USA > Colorado > Larimer County > History of Larimer County, Colorado > Part 32
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84
"In the autumn and early winter of 1872, Earl Dunraven, with his guests, Sir William Cummings and Earl Fitzpatrick, shot big game in the Park. Dunraven was so delighted with the abundance of game and the beauty and grandeur of the scene, that he determined to have Estes Park as a game pre- serve. His agent set to work at once to secure the land. Men were hired to file on claims and ulti- mately about 14,000 acres were supposed to have been secured from the government. * * * * Many of Dunraven's land claims were contested. His agent had secured much of the land by loose or fraudulent methods and some by bullying the homeseekers. R. Q. McGregor and others con- tested the twenty-one original claims. The con- testants claimed that "these twenty-one claims had been entered by not more than five or six men; that the claimants had never lived on the land; that there were neither house nor fence, nor any im- provement on any of the land." There are three "old timers," still living in the park, who insist that the greater portion of Dunraven's land was fraudulently secured. Dunraven came out with about 8,000 acres, but his agent claimed something like 15,000, and for many years controlled that amount. In 1895 some one investigated, and since that time more than thirty homesteads have been taken within the boundaries of the Dunraven ranch." Since then Dunraven has sold all of his interests in the Park.
"In 1874, a stage line was established between the Park and Longmont, and the same year Mr. and Mrs. R. Q. McGregor located at Black canon,
and Mrs. McGregor was appointed postmistress the following year. Mr. McGregor served Lari- mer county as county judge from 1882 to 1884, being elected to