Mineral springs abound. No one knows how many there are, yet there is a long list of them already well known. The names Manitou, Glenwood, Poncha, Pagosa, Buena Vista, Ouray, Idaho, Cañon City, have been heard by all. Every town has its especial waters. At some of these there has been a lavish expenditure of capital and hotel palaces have arisen. Some are so especially endowed with outlying attractions that the waters are a secondary consideration, and of these is Manitou. Others have extraordinary temperatures and volume, so that nature’s chemistry is the pastime of hundreds, and of these is Glenwood. Others are the favored of a few. Every prospector knows of one or more, where isolated cases believe that they must drink or die; have drunk, and did not die.
Every railway line in Colorado is truly an excursion line; to ride over it is a pleasure tour, and one that the man in health and seeking rest and recreation alone will enjoy first before he calmly chooses a spot wherein to rest, and which will thereafter be his chosen place before all others. In this way thousands of tastes are gratified every year, and each one wonders why all others cannot see with him in his place advantages incomparable and quite inexpressible. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad can reel off, so to speak, two dozen mineral springs and health and pleasure resorts on its lines in one small publication, not mentioning at all the places that are famous as scenery, passes, heights, cañons, mountains and astounding feats of railway construction. These number scores.
The Colorado Midland road, with less mileage and covering a much smaller extent of country, mentions fourteen resorts, besides twice or thrice as many famous pieces of scenery.
And here it may be remarked that of the famous resorts of Colorado one is reached by both the Denver & Rio Grande and the Colorado Midland. This is Glenwood Springs, sharing with Manitou an almost equal fame. The place is at the junction of Grand River and Roaring Fork, in a valley that is like an elongated bowl. The springs themselves are phenomenal, running out on both sides of the river, and varying from twenty to a thousand cubic inches a second—among the largest in the world. Those on the north side of the river discharge an immense body of water at a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and this stream is made to flow through an aqueduct on both sides of an island. On this island stands the famous bathing house. Here is found every species of bathing arrangement housed in magnificent style. There are twenty-two large two-room bathing apartments for each sex—forty-four in all—and each is supplied with hot, cold or warm mineral water, and the same temperatures of fresh water, and also showers of either. Here in the heart of the mountains will be found all the appliances of the highest grade of civilization, electric lights, smoking, billiard and eating rooms, linen rooms, hair-dressing rooms, laundries, etc. The feature of the place is perhaps the swimming bath. It is a huge out-of-doors oval tank, full of hot water, and ranging in depth from three and a half to five and a half feet. Two thousand gallons a minute of hot mineral water pours into this huge artificial swimming place, the high temperature being reduced by colder water as it enters.
These features—chief among which is, of course, the hot mineral water in immense volume, making the place remarkable among the resorts of the world—are backed by a hotel which takes rank among the palaces. It has two hundred guest rooms, in nearly all of which are open fireplaces, and there is every convenience that pertains to civilization, mention of which in detail is merely tiresome to the accustomed Colorado visitor. One of the features of our national life is seldom mentioned, and there is now only a small class for whom the mention is worth while. It is that wherever the American establishes himself he takes with him all there is. The refinement, the culture, the “style” of Newport and Saratoga are all duplicated at Manitou and Glenwood, housed magnificently of themselves and environed by scenes in comparison with which those of most of the pleasure places of the world are tame.
The Middle Falls of the Cascade in Cheyenne Cañon, near Manitou—This glen and waterfall are among the most celebrated in the world.
A third line, the Union Pacific, Denver & Gulf, has all the famous country beyond Clear Creek Cañon, full of scenery, resorts and mines; the South Park line to Leadville and Gunnison—a trip often made by the Colorado tourist for the pleasure of the journey—with the most famous mining “camp” of the world at the end of it.
The Burlington Route has a line running northwest from Denver to Lyons, whence one of the few remaining famous mountain stage rides may be taken to that which is by many—by all who know it well—considered to be the gem of the Colorado parks, Estes.
This park was in its time the most famous of the natural feeding grounds for all the Colorado animals. It is largely so yet, though in visiting it there is always a half regret that its location was ever divulged in type, so that it might have remained always a chosen spot for those only who could appreciate its original loveliness and were willing to share it with the animals who live there. It is skirted by mountains nine, eleven and fourteen thousand feet high. Two peaks of granite stand on either side of its only feasible entrance. The interior is shaped irregularly and there is little level ground. It is made up of natural lawns and of slopes and grades. It is but twenty miles in length and is not more than two miles wide in any place. One bright, swift trout stream, known prosaically as the Big Thompson, is born in the snow of Long’s Peak and flows crookedly through it from end to end. This is really one of the loveliest streams in the world. There are waterfalls and little lakes, fine groupings of trees, lawns that seem the work of the landscape gardener on a large scale. Nevertheless, sublimity is the dominant feature of Estes Park, after all. There are pinnacles of rosy granite, the streams are lost in cañons almost or quite inaccessible, and the upper end of almost every valley is closed in mystery. There are, though it seems so far removed from the actual heart of the Rockies, seven mountain ranges between Estes Park and the plains.