CASTLE GATE.
When we came to the learning, there were persons enough to teach us, besides all the explicit information Mr. William E. Pabor and others have put into type about the new town—the western Denver, the metropolis of—
“Didn’t we hear Gunnison called that, too? and Montrose? and—?” asks the Madame, whose serious mind can never quite become accustomed to local flowers of speech.
Undoubtedly we had; but who shall say which one of them, a century from now, shall not deserve the name? Describe it? That would be merely repetition. Situated, as I have said, in the midst of a level sage-plain, utterly treeless, it is an orderly jumble of brick buildings, frame buildings, log cabins, tents, and vacant spaces. It is South Pueblo or Salida or Durango, or Gunnison of two years ago over again. The more important question to be answered, is, why is a town built here at all? It is here in anticipation of the agricultural productions of the valley by which it is surrounded, water for the irrigation of which is supplied by the largest river in Colorado, and therefore inexhaustible.
A year before the railway came, speculators, chiefly from Ruby and Irwin, who had no dread of loneliness, went to this point and started the town. “They staked off several ranches,” says the report, “and located one irrigating ditch and a town site.” This town, which they called Granville, is situated across the Grand from the mouth of the Gunnison. A town site was afterwards staked by the Crawford party, and given the name of Grand Junction.
That is the way these marvelously new and flourishing towns are started out here. They reverse the proverb and may be said to be made not born; or, as Chum puts it, fititur non nasce. I couldn’t have done that, but it was easy enough for Chum who has been to college; he don’t mind a little gymnastics in Latin like that.
In the mountains dividing Middle park from North park the clustering streamlets pour steadily into Grand lake, whose surface is rarely free from gusts of chilling wind or the shadow of gathering storms. Hidden in heavy forests, it occupies a basin scooped out by the mighty plow of a glacier and held back by moraines and montonnes that record a geological history of the utmost interest to the student. About this solitary lake gather gloomy traditions of fierce warfare between Ute and Arapahoe, and since the Indian owners have yielded it to the white men, one of the darkest crimes in the history of the Rockies has happened upon its shores.
From this dark mountain-tara flows a strong outlet fed by the snows. Its whole youth lies in the depths and gloom of cañons, for range after range open their gates to let it pass, but the gates are narrow and the pathway rough. Thus this river, constantly recruited, more and more the Grand, fights its way from the center almost to the western edge of the state. There, when its labor is fairly done, and aid is no longer needed, comes the help of the powerful Gunnison, and doubly strong it rolls westward to the Utah line, and then southwestward till it meets the flood of the Green and both become the Rio Colorado.