CHAPTER XI.

Park County-South Park-Towns and Mines-Salt WorksGeology-Placer Mining in the Past, in the Present-Beaver Gulch-Tarryall-Crossing the Range in Midwinter-Lode Mining in the Past, in the Present-Climate-The Espinosas-The Reynolds Guerrilla Raid.

PARK COUNTY is nearly identical with the South Park, its boundaries generally coinciding with the crests of the surrounding ranges and spurs. In the upheaval of this portion of the Mountains it appears there were two or perhaps three great centers of eruptive force. Two of these are Mt. Lincoln and Pike's Peak. Their relative positions to each other and to the Park have been elsewhere noticed. They stand one hundred miles from each other, and are connected by semi-circular spurs, as the towers in the walls of ancient cities were by the walls. Between these spurs and upon their shoulders is upraised and upheld the plateau of the South Park, about thirty by sixty miles in extent, foot-hills forming a separate system between the Park proper and Pike's Peak, making its total area perhaps three thousand square miles. Of the great parks it is the third in size. Mt. Lincoln rises at its head to

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an altitude of 17,300 feet,* overlooking its entire extent and the solid, banked-up billows within the limits of vision on every hand, any of which would be a wonderful mountain elsewhere-yet is Lincoln as Saul among his brethren. From his sides the waters flow to the East and the West. Hence depart the Grand for the Pacific, and the Arkansas and South Platte for the Atlantic. The Park slopes away gently to the south-east, and on its bosom are gathered a multitude of brooks, which, uniting twenty to thirty miles from their extreme sources in the eternal snow-banks and morasses of the Range and the Montgomery Spur, form the south branch of South Platte, break through the eastern wall and bear away across the great Plains on their journey to the sea. Let us be a little more precise:

At the base of Mt. Lincoln is situate the mining town of Montgomery, enjoying or enduring an elevation above the sea of 10,000 feet. Here the South Platte debouches from the Range, four or five miles from its extreme source, a cluster of mountain pools, fed by the ever-during snows. Eight miles east of Montgomery, if you cross the root of a huge spur running down into the Park ten or twelve miles to Fairplay, or twenty miles if you round the point of said spur, is Hamilton, situate on Tarryall Creek, where that stream escapes from the Range. Six or seven miles south from Montgomery, a tributary stream escapes from the Montgomery Spur, and here is the county seat of Park County, the original "Buckskin Jo," still called

*Calculation of Prof. Alfred Du Bois.

"Buckskin." Two miles further south, at the mouth of a similar gorge and on a like stream, is Sterling City, originally called "Musquito." These towns are each in the midst of a cluster of rich quartz veins. The forks unite six or seven miles south-east of Montgomery, and between their junction and Fairplay, perhaps three miles further down the main stream, occur immense bar diggings, the bar being very wide and from sixty to one hundred feet in depth and prospecting everywhere and all through. This bar has always been wrought with fair success, and preparation is making to aggregate the "claims" in which it has been held into a large tract, so as to justify the expense of putting in a bed-rock flume and working by steam machinery. A steam dredge will do the work of fifty men with shovels.

About ten miles west of Fairplay and five south of Musquito, another affluent of the main stream escapes from a vast horseshoe in the Range as from the mouth of a jug. In this horseshoe about sixty lodes have been discovered, one-third of which are strong veins, containing more than the usual proportion of silver. The surface formation is trap, and there is considerable galena which will doubtless disappear at a greater depth. Four of the lodes have been sunk upon from thirty to sixty feet and are considered first-class. The district is called "Horseshoe," and the stream "Horseshoe Creek." From Fairplay, which seems the natural entrepot of these mines, the stream glides smoothly down. through the Park with a descent of one hundred

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feet per mile, and receiving a few miles further down considerable tributaries from the north and from the south, its banks spread out into an arable plain, which, though 9000 feet above the sea level, has sufficient strength and warmth to mature vegetables and the small grains. This Park has salt springs, beds of gypsum, coal shales, veins of chalcedony, carnelian, and other curious stones, and minerals. It has not been thoroughly explored and no one fully knows its resources or curiosities. Silicified wood abounds in its lower portion, and at one point, about thirty miles west of Pike's Peak, there is a small patch of petrified stumps still standing, one of which is fifteen feet in diameter.

Some twenty miles below Fairplay, extensive salt works were erected in 1866, by Rollins, Hall & Lane. The brine is rich and boils up all over an acre of ground, flowing off quite a stream. There is practically no limit to it, and consequently no limit to the amount of salt that may be furnished by these, the appropriately named, "Colorado Salt Works." They now furnish all of the article used in the Territory. Nothing, we fancy, could more delight or surprise a stranger, traveling over the virginal and somewhat lonesome Park, than to come suddenly upon these capacious and well built kettle-houses, drying and store-houses, saw-mill, barns, dwellinghouses, &c., nestled away in one of those secluded nooks with which the Park abounds. Toward the Park nothing can be seen from the Salt Works, it being shut out by a low ridge, but a little way to the south-west lies the miniature Sierra, low, dark, and

completely forest-crowned, which divides the Park from the kanyon of the Arkansas; and over and beyond that immense kanyon can be seen, in a clear day, the sharp peaks of the main Range, rising to awe-inspiring hights in the deep blue of heaven, and lifting their quite terrible desolation into an atmosphere whose perfect purity we love to associate with something prettier. Colorado affords many beautiful, many grand, not to say, awful views, but this is a rare one.

In the Summer months the scenery of the Park is one kaleidoscopic picture. In its upper portion the great and unchanging mountains rise abruptly from its bosom, collecting the snows and distilling the waters. Here, as we have said, are the mines and the towns. Lower down the immense spurs or wings of the Range become low, wood-crowned ridges, the plateaus between smooth and level as a floor and covered with a strong, rich turf, in places along the streams yielding from a ton to two tons of hay per acre. Everywhere the lawn continues up the sides of the hills and ridges, searching its way among the low, scattered evergreen trees, suggesting all of loveliness it does not present. In the lower portion, except on the stream banks, the Park is dry, like the Plains, roughly carpeted with a puny sage and stubbed crisp turf of wiry grass.

On the whole it is well watered and timbered and the streams are full of trout; it is covered with indigenous grasses, the richest in the world, and is equal in its native state to the production of two thousand tons of hay per annum. It is easily ap