MARSHALL PASS AND MT. OURAY, COLORADO
The journey up the "scenic route" has one point especially—that at the base of the Holy Cross Mountain where the train climbs from plateau to plateau—that enchants the imagination. The vast mysterious cañons lie far below, steeped in the twilight of the gods. The air shimmers with faint hints of color. Above, the towering granite walls seem to cut their way into the sky. The faint plash of a thousand waterfalls echoes from the rocky precipices, and the faint call of some lonely bird hovering over a pinnacle is heard. The mysterious light, the dim coolness and fragrance, the glimpses of blue sky seen through the narrow openings of the cañons above all, combine to produce that enchantment—the "Encantada,"—that Vasquez de Coronado felt when he first beheld this marvellous country.
Emerson asserts that life is a search after power,—
"Merlin's blows are strokes of fate."
It is apparently a twentieth-century Merlin who has dreamed a dream of wresting electricity from the mountain currents to utilize as power to create a new field for industrial energy. The electrical engineer, who is the magician of contemporary life, demonstrates that not the volume of a stream, but rather its "fall," is the measure of its possibilities of power, and no country is so rich in water that comes tumbling down from the heights as is Colorado. The wild streams that precipitate themselves down the mountain-sides are as valuable as are the veins of gold that permeate the mountain. Science has now taken them in hand, and will not longer permit these torrents and waterfalls to run to waste or to display themselves exclusively as decorative features of the mountain landscapes. The General Electric Company is utilizing these falling waters, and is already achieving results with their transformation into power which are beyond the dreams of imagination. The Silver Cascade, which for ages has had nothing to do but leap and flash under the shimmering gold of the Colorado sunshine, suddenly undergoes
"a sea change
Into something new and strange."
It becomes an important factor in the world's work. For instance, in lovely Manitou,—the little town that dreams at the foot of Pike's Peak and which seems made only for stars and sunsets and as the stage setting of idyllic experiences,—in lovely Manitou an hydro-electric plant has been for more than a year in successful operation; and an opportunity is thereby afforded the interested observer to see the practical working of an enterprise that draws its energy directly from nature's sources. The power is obtained from water that is stored in a reservoir situated far up on the side of the peak. Three and one-half miles of pipe were used to carry the water from the reservoir to the plant. The water has a fall of twenty-three hundred feet, which is much more than is needed to turn the giant wheels that furnish the power to be distributed to Colorado Springs, Colorado City, and the surrounding country. The mills at Colorado City use this power exclusively, and the cheapness at which it can be furnished is a potent factor in making for the success of their operation.
At Durango the Animas Power and Water Company has installed a plant for hydro-electric energy which will furnish power to the entire San Juan county. The plant comprises two three-thousand horse-power current generators and the station appliances that correspond with these; and from this plant extend fifty-thousand volt circuits to all the large mines near Ouray, Silverton, and Telluride. The "Camp Bird," the "Gold King," the "Silver Lake," the "Gold Prince," and the "Revenue Tunnel" mines all draw from this plant for their entire milling and mining work.
To harness the cascades, which for ages have known no sterner duty than to sparkle and frolic in the sunshine, to force the water sprites and nixies to perform the work of thousands of horse-power, is the achievement of the modern Merlin.