Cunningham is a good type of those huge ravines the western man calls gulches. Its real walls are several hundred yards apart,—Galena and Green mountains on the north, King Solomon on the south—but from each have tumbled long sloping banks of débris, that join at their bases into a series of ridges. Among these a turbulent stream seeks its irregular way, and over them the traveler must climb wearily, making frequent detours to avoid huge pieces of rock that have fallen bodily from the cliffs, and have been rolled by their great weight to the very bottom of the gorge. Here and there the walls are sundered, and down a side ravine is tossed a foaming line of cataracts; or some hollow among the peaks (themselves out of sight) will turn its gathered drainage over the cliff, to fall two or three thousand feet in a resounding series of cascades, white and filmy and brilliant against its dark and glistening background. Wherever any soil has been able to gather upon these loose rocks, if some curvature of the cliffs protects from the sweeping destruction of snow avalanches, heavy spruce timber grows, and this, with lighter tinted patches of poplars, or willow-thickets in wet places, or a tangle of briers hiding the sharp rocks and beloved of the woodchucks and conies, give all there is of vegetation.
But these are all minor features, under-foot. Overhead tower the rosy and gleaming monuments of that old time “when the gods were young and the world was new;”—cliffs rising so steeply that only here and there can they be climbed, and studded with domes and pinnacles so slender and lofty that, under our unsteady glance, they seem to totter and swim vaguely through the azure concave.
Amid this magnificence of rock-work, spanned by a violet edged vault which is not sky but only color,—the purest mass of color in the universe,—passes the trail and stage-road cut over the lofty crest to the sources of the Rio Grande, and thence down through Antelope park to beautiful Wagon-Wheel Gap, and the railway again. Here, too, are rich silver mines, lowest down the “Pride of the West,” next the “Green Mountain,” and, last of all, “Highland Mary,” standing almost on the summit of the pass.
The central point and outlet of all this district is Silverton, and its founders preëmpted almost the only site for a town of any consequence in the whole region. Yet she has less than one thousand acres to spread herself over. Engulfed amid lofty peaks, a little park lies as level as a billiard-table, and as green, breaking into bluffs and benches northward where the river finds its way down.
When, three and twenty years ago, miners were amazed at the wealth disclosed in the mines of central Colorado, eager prospectors began to penetrate yet deeper into the recesses of the jumbled ranges that lay behind the front rank. Among the boldest of these was a certain Colonel Baker, reputed to have got his title as a confederate officer, who organized a large party of men—some say two hundred in number—to go on an exploration of what was then called the Pike’s Peak belt, including nearly all the region between that historic mountain and the head of the Gila river in Arizona. Marching eastward to Pueblo, and thence by the old Mexican wagon-road through Conejos and Tierra Amarilla, Baker and his men worked northward along the San Juan and Animas, prospecting for and finding more or less bars of gold-gravel (you may get “colors” anywhere in this part of Colorado), till finally, in the summer of 1860, he crossed the range, and discovered the deep-sunken nook which bears his name.
Erecting a central camp here, these prospectors climbed all the mountains, and pushed up every ravine, in search of gold, but found small encouragement. The silver they knew of, but had no means of working. Winter came, and they gathered together and built cabins in the thick timber at the mouth of the cañon. The snow packed deep about them, a provision train intended for their succor was captured by the Indians, who became aggressive, sickness set in, and the horrors of starvation stood at their very doors. This terror, added to their lack of success, overcame even pioneer patience and philosophy. Reviling Baker as a cheat, who had brought them, under false pretenses, into this terrible state, they were about to hang him to one of the groaning pines that mocked their misery with a loud pretense of grief in every storm, when some slight help came and the colonel’s neck was saved. The following summer, all who had not died crawled out of their prison-park and returned to civilization.
It was not until ten years later that any persons went to Baker’s park to stay, and then they were extremely few in number. Almost the first result of this second advent of prospectors was the unearthing of the “Little Giant” gold mine in Arastra gulch—a narrow ravine where were at once erected a log village and an arastra with which to crush the quartz, worked by the little stream which trickles down from the snowbanks. Simultaneously came the discovery of silver leads, a fact that speedily got abroad, induced a little boom, and set Howardsville on its feet as a camp of some importance and magnificent expectations.
Five miles below, Silverton was laid out straight and square, became the county-seat, and attracted most of the new-comers as a place of residence. At first, of course, all the buildings were of logs, and bore roofs of dirt. To-day the village has perhaps fifteen hundred permanent residents; churches, schools, newspapers, the telegraph, and all the appurtenances of frontier civilization. It is characteristic of these mountain towns that they spring full size into both existence and dignity. There is no Topsy-growth at all; rather a Minerva-like maturity from the start.
For several years no wagon-road entered Baker’s park, and the only communication between it and the outside world was by saddle animals. As the local paper gently expressed it, it “was somewhat deprived of easy transportation.” Goods and machinery of every sort had to be brought in on the backs of the tough and patient little Mexican donkeys, toiling across the terrible heights under burdens almost as bulky as themselves. The whole town would be alive with a general jubilation when the tinkling bells of the first train of jacks was heard in the spring, for that meant the end of a six months’ siege in the midst of impassable snow.
Though these mountains are yet full of men who go about all day with a big six-shooter in their belt; and though the main streets of Silverton (like other frontier places) contain too many drinking and gambling saloons, yet the town has never passed through such a rough history as most mining camps see, and it is to-day the most orderly village in the whole region. This is chiefly due to the quietly determined attitude its best citizens have taken, and their fixed purpose not to let the lawless rule.