The Awakening of the Desert

by Julius Charles Birge

On the seventh day we skirted along the eastern slope of the mountains and now once more upon the plains we passed numerous herds of antelope and elk. At night we arrived at the Planter's House in Denver.

It had been eight years since George A. Jackson, a trapper and companion of Kit Carson, discovered gold in Cherry Creek near the present site of that settlement. As Pike's Peak (discovered by Zebulon M. Pike in 1806) was hardly a hundred miles distant and was the nearest object bearing a name that had appeared on the maps at any time prior to the Cherry Creek discovery, the diggings were first known as Pike's Peak Gold Mines.

In the following autumn of 1858 intelligence unaccompanied by any particulars reached the States by the way of Omaha that gold had been discovered at Pike's Peak. The news vividly colored by excitable men spread like wild fire through the country. Early in the following spring I saw a small train roll out with a party of adventurers whom I well knew to be on the alluring quest for Pike's Peak gold. One wagon bore the legend which later became familiar "Pike's Peak or bust." I saw members of the party in the autumn of the same year after they had returned "busted." Their hunt was like the storied search for the bag of gold at the foot of the rainbow. Before the rumor of the discovery of the precious metal had barely had time to rouse the average fortune seeker George Scofield of Council Bluffs, who had been a successful placer miner in California in 1849, joined with his neighbors, Samuel Dillon, William Kuhn, George Ritter, and Joseph Wheeler and late in 1858, fitting out a four ox team with supplies, started immediately for Pike's Peak. As they wandered among the foothills near the mountains the snow began to fly. With the view of establishing winter quarters they moved down to Cherry Creek and built the first log house erected in that part of the territory. This was the beginning of Denver. This record with the print of the house is furnished by Ira Scofield who was in at the house warming. Thus was planted, in what was then Kansas territory, another active aggressive center of population which was to open the slumbering wealth of the hills, rouse the latent energies of the soil and carve out the new state of Colorado. The rush of fortune-seekers, the majority of whom went broke, brought to the Cherry Creek country a legion of adventurers. The town, which at the beginning represented a shifting, unstable population, was named Denver in honor of James W. Denver, then Governor of Kansas territory.

FIRST HOUSE IN DENVER. BUILT ON CHERRY CREEK IN 1857, BY GEORGE SCOFIELD

After a brief sojourn in Denver I devoted a few days to a tour through the new mining district back in the mountain gulches, and later through South Park to Mount Lincoln, which at that time was said to be the highest peak in the Rocky Mountain Range, and which I ascended on horseback, finding it an easy task.

The petrified forest in South Park was then an interesting feature. There were numerous stumps of trees of massive proportions; some of them that I measured were eighteen feet in diameter. They stood near together in a slight depression, at an altitude of almost 10,000 feet. They were thoroughly petrified. The indication was that for a long period their trunks had been submerged to a height of 15 or 20 feet above their bases in a shallow lake of silicious waters, until the transformation to that height was complete. The tops not having been submerged doubtless decayed ages ago. With some labor I took home with me a large fragment from one great petrified stump, the rings of which in some places were clearly defined. On counting them across some level section it appeared, by ascertaining the number of rings to the inch, that it had required at least a thousand years for the tree to attain its growth. How many thousand years it had stood in that barren valley since it had been converted into stone no man can tell, but it is certain that the destructive hands of thoughtless men, in the brief period of seven or eight years after my visit, leveled all the stumps to the ground and used portions thereof in various constructive works. In short, there is little left of what should have been preserved intact as an interesting, geological phenomenon. The fireplaces and chimneys in a ranch owned by a Hollander, named Costello, where I once spent the night near this ancient forest, were built from broken sections of these petrified trees.

The Butterfield Overland Dispatch had been operating a line of stages by the Smoky Hill route for several weeks, and I proceeded onward from Denver by their coaches. As stated by Root in his volume The Overland Mail, this company within eighteen months of its establishment, and on account of financial difficulties brought on more or less by Indian depredations, was forced into liquidation.

Evidence that the Indians were very busy in endeavoring to prevent the running of these stages was unpleasantly convincing. On our first night out we passed the smoking ruins of a station that had been burned by the Indians within the preceding twenty-four hours. Discovering this state of affairs, the passengers kept their guns close at hand. Nearly all were provided with Spencer Carbines.

Having received advices that trouble of this nature was brewing, the driver had taken on board a quantity of provisions to be used in an emergency. This prophylactic measure proved exceedingly fortunate, because at the home station next beyond the one that was burned, the Indians had within a few hours appropriated everything of the nature of supplies that could be found there, and had then moved on eastward. For some strange reason this building was not then burned, nor were the keepers killed. Our party consisted now of seven passengers, one of whom was Governor Alfred Cumming. On entering the pillaged station we found a slender, youthful-looking man, with his young wife and infant child. They informed us that on that morning the Indians had closed in on their station, and as they were hungry after their raidings of the preceding night, the husband in desperation had welcomed them, and he with his little wife had been cooking for them until all supplies were exhausted. Their stock of provisions was replenished from the supply brought by our coach, and with some assistance from our driver they wearily cooked our breakfast, in which they were happy to share.