Chapter XXVI: A Trip to Lake City

A wild and broken landscape, spiked with firs,
Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge.
--WHITTIER.

Lake City is a mining town at the foot of the San Juan mountains thirty miles south of the railway station of Sapinero (the latter named after a sub chief among the Utes who was looked upon by the whites as a man of unusual sagacity). It was at that time reached by a buckboard, carrying the mail and passengers.

The stage-road led up a long, long hill to the top of the mesa between the Cochetopa and the Lake Fork of the Gunnison. This much of the way was in the track of the old southern road to California, which came up from Santa Fe to Taos, San Luis park, Saguache, and so on over here along the Cochetopa, striking the Gunnison river just above this point and continuing on down to the Uncompahgre, where it crossed the Gunnison to the northern bank and pushed westward to Utah. This was the route followed by Captain Gunnison in 1853, and it came to be known as the Salt Lake Wagon Road; and the whole course of the Denver and Rio Grande railway follows it closely from Grand Junction to the Wasatch mountains. The road is still occasionally traveled for short distances by light wagons and by men driving bands of horses, who wish to escape paying the tolls demanded along the new and improved roads, so that it is in no danger of becoming obliterated.

From the top of this high plateau, a great picture opens before the eye, in all directions. Northward the peaks of the Elk range form a long line of well-separated summits. Northeastward, the vista between nearer hills is filled with the clustered heights of the Continental Divide in the neighborhood of the Mount of the Holy Cross. Just below them confused elevations show where Marshall pass carries its lofty avenue, and to the southward of that stretches the splendid, snow-trimmed array of the Sangre de Cristo. They fill beautifully the far eastern horizon, and end southward in the massive buttresses of Sierra Blanca, of which no more impressive view can be had than this elevated standpoint affords. As we advance a few miles other mountains rise into sight straight ahead,--that is, in the southward. These are the cold and broken summits of the Sierra San Juan; while isolated from them, and a little to the right, stands the Saul of their ranks,--Uncompahgre peak, head and shoulders above all his comrades. Nor is this figure an idle comparison, for his tenon shaped apex easily suggests it.

Half way to our destination, the crazy buckboard rattles us painfully down a steep and stony hill into the valley of the Lake Fork of the Gunnison, where there is room for several ranches whose fields of hay and oats show a plentiful growth, and whose potato-patches are something admirable. The best of these is Barnum's, where there is also a store and a post-office, and where your "humble correspondent," supposing himself about to lay his head upon a soft bag of oats, nearly dashed his brains out by hurling it in misplaced confidence against a marble-solid bag of salt. _Eheu! miserere me!_

When we had wound our way farther up the narrow cañon into which the valley contracted on the further side of this gateway, there came to view the precise similitude (but here on a lesser scale) of the massive, pillared, mitre-crowned cliffs that form the shores of the Columbia river between Fort Vancouver and The Dalles.

As a mining-town Lake City is not now so active as formerly. It stands in a little park at the junction of the Lake Fork (of the Gunnison) with Henson creek,--both typical mountain streams, each wavelet flecked with foam and sparkling like the back of the trout it hides. Henson creek became especially famous among prospectors, who found that, however large an army of miners might flock in there, new veins were always to be had as the reward of diligent searching. Thus a populous and highly enterprising town arose, which became the supply point for a wide mountain region, owing to its accessibility from both north and south; and though it was over one hundred miles--mountain miles at that!--from a railway, more than ten million pounds of merchandise, and five million pounds of mining machinery and supplies were taken in on wagons during 1880, at a cost of over a million dollars for transportation alone. A very good class of people went to Lake City, too, so that a substantial and pretty town arose, school-houses and churches were built, and I have never seen a mining camp where the bookstores and news-stands were so well furnished and patronized. At the beginning of 1881 about two thousand people lived in the town itself, not counting the great number of men in the mountains round about; and three factories for the treatment of ores were in operation.

Since then, however, Lake City has retreated somewhat; not that the mines have proved false to the confidence placed in them, but because it has been shown that until cheaper methods of transportation and more economic treatment can be devised, the mines cannot be worked to the same profit which a similar investment in some neighboring districts will return. This is due to the fact that the ores, of marvelous value when their mass is considered, are of too low grade, as a rule, to afford a high margin over the expenses of working. This by no means condemns the district; it only causes its stores of wealth to be held in abeyance for a while before their coinage. Many another district, a few years ago thought equally profitless, has risen to become the scene of steady dividend-making labor through the perfection of processes. It will not be long, before, by like means, the reviving of Lake City's mines will occur, and enable her to catch up with her more fortunate sisters in the wide circle of the San Juan silver-region.

But when that time has come,--though the Alpine grandeur of the scenery cannot be lost, the splendid shooting and fishing which now make the village one of the favored resorts of the west, will have disappeared; and there are some of us, more sentimental than world-wise, who will regret the change. Over these rolling uplands, among the aspen groves, upon the foothills and along the willow-bordered creek deers now throng, and even an occasional elk and antelope are to be seen. In the rocky fastnesses the bear and panther find refuge, and every little park is enlivened by the flitting forms of timid hares and the whirring escape of the grouse disturbed by our passing. Upon these lofty, grass-grown plateaus, some cattle already get excellent feeding; and the time will be short before they are multiplied into the vast herds whose pasturage will be economised by good management, and for which a market will be found within a few days drive of the range. Too high and arid for extensive farming, the opposite, yet inter-dependent, pursuits of mining and cattle-raising, will ere long bring all this elevated interior of the state into full utilization. When one wonders how this railway company is to support itself amid the wilds, this future must be remembered.