The Colorado Springs and Cañon City Highway and the Ute Pass section of the Pike’s Peak ocean-to-ocean road, recently completed by Colorado’s system of convict labor, are two of the most perfect mountain roads in the United States.
For twenty miles south of Colorado Springs the road winds around the foothills and mountains, practically the entire roadbed having been cut out of the hillside, and in many places blasted out of solid rock. For the remaining twenty-five miles the way is over foothills and through undulating country. Besides being a marvel in engineering, the road is one of the most scenic and picturesque in the West, passing as it does through Red Rock Cañon, Dead Man’s Cañon, and many other mountain beauty spots.
The road averaged eighteen feet in width, and is perfectly crowned and drained. Although it offers a succession of climbs, so skillfully was the engineering work done that heavy grades have been eliminated, and the motorist is confronted with only one grade as high as three per cent.
The Ute Pass Road follows the ancient trail of the Indians across the Rocky Mountains. In the last few years that part of it between Colorado Springs and Cascade has been entirely reconstructed by convicts.
Under the Colorado system the convict is allowed ten days off his sentence for each month of labor on the roads. This is in addition to the usual reduction for good behavior.
Thomas J. Tynan, warden of the State Penitentiary, under whose supervision the work of the last three years has been done, estimates that in the next ten years five thousand miles of the best roads will be constructed at a cost of less than five hundred thousand dollars.
He says one thousand men have been used in roadwork in the last three years at a cost to the State of twenty-five cents a day for each man. The men go about their work unguarded, and less than one per cent have violated their pledges and made successful escapes.
Wilson Gets Curious Bottle.
Fingal W. Anderson, who lives at Aitkin, Minn., has cunningly contrived a present which he has given President Wilson, and which the latter prizes highly.
Anderson has been ill and has whiled away weary hours in contriving his gift. It is a bottle into which he has[{57}] inserted a shield of the United States. Upon one side of it is a picture of the White House, and upon the other a picture of the president. In presenting the gift, Anderson said, in a letter: