In general aspects and conveniences the towns and cities are under excellent municipal regulations. Leadville, formerly one of the most lawless of great mining camps, is to-day a peaceful and prosperous city on a great trans-continental highway. The Western towns begin with wide, clean, beautiful streets. They begin with the most tasteful architecture. It may not be the most expensive or the most colossal, but it is beautiful.
Northern Colorado is in many respects a distinctive region of itself. It offers rich agricultural facilities; the beet sugar factories at Greeley are making it a commercial centre; the electric trolley line which will soon connect Greeley with Denver will multiply the homes and settlements within this distance of fifty miles, and this part of Colorado is enriched with great coal fields. The latter promise not merely their own extension of industries in digging the coal and putting it on the market, but they also indicate another and far more important result, which stimulates the scientific imagination,—that of making Northern Colorado a power centre whose strength can be applied in a variety of ways and transmitted over a large area of country. For more than two years the Government has been conducting a series of experiments in a very thorough manner, endeavoring to ascertain the gas values of the great lignite coal fields between Boulder and Denver. It has been discovered that the converting of the coal into gas gives it double the efficiency for use as a motor power for engine or for fuel than can be gained from the coal in its natural state. A ton of coal converted into gas will, as gas, give twice the power that the coal would have yielded, and give the same power that two tons of coal, that has not been converted into gas, would afford. In order, however, to produce this power economically, it must be done at the point of mining. It is there that the gas producers must be located; and from these points the gas can be transported in pipes, or can be converted into electricity and sent by wires at far less cost than would be that of sending the coal itself by freight. These discoveries not only suggest that this region in Colorado is destined in the near future to become a power centre which will be tapped from the surrounding country for a great distance in all directions, and will thus render Boulder one of the most important of Western cities; but they also suggest the evident tendency of the age toward intensity rather than immensity,—toward the concentration of energy in the most ethereal form rather than its diffusion through large and clumsy masses of material.
Colorado contains over twenty-five thousand square miles of coal fields, distributed over the state, with an average annual product of over seven million tons. No other corresponding area in the entire world exceeds Colorado in its great storage of coal, and the state ranks as one of the first in the production of iron.
There are already fifteen beet sugar factories in operation, representing investments amounting to over twelve million dollars, and which are estimated to have produced, in 1906, an aggregate of some two hundred and twenty thousand pounds of sugar, the percentage of saccharine matter being higher than that of the sugar beet of California.
SULTAN MOUNTAIN
Statistically, Colorado ranks first in irrigation, and there are some eighteen thousand miles of irrigating canals already in operation, with the system being so rapidly extended that it almost outruns the pace of calculation. Three million acres are under cultivation in Colorado, and two million eight hundred and fifty thousand acres are irrigated; the storage reservoirs already constructed are sufficient to place another million of acres under cultivation. This irrigated land sells from sixty to one hundred dollars per acre. Colorado has a reputation for being a great potato state, and in the year 1905 the town of Greeley alone shipped over three hundred thousand dollars' worth of potatoes, while tomatoes are a feature often yielding ninety dollars to the acre, and celery has been estimated to yield one hundred and fifty dollars an acre. There are tracts of from two to three thousand acres devoted to peas alone, producing forty to fifty thousand cans; and asparagus grows with great success.
Colorado is a fruit country offering the best of conditions. The peaches of Southern Colorado lead the world in flavor, beauty, and size; the canteloupe flourishes with such extraordinary vitality that it often yields a revenue of fifty dollars an acre; and the watermelon also grows in unusual perfection. The valley of the Arkansas River is the great region for producing melons, and Colorado exports these to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. Apples, plums, and pears grow with equally bounteous success, and there are fruit farms that with their orchards and small fruits sometimes realize fifty thousand dollars a year, when the season is a good one and the market conditions favorable. The seasons of irrigated land are largely under control, and surpass those regions which are at the mercy of excessive rains or of droughts. So the law of compensation still obtains. The resources of horticulture, alone, in Colorado are very important, and they form one of the most alluring features of this beautiful and richly bountiful state.
In the way of crops, alfalfa takes the lead in Colorado, as wheat does in Kansas. It requires the very minimum of care; the land being once planted with alfalfa, there is need only of turning on the irrigation, and mowing it, at the right time. Alfalfa produces three crops a year, and yields from one to two tons per acre. It sells at from three to ten dollars a ton, and this makes a revenue quite worth considering. The difficulties encountered everywhere in Colorado, in every branch of industry, or in domestic work, are those of securing labor. Wages are high in every conceivable line of work, but to a large extent the labor and service, even when procured, is of a very poor order. In many of the larger hotels employés are often kept on the pay-roll for two months at a time when not needed, simply because it is impossible to fill their places when the need comes. From requirements of the seamstress, the laundress, the cook, the maid, the farmer's working-men, or the employés in almost any line of work, the same difficulty exists. Much is heard regarding strikes and other forms of the eternal conflict between labor and capital; and yet the high rates paid, the concessions constantly made to the demands of employés, the conditions provided for them, would seem, at a superficial glance, to be such as to bridge over every difficulty. Domestic service is something that presents the greatest problem on the part of the employer. If there is so large a number of "the unemployed" in the East, why should not the conditions balance themselves and this superfluous element find good conditions for living in Colorado? This question involves the problem of economics, with which these pages have nothing to do; but no traveller, no sojourner, can linger in Colorado who is not simply lost in wonder that the varied work that is waiting, with the most liberal payments for the worker, and the multitude of workers in the East who need the liberal payment, cannot, by some law of elective affinity, be brought together.
When it is realized that the Rocky Mountains occupy in Colorado more than five times the entire space of the Alps in Europe, their importance in climatic influence as well as in scenic magnificence can be understood. The forests of Colorado are found on the mountains and foothills. The heights are covered with a dense growth of pine woods, while in lower ranges abound the silver spruce and the cedar. Colorado has a state forestry association which aims to secure as a reservation all forests above the altitude of eight thousand five hundred feet, as this preservation is considered most important to the water supply. In the Alps there are nine peaks over fourteen thousand feet in height; in the Rocky Mountains, within the limits of Colorado alone, there are forty-three peaks, each one of which exceeds in height the Jungfrau. There are in Colorado more than thirty towns, each of which is the theatre of active progress, and each of which lies at an altitude exceeding that of the pass of St. Bernard. The sublime cañons and gorges are eloquent of the story of Titanic forces which rent the mountains apart. The vast plateaus were once the bed of inland seas. In the cañon of Grand River towering walls rise to the height of half a mile, in sheer precipitous rock, for a distance of some sixteen miles. The strata of these rocks are distinctly defined, and the play of color is rich and fantastic. The vast walls are in brilliant hues of red and amber and green and brown,—the blending of color lending its enchantment to the marvellous scene. Each cañon has its own individuality. No one repeats the wild charm of another. Excursions abound. There is "the loop," an enchanting mountain ride made from Denver within one day for the round trip; the "Rainbow" tour, and others, besides that of the "circle" already described. In each and all these journeys the route is often on the very verge of the abyss, and the sublimities, the splendor of coloring, exceed any power of language to suggest.