a wide circuit of mining localities, including Red Mountain, Mt. Sneffles, Mineral Point and Mineral Farm, Bear Creek, and half a dozen other places of lesser note; and which affords a good market for the agriculturists of the lower valleys, and the cattle breeders of neighboring mesas. Prosperity, comfort, and even much luxury prevail now; but some of the trials of the earliest settlers, beset by isolation, winter, famine, and the fear of Indians, would be worth recounting could I have unlimited space.
This is not a miner’s guide, and nothing could be drier reading for a stranger than a catalogue of diggings and minerals. The ores abound in a thousand ledges which run up and down, and here and there, all through the mountains, from the metamorphic limestones of the outer ledges to the storm-hewn trachyte that caps the hoary summits. What I have said concerning the ore of the opposite (southern) side of the San Juan system of mountains, and the way in which it occurs, applies well enough to this side also. It could not well be otherwise, for the age and general geology of the two regions is as nearly alike as the two sides of the same mountain-chain are very likely to be. In a word the ores are varied, but chiefly ores of galena and copper, occurring in fissure veins and carrying a “high grade” proportion of silver (in various forms) and a considerable quantity of gold. The extraordinary variety of minerals, and the vast bulk of the ore deposits are the two noteworthy features of the region. These ores, moreover, as a rule, are not “refractory” though containing antimonial elements which in an excess would make them so. Works for their concentration, i.e., the sifting out (after pulverization) of the worthless vein-matter, in order to save the expenses of transportation, are run to great advantage.
Ouray’s principal claim to our notice as sightseers lay in its beautiful situation, and the attractive bits of mountain scenery in its neighborhood,—a collection of pictures which it would be hard to duplicate in an equally limited space anywhere else in the whole Rocky mountains.
The valley in which the town is built is at an elevation of about 7,500 feet above the sea, and is pear-shaped, its greatest width being not more than half a mile while its length is about twice that down to the mouth of the cañon. Southward—that is toward the heart of the main range,—stand the two great peaks Hardin and Hayden. Between is the deep gorge down which the Uncompahgre finds its way; but this is hidden from view by a ridge which walls in the town and cuts off all the farther view from it in the direction, save where the triangular top of Mt. Abrams peers over. Westward are grouped a series of broken ledges, surmounted by greater and more rugged heights. Down between these and the western foot of Mt. Hayden struggles Cañon creek to join the Uncompahgre; while Oak creek leaps down a line of cataracts from a notch in the terraced heights through which the quadrangular head of White House mountain becomes grandly discernible,—the easternmost buttress of the wintry Sierra San Miguel.