Chapter XXXI: The Grand River Valley

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in Paradise
was more favorably situated, on the whole, than a backwoodsman in this
country.
--THOREAU.

A very honest little circular--quite a phenomenon among prospectuses--had come into our hands, which gave in terse language the claims that Grand Junction made to the notice of the world and upon the attention of the man who was looking for a place of residence in western Colorado. This honest little circular, toward its end, contains the following paragraph:

We desire, however, to inform all eastern people who may be thinking
of coming west, that, while this is one of the most productive valleys
in Colorado, it is anything but this in appearance now. Excepting
along the banks of the streams or near them, there is probably not a
tree to be seen in the valley, unless it was planted since the valley
was settled, or within the past eighteen months. The soil has a dull
grayish appearance, with hardly a blade of grass growing in it for
several miles back from the river, and it produces naturally only
sagebrush and greasewood. It is uninviting and desolate looking in the
extreme, and yet it is far from being so in reality. We are thus
explicit in speaking of the desolate appearance of the country, so
that no homesick wanderer in this far-off western land will say when
his heart fails him in looking over our valley, that he has been
deceived, and that all that has been said of Grand Junction and its
surrounding country is a delusion and a snare. If the reader of this
lives in the east, he will almost surely be disappointed at first, if
he comes out here. It will be the disappointment of ignorance though,
for it is only a man who is ignorant of the productiveness of this
country who will refuse to believe what is said of it in this respect.

That paragraph put us upon our metal. We were eastern people undoubtedly, but then we had seen "a heap" of Colorado, and the word "ignorance," we would not confess applied in our case. It was therefore with no little curiosity, and something of a resolution to be pleased anyhow (since we had been told we might not be,) that we detached our peripatetic home and slipped into a resting-place upon the customary siding. The glow of the sunset filled the valley with a blaze of yellow light, and the mesas wore chevrons of indigo shadow and pink light to the northward, while the scarred bluffs across the Grand reflected the last rays from burning crests of red sandstone. Weary with travel we threw open our doors, brushed and dusted and bathed, while the kitchen was busy, and then sat down to dinner in the cool soft air of the twilight. When it was over a multitude of twinkling lights alone showed where the town lay, and so we left until morning learning more about it.

* * * * *

When we came to the learning, there were persons enough to teach us, besides all the explicit information Mr. William E. Pabor and others have put into type about the new town--the western Denver, the metropolis of--

"Didn't we hear Gunnison called that, too? and Montrose? and--?" asks the Madame, whose serious mind can never quite become accustomed to local flowers of speech.

Undoubtedly we had; but who shall say which one of them, a century from now, shall not deserve the name? Describe it? That would be merely repetition. Situated, as I have said, in the midst of a level sage-plain, utterly treeless, it is an orderly jumble of brick buildings, frame buildings, log cabins, tents, and vacant spaces. It is South Pueblo or Salida or Durango, or Gunnison of two years ago over again. The more important question to be answered, is, why is a town built here at all? It is here in anticipation of the agricultural productions of the valley by which it is surrounded, water for the irrigation of which is supplied by the largest river in Colorado, and therefore inexhaustible.

A year before the railway came, speculators, chiefly from Ruby and Irwin, who had no dread of loneliness, went to this point and started the town. "They staked off several ranches," says the report, "and located one irrigating ditch and a town site." This town, which they called Granville, is situated across the Grand from the mouth of the Gunnison. A town site was afterwards staked by the Crawford party, and given the name of Grand Junction.

That is the way these marvelously new and flourishing towns are started out here. They reverse the proverb and may be said to be _made_ not _born_; or, as Chum puts it, _fititur non nasce_. I couldn't have done that, but it was easy enough for Chum who has been to college; he don't mind a little gymnastics in Latin like that.

In the mountains dividing Middle park from North park the clustering streamlets pour steadily into Grand lake, whose surface is rarely free from gusts of chilling wind or the shadow of gathering storms. Hidden in heavy forests, it occupies a basin scooped out by the mighty plow of a glacier and held back by moraines and _montonnes_ that record a geological history of the utmost interest to the student. About this solitary lake gather gloomy traditions of fierce warfare between Ute and Arapahoe, and since the Indian owners have yielded it to the white men, one of the darkest crimes in the history of the Rockies has happened upon its shores.

