SECTION VIII-COLORADO.

CHAPTER LI.

GENERAL REMARKS.

The Territory of Colorado, situated between the 25th and 32d meridians of west longitude, and the 37th and 41st degrees of north latitude, forms nearly a square, comprising an area of 106,475 square miles. It is divided by the Rocky Mountains into two nearly equal portions. The eastern half, with the foot-hills on that side, embraces most of the cultivated agricultural lands. As yet, not many valuable mines have been found in this part of the Territory, except the extensive coal-beds in Jefferson, and Boulder Counties. Denver City, a thriving town of about five thousand inhabitants, the capital and the agricultural and commercial center of the Territory, is located at the eastern base of the mountains. At this point the plains, gradually rising from the Missouri River, have attained an elevation of a little over five thousand feet. That portion of them belonging to Colorado is well watered by the South Platte, Republican, and Arkansas Rivers, and their numerous tributaries. All along these rivers and creeks is found excellent agricultural land, yielding easily much more than the supplies required for the whole Territory. The following account of the crops raised in 1868 is furnished, from personal knowledge, by Mr. W. R. Thomas, one of the editors of the Rocky Mountain News:

The following article places before the reader, in compact form, the facts and figures regarding mining and agriculture in Colorado.

The material was collected with great care and labor, and at no little trouble and expense. The facts stated will be found as near correct as it is possible to ascertain them, and within rather than outside the truth.

The bullion product.-These figures are obtained from the express books of Wells, Fargo & Co., and show the amount of gold and silver bullion carried east by them during the year. The amounts credited to each office do not include re-shipments.

These amounts do not include the gold and silver carried east by private parties, nor that manufactured at home. For a correct estimate of the latter items no satisfactory data are at hand.

Agricultural statistics.-The agricultural statistics which have been collected may be divided into two classes; first, the number of acres cultivated in certain valleys, with an estimate regarding the crops raised thereon, and second, the actual crops of other valleys, as gathered from reliable sources.

Two or three small valleys are included in the Arkansas. included in "oats, barley," &c.

Rye and buckwheat are Taking the following average: For wheat, twenty-eight bushels; for corn, twentyfive bushels; for oats and barley, thirty-five bushels, and for potatoes and miscellane ous vegetables, one hundred bushels per acre, the estimated crop of these valleys would be as follows:

The remaining valleys were visited after the crop was gathered and the cereals threshed, and the number of bushels raised was collected as far as possible.

The figures on corn and potatoes are far below the real facts. Coal Creek is included in Beulah, and several small valleys in the Las Animas. The corn and potato crop was not collected in the Beulah Valley.

These figures given comprise the mining and agricultural statistics which have appeared in a series of editorial letters during the year. They do, however, not represent the whole agricultural product of the Territory. Several valleys have not been visited, among them Clear Creek, Bijou, Kiowa, Running, Plumb, and Monument Creeks, the Upper Arkansas Valley, the different valleys lying between the St. Charles and the Las Animas, including the Greenhorn, Upper Huerfano, Apishapa, Las Cucharas, and the country beyond the Sangre de Christo range in the San Luis Valley. The crops in these various sections have been large, especially in small grain, and had it been possible to collect the figures concerning them, there is no doubt that those now given would have been increased at least one half.

Value of the crop reported.-The value of the crop for the sections given above at government prices would be as follows:

We conclude this summary by submitting an estimate of the agricultural products of the whole Territory in 1868, which we consider nearly correct. We arrive at the result by increasing the figures on wheat, corn, oats, barley, &c., one half, and by doubling the potatoes and miscellaneous crop. The table will then stand thus:

Mr. Cyrus Thomas, in his report to Dr. F. V. Hayden, United States. geologist, says the crop of 1869, which is larger than that of any year preceding, is estimated at the following figures:

Wheat, 675,000 bushels; corn, 600,000 bushels; oats and barley, (ninetenths oats,) 550,000 bushels; potatoes and other vegetables, 350,000 bushels. Total value, including that of the hay and dairy product, not less than $3,500,000. This is not far below the value of the products of mining for the year.

The western half of Colorado is not much known beyond fifty miles from the mountain range, though several parties of prospectors have explored the country at different times. Some placers and veins have been found but no mining has been done on a large scale, except in the Snake River district. Here the crevices of the veins are large, and the ore is mainly galena, assaying well in silver. Nuggets of silver, weighing from an ounce to a pound, were, according to Mr. Hollister,* found in the days of gulch mining, at the head of Ten Mile Creek and Blue River. Nuggets of gold, weighing, in some cases, as much as 50 pennyweights, were also found. Some single pits, 20 feet square, are reported to have yielded from $10,000 to $20,000. The principal work now carried on in that district is that of a Boston company, which is driving a cross-tunnel under Fletcher Mountain, to cut at considerable depth a large number of strong galena lodes which crop out on the surface. The work is to be done with a rock-drilling machine.

Reduction works are already in process of erection. The Lawrence Silver Mining Company are putting up a building for two reverberatories. Mr. Collum will have two more, and Mr. Yonley is now constructing a small test furnace. A wagon road from Georgetown to Snake River, via East Argentine, is nearly finished. From all appearances much activity may be expected in that region during the coming summer. The territory still further west is scarcely known, except as possessing

* The Mines of Colorado, by O. J. Hollister.

a magnificent grazing country, with abundance of fish in the streams and game in the forests.

This report is more immediately concerned with the Rocky Mountain chain and its valuable mineral deposits. The beauty and grandeur of the cliffs and peaks, the loveliness of the parks and valleys, have been the frequent themes of poets, travellers and painters. In the pages of Bayard Taylor, Hollister, and Bowles, on the glowing canvas of Bierstadt, and in the enthusiasm of innumerable tourists who annually visit this magnificent region in search of health and pleasure, they have received such justice as mere description can bestow.

The highest elevation of the mountains in Colorado is about 14,500 feet-at Mount Lincoln, near Montgomery, in South Park. Pike's Peak and Gray's Peak follow, having, respectively, the altitude 14,300 and and 14,250* feet. The whole chain is abundantly covered with timber up to a line about 11,500 feet above the sea, and watered by large creeks, fed from the heavy snows of the summits, and containing an abundance of deliciously clear cool water. These streams, met with in every principal valley, afford during nine months of the year ample power for driving machinery. They exert a very beneficial influence on vegetation, causing the soil in those valleys to yield excellent crops, even at an elevation of nearly 9,000 feet.

In this connection I desire to call attention particularly to one of the worst abuses attendant upon the settlement of the mining regions and other portions of the West. I allude to the wanton destruction of timber. This reckless and disastrous practice was extensively prevalent in the heavy fir and cedar forests of Oregon and Washington nearly twenty years ago. Timber was so abundant that to many it seemed inexhaustible, and they took especial delight in its destruction. Hundreds of square miles were burned over in a single season, and vast quantities of the finest timber in the world, easily accessible for purposes of commerce, either totally consumed or rendered utterly valueless. The same waste is yearly going on in all the western States and Territories, and particularly in the mining regions on the Rocky Mountains. Mr. W. N. Byers, of Denver, who is familiar with facts and results in Colorado, has furnished me with statements on the subject, which my own observations confirm.

When that Territory was settled, some ten years ago, the mountain sides were found generally covered with thick forests of pine, spruce, fir, and other trees, most of them of small size and short body. A given space would not give a large quantity of lumber or wood, as compared with many timbered countries, but for that very reason it was the more valuable, and its economy of more importance, because there was no other source of supply. Generally, these forests were green and flourishing. Only at rare intervals could a track be found that had been burned over by the Indians, and the trees killed. To-day, certainly, one-third-possibly one-half-in all the settled portions of the Territory, are dead-killed by fire. And outside the settlements, in regions visited at long intervals only by prospectors, their tracks can be everywhere seen in blackened trunks and lifeless, desolate-looking hill-sides. During the dry, scorching latter summer, the eye seldom glances over the mountain landscape without seeing somewhere-often in several places the dense column of smoke that indicates a burning forest. Some of this destruction is fairly attributable to accident, more of it to culpable carelessness, and yet more to criminal design.

*These differences are too small to be perfectly established.

Another source of timber waste is in the felling of trees unnecessarily Often a man, finding a good body of timber for lumber, will go to work and slash down hundreds or thousands of trees, thinking that some other man will come in with a saw-mill and buy his logs. Sometimes the customer makes his appearance, but often he does not, until the logs are rendered nearly, or entirely, worthless by decay and the ravages of worms. But even if the saw-mill comes, there is no effort at economy. Timber is plenty; it belongs to the United States, and the pioneer "has as good a right to it as anyone else." Hence, only the best is used. The tree that would furnish three saw-logs, and its top two cords of wood, if it belonged to the logger or millman, in this case supplies but two logs, and the ramainder is left to rot, or to be devoured by the fire that is set out when the neighborhood has been skinned of its most valuable trees. The saw-mill is pulled up and moved a mile, or five, or ten, to another fine grove, where the same thing is done over again, and so on. At Central City, the oldest and most populous gold-mining center of Colorado, the consumption of wood for fuel is very large. A few years ago it was purchased for two dollars per cord, but the increased distance of hauling has advanced the price about one dollar each year, until now it frequently costs ten. Lumber has to be brought from twenty to forty miles, and heavy mill timbers often much further. And to obtain these articles they are robbing and skinning districts that may at any day require their own timber just as much as Central City ever did. Denver, which formerly obtained her supply of lumber within twenty or thirty miles, now has to haul much of it sixty. Other examples might be cited, but it would only be an accumulation of evidence. The question arises, "Where is all this to end?" And the answer of the denuded hill-sides, of the dismal wastes upon the mountain slopes, with their millions of charred trunks and ghostly whitened branches, is terribly suggestive.

What shall be the remedy? Government officers have tried to check the waste of logwood by the collection of a stumpage tax, and sometimes by stopping such operations altogether; but the reform is not perceptible, and the deputy marshals soon tire of the task. In fact they are powerless. The entire standing army of the United States could not enforce regulations against cutting timber upon government lands. The territorial legislature, years ago, enacted a stringent law for the punishment of those who fire prairies or woods; but the records show no example of its enforcement. Last summer, in a new mining district that was formed, the miners, among other by-laws, adopted one, that any person firing the woods should be hung. They then nailed upon trees at the borders of the district, upon all the trails leading thither, boards, upon which were painted: "Put out your fires! Any person firing the timber will be hung." No damage was done by fire in that district last year, but some day a reckless dare-devil will probably fire the woods, just to see whether or not he will be hung for it. The general government has failed, the territorial government has failed, and Judge Lynch will fail, to protect the timber. I incline to think the only course is, for the government to put the lands in market, and sell them to settlers under rules now applicable to the location and perfection of homestead and pre-emption claims upon agricultural lands, with this change: Where such locations are made upon mineral lands-so returned by deputy surveyors and the surveyor general of the district-the title con veyed shall be a surface right only, which shall be absolute ownership, except in relation to minerals. The ground shall be free to all prospectors who desire to search for minerals, and when such shall have been found, upon application to the owner of the land, the latter shall be com