End of the Stage Ride from Terminal of the Burlington Route—Estes Park.
It will be understood that it is not intended to do more here than give a sketch of an easy journey out of Denver into a celebrated mountain region. This little journey may be made over the “Loop” and back in one day. It may last a month or all summer. It is one of the remarkable features of Colorado travel that this trip among the heights and fastnesses of nature, and all other delightful journeys here, can be made without a moment of hardship, or even of inconvenience. Civilization is everywhere. Roads, railways, bridges, towns, dot the mountain world. Yet that world remains unchanged, lovely and magnificent in single phrase, and capable of being seen and enjoyed with an expenditure little greater than that which is always necessary at home or elsewhere.
CHAPTER V.
Nooks and Corners.
The State of Colorado contains four thousand three hundred and fifty-seven miles of railroads in a mountain area of a hundred and five thousand square miles. In any other state every mile of this would be “scenic,” and the most uninteresting part of it would elsewhere serve to divert extensive travel.
In this area, penetrated in every part by the astonishing railway mileage given, there are a hundred and fifty-five mountain peaks that are over thirteen thousand feet high. That is ten times as many as all Europe holds. One of these, situated so as to be seen sometimes a hundred miles across the plains, is forsooth climbed by a human railroad, and can be scaled and descended and the traveler be far on his way toward home within the daylight hours of one eventful day. When one begins to describe this country he has to deal with all the majesties, mountains, parks, crags, cañons, glens, waterfalls, geysers, lakes, caverns, cliffs, buttes, all spread out on a tremendous scale, none of them small. There are, it is said, seventy-two high peaks that yet stand nameless, waiting for some form of concurrent opinion as to how these colossal sons of nature shall be best called in mere human speech.
There are about five hundred lakes, large and small, some of them distinguished by a famous name, and many still asleep in mountain hollows almost unknown, where every wanderer who finds them is a discoverer for himself.
There are about six thousand miles of running water, born of snow, filled with fish, most of their countless windings still untraced by him who bears a rod and basket and would like to lure to unequal combat and certain death the mountain fishes, all “game” and difficult of capture. In the far recesses of the mountains there are places still unknown to all save one—the prospector—and here linger the mountain lion, the panther, black, cinnamon, grizzly and silver-tip bears, wildcats, lynxes, porcupines, deer, elks, antelope, and all the creatures of the wilds. These are never common; all the hunters’ tales do not ever make them that, and they must be hunted. He who finds and slays them is an adventurer, and was always such.
Glenwood Springs—General view.