From this dark mountain-tara flows a strong outlet fed by the snows. Its whole youth lies in the depths and gloom of cañons, for range after range open their gates to let it pass, but the gates are narrow and the pathway rough. Thus this river, constantly recruited, more and more the _Grand_, fights its way from the center almost to the western edge of the state. There, when its labor is fairly done, and aid is no longer needed, comes the help of the powerful Gunnison, and doubly strong it rolls westward to the Utah line, and then southwestward till it meets the flood of the Green and both become the Rio Colorado.

Where the Gunnison now empties into the larger stream was once a wide lake embanked by the abrupt and lofty bluffs that now bound the plain, and whose mesa-top indicates the ancient level of the whole country, out of which the valleys, cañons and lake-beds were eroded.

Into this old expansion of the rivers, had been poured the freight of soil brought down from the mountain-sides, where the varied rocks were being ground to powder under the feet of glaciers, and swept along by gigantic torrents fed with endless meltings. Hither was carried by the swift waters the mingled dust and pebbles of primeval granite, volcanic overflows and sedimentary sands, lime, and argillaceous rock. It was the latest mixture of all that before this had been handled again and again through the fires that upheaved the inner ranges, and the waters that laid down the rocky tables, leaning against their flanks. Into the river-lakes went all this mixture to sink into mud upon the bottom of the quiet sea,--a union of the best elements in all the composition of the western slope of the Rockies. In the whole world you could not find a soil made after a better recipe. Slow changes in the climate proceeded, and the lake drained away and left a valley twenty-five miles long and half as wide, waiting to nourish the farmer's grain and the children's flowers.

The first requisite to adapt it to human service, however, was that the valley should be watered. Thousands of acres of good land in the Rocky mountains from Kootenai to Chihuahua remain worthless because there is not enough water available to spread over them, but at Grand Junction there is no such deficiency. The great drainage of the Grand would not miss all the water that could possibly be used. Already along its margin miles of ranches have been begun, by men digging small and temporary ditches bringing water to irrigate a single farm or a small group of fields in the bottom. These were the first comers who had choice of the whole area. Later two or three larger ditches were made having a greater scope, and now there has just been finished a waterway, led for twenty-five miles along the benches at the base of the Roan or Little Book Cliffs, bounding the plain on the north, which will bring under cultivation thirty thousand acres of valley heretofore unwatered, and may be extended when the population demands. This ditch comes out twelve miles above town. It is fifty feet wide across the top, and is thirty-five feet at the bottom; the depth is five feet, and it delivers seven hundred cubic feet of water each second, at a speed of two miles an hour, though there is only twenty-two inches of slope in each mile of length. A ditch like this costs $200,000, yet dividends are confidently expected. If anybody can invent a steamer which will not wash the banks, pleasure yachts and freight barges will be put upon it, for it is of considerably greater dimensions than the Erie Canal when first opened. There is no lack of water, therefore. Competent observers say the supply is sufficient for half a million acres, so that the intricate and expensive lawsuits vexing the farmers of the eastern slope can hardly arise here. This abundance is a matter of vital importance, and an inestimable advantage. Water has a value above that of land everywhere in Colorado. Where land, in the valley of the Cache la Poudre, is valued at ten dollars per acre, a water right carries a cash valuation of fifteen dollars per acre and is more easily disposed of. The blessing attending the cultivation of the soil where the water-supply exceeds the area of land, can only be appreciated by those who have seen their crops wither for want of it.

It is only recently that this water-supply has become available, however, through the medium of the canals, for any extended farming. Large crops, therefore, cannot be expected until next year, but enough has been learned to make it sure that when the peculiarities of this adobe soil and the looser mesa soil are understood, so that the farmers may know exactly how to supply their irrigation to the best advantage, the most plentiful crops of all the cereals can be produced. We were told that the experiments right here at Grand Junction already, had yielded corn-stalks eleven feet seven inches high; a bunch of wheat having seventy-four stalks in one stool; barley with seventy-six stalks in a stool; oats five and a half feet high; Egyptian millet, one hundred and five stalks from a single seed, weighing thirty-six pounds; four cuttings of alfalfa; Irish potatoes weighing from two to four pounds apiece; cabbages from five to twenty-three pounds apiece; beets, carrots, parsnips, and all the vegetables of equally prodigious dimensions. There can be no question of the extraordinary productivity of this region, and that its agricultural future is to be a very prosperous one.

Equally large expectations are held at Grand Junction, Delta, Montrose on the North Fork, and in all the adjacent lowlands, that this whole region will prove a great fruit-bearing country. The plentitude and excellence of the wild fruits along the streams and in the foothills is remarkable, and formed one of the attractions of the reservation in the eyes of the Indian. The similarity in soil, climate and altitude to the fruit-growing region of Utah is adduced, and, in respect to grapes, peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, and all the small fruits, successful experiments have justified all the arguments. Just below Ouray, last year, a ranchman raised seven thousand quarts of strawberries for market. I saw watermelons and muskmelons growing finely on Surface creek at the foot of the Grand Mesa near Delta, and everywhere you will find young fruit trees doing well and uninjured by winter, which is always mild so far as known, the thermometer rarely indicating cold below zero, and the snowfall in the valleys being light. "This new Colorado has a climate essentially different from that of old Colorado and the country east of the Continental Divide. It is the climate of the Pacific coast modified only by altitude and latitude. The air currents come up over the valleys, plateaus, hills and mountain sides, fresh from the ocean currents that wash the Pacific shores. These ocean streams are heated under an equatorial sun and sweeping north around the circle of the earth, temper the whole western slope."

In this neighborhood, too, are splendid grazing regions, which are rapidly filling with cattle. I have before me a trustworthy scrap from the _Colorado Farmer_ on this point: "The face of the country," says the writer, referring to the hill regions of the Uncompahgre and the grand plateaus, "is gently sloping but cut by gulches, ravines and cañons; grass grows luxuriantly from the creek and river bottom to the very tops of the highest plateaus; on the higher uplands there are plenty of pine and piñon trees, in many places interspersed with cedars and aspens; many small brooks and springs course their way down the hillsides; natural shelter is found in every neighborhood from storms when they come, which is seldom. Game abounds in the greatest plenty and taken all in all, it is probably the finest stock range in the state. The quality of the grass is excellent and cures completely. It is different from the plains grass, grows tall with an abundant wealth of leaf, stem and seed. This country is to be the great cattle country of the state. The Rio Grande railway runs through it and will carry the fattened beeves to the market of the mountains and to Denver and even start them on their way to the great markets of the East. There are already cattle there and they are but forerunners of the thousands yet to come."

The important point is, that the wide mountain areas insure summer pasturage without driving to great distances; while the valleys afford good winter grazing. I have been in every cattle region in the United States, and I never saw anywhere such magnificent grass as I have ridden through for miles and miles along the upper part of Surface creek in Delta county. When the herds have so increased that the winter pasturage falls short--some years must elapse before that--the valley lands will furnish an abundance of millet, oats, alfalfa and other grasses, by means of the inexhaustible supply of water which is possible for irrigation.

As further aids to her progress, Grand Junction has easy access to coal, both hard and soft; has limestone in great abundance, and excellent white sandstone for building purposes; while the soil is adapted for making sun-dried adobes or for being made into burned brick, of which material most of the buildings and many of the sidewalks in town are now constructed. Game is common in the neighboring mountains, especially throughout the great wilderness which stretches northwest, and the rivers abound in edible fishes.

At length there comes a day when we are ready to leave Grand Junction and "go West." It is a long ride that lies ahead and we turn our parlor car into a sleeper by setting up the cots and curtains that have not been needed for several weeks. It is late in the afternoon, and when the morrow's light dawns we shall be out of Colorado and among the lakes and deserts, the mountains and Mormons of Utah.