The Crest of the Continent: A Summer's Ramble in the Rocky Mountains and Beyond

by Ernest Ingersoll

The history of this new “camp,” Red Mountain, is a short one. In the summer of 1881 three men discovered the Guston mine, but as the ore was low grade it was worked only because it gave an excess of lead which was just then in demand at the Pueblo smelter. In August, 1882, John Robinson, one of the owners, was hunting deer, and while resting, carelessly picked up a small bowlder, after the manner of prospectors who never stop a moment anywhere but they scrutinize every bit of stone within reach, out of pure habit. Astonished at the weight of this piece he broke it in two and found it to be solid galena. This clue led to the discovery of the Yankee Girl lead close by. A month later the owners had sold the prospect-hole for $125,000, but retained two other apparently equally valuable mines near at hand. In the Yankee Girl rich ore was found only a dozen feet below the surface; and though it had to be packed upon mules and burros all the way down to Silverton, it yielded a profit of over fifty dollars a ton.

Upon the heels of this discovery there was a great rush of miners and speculators toward the scarlet heights, and several large settlements—principally Ironton and Red Mountain Town—sprang up on the rough and forested hillside. Claim stakes dotted the mountain as thick as the poles in a hop-field, and astonishing success attended nearly every digging. Among them all the first lode opened, the Yankee Girl, held supremacy, as is so often the case; but a few months later a neighboring property, the National Belle, leaped far to the front at a single bound.

This occurred by the accident of a workman breaking through the tunnel wall into a cavity. Hollow echoes came back from the blows of his pick, and stones thrown were heard to roll a long distance. Taking a candle, one of the men descended and found himself in an immense natural chamber, the flickering rays of the light showing him the vaulted roof far above, seamed with bright streaks of galena and interspersed with masses of soft carbonates, chlorides and pure white talc. On different sides of this remarkable chamber were small openings leading to other rooms or chambers, showing the same wonderful rich formation. Returning from this brief reconnoisance a party began a regular exploration. They crept through the narrow opening into an immense natural tunnel running above and across the route of their working drift for a hundred feet or more, in which they clambered over great bowlders of pure galena, and mounds of soft gray carbonates, while the walls and roof showed themselves a solid mass of chloride and carbonate ores of silver. Returning to the starting point they passed through another narrow tunnel of solid and glittering galena for a distance of forty feet, and found indications of other large passages and chambers beyond. “It would seem,” cries the local editor in his account of this romantic disclosure, “as though Nature had gathered her choice treasures from her inexhaustible storehouse, and wrought these tunnels, natural stopping places and chambers, studded with glittering crystals and bright mineral to dazzle the eyes of man in after ages, and lure him on to other treasures hidden deeper in the bowels of the earth.... The news of the discovery spread like wildfire, and crowds came to see the sight, and to many of them it was one never to be forgotten.”

This was only the first of these surprises, for many cavities have since been divulged, great and small, in each of which crude wealth had been locked up since the world was made. The character of the ores, the occurrence of these cavities, and the extremely short distances beneath the turf at which rich ore is struck, have combined to cause much discussion among geologists as to the true history of the district.

One of the most striking scenes in the neighborhood of Ouray is the passage through which Cañon creek makes its way down to join the Uncompahgre just above the village. A wild and interesting gorge leads upward toward the western foot of Mt. Hayden, the trail carrying one along the edge of a little cliff, and the walls rapidly contracting so that little room is left even for the foot-trail. A quarter of a mile, perhaps less, above the village, these walls suddenly close together, and the steep, brush-grown slope, is lost in a lofty crag, towering far above the tallest spruces, and standing squarely across the gorge. In this escarpment a zigzag crevice shows itself extending from top to bottom: at the top you may look some distance within it, but at the foot the protruding masses on one side, the sharp curve on the opposite, and the deep shadows, never illumined by the highest sun, shut off all searching by the eye. Out of this narrow, upright, cave-like crevice, as though from its original strong fountains, gushes the deep and turbulent stream, cold as ice and sparkling with a million imprisoned bubbles of air. Get as near as you can to its aperture—crane your head around the very corner of these mountain water-gates, and you can see nothing but darkness, in which only the outlines of the nearest irregularities in the rocky walls are dimly defined, while the beetling ledges above shut out the narrow line of sky that might be seen were the sides of the cañon smooth. Retreating down stream a little way, you look past bright pillars of rosy quartzite, across the glittering pathway of foam flecked water, glorying in its escape, up to the lofty gates and the shadowy crevice between, whence the river comes ceaselessly and with singing; you note the color-touches of the flowers and blossoming vines; the soft hangings of the ferns under the damp ledges, the emerald foliage of the poplar standing bravely beneath the shadow of the cliffs and the darker forms of giant spruces—you see this contrast of brightness and color and sunshine just without the damp gloom of the mysterious portals; and you tell yourself that there are few scenes in the Rockies that can equal it.

There is a roundabout way to get to the top of these cliffs and look down into the chasm; and at one point, where it is much more than one hundred feet in depth, a person may easily step across from edge to edge. Though it would probably be impossible in the lowest stage of water to make one’s way up from below against the swift flood that fills the whole width of the chasm, yet by going above it is possible to work your way down stream for a long distance into the crevice. A cave exists there, entered at the surface of the water, and occasional picnic parties are made up to go to it. These consist mainly of young people whom age has not sobered, for during the latter part of the way it is needful that the gentlemen wading should carry the ladies across frequent portages—to borrow a word from a reverse custom. The cave entrance at the water side is only an ante-chamber to the real cavern. To reach that a ladder and rope is required, by which the men first ascend to a second higher chamber and then draw the ladies up. The entrance is a hatchway so narrow that portly persons have been known to express fears as to their getting through.

GRAND CAÑON, FROM TO-RO-WASP.

Both cave and cañon are eaten out of the limestone, and several chasms of the same sort occur upon this and neighboring streams, where the water flowing along the strike of the upturned strata, has cut into it a narrow channel between walls of more resisting rock. Along Portland creek, just above the village, such a cañon is to be visited, containing many beautiful cascades, where the cañon walls do not rise vertically but at a considerable slant, one leaning over the other, and the stream ever edging sidewise as it cuts deeper and deeper. The erosion in these cases is not accomplished so much by attrition, as by a chemical decomposition of the limestone. Yet attrition must do a great work at times; for now and then these purling brooks become the channels for cloudbursts at their sources, and then a mighty and impetuous flood hurls itself down the gorge and chokes the bursting cañons with an unmeasured mass of water and detritus, whose weight and velocity are so great, however, that the flood of water not only, but thousands of tons of bowlders and rocky fragments are forced through and spread out in the valley below. Every such a deluge leaves its marks plainly upon the sides of the cañons, as well as upon the softer banks outside.