Nevertheless, popular language divides the system into certain great lines. The “Front Range” extends irregularly from Long’s Peak to Pike’s Peak, then fades out. The “Main” or “Snowy Range,” which is the continental watershed or “divide,” begins at the northern boundary, in the Medicine Bow Mountains: but in the center of the State breaks out of all regularity into several branches, so that it is only by ascertaining where the headwaters of the Atlantic and Pacific streams are separated, that one can tell how to trace the backbone of the continent, for many of the spurs contain peaks quite as lofty as the central chain. Thus the splendid line of the Sangre de Cristo, running southeastward, only divides the drainage of the Rio Grande from that of the Mississippi; yet the highest peak in Colorado belongs to it. The main chain, on the contrary, trends southwestward from the parallel groups in the heart of the State, only to become mixed up into half a dozen branches, all of enormous height and bulk, down in the southwestern corner. Even this is not all, for westward to Utah the whole area is filled with vast uplifts, standing in isolated groups, serving as cross-links, or lying parallel with the general north-and-south lines of great elevation. “I suppose,” says Ludlow, “that to most Eastern men the discovery of what is meant by crossing the Rocky Mountains would be as great a surprise as it was to myself. Day after day, as we were traveling between Denver and Salt Lake, I kept wondering when we should get over the mountains. Four, five, six days, still we were perpetually climbing, descending or flanking them; and at nightfall of the last day, we rolled down into the Mormon city through a gorge in one of the grandest ranges in the system. Then, for the first time, after a journey of six hundred miles, could we be said to have crossed the Rocky Mountains.”
Because we had ascended and descended Veta Pass, therefore, and saw on our left the seemingly insurmountable barrier which yesterday stood at our right, we had by no means got beyond the Rockies; for out there “mountain billows roll westward, their crests climbing as they go: and far on, where you might suppose the Plains began again, break on a spotless strand of everlasting snow.”
VI
SAN LUIS PARK.
The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air.
—Tennyson.
San Luis Park, exceeding in size the State of Connecticut, is identified with the earliest and most romantic history of Colorado. It was here that brave old pioneer, Colonel Zebulon Pike, established his winter quarters almost a century ago, and was captured by the Mexican forces, for at that time all this region was Spanish territory. It was here the northernmost habitations of the Mexican people, the ranches at Conejos, Del Norte, and all along between, were placed, and so became the first farms in what now is Colorado. Here were pastured the first herds and flocks of the early settlers, and the great Maxwell grant, whose ownership has been the subject of so much litigation, included a large portion of this park. To this region, long ago Governor Gilpin directed the attention of immigrants, and lauded it as the “garden of the world.” Gardening is practicable here, without doubt; but colonists have found other parts of the State so much more favorable, that, in spite of its superior advertising, the park has kept nearly its pristine innocence of agriculture outside of the old Mexican estates along the principal streams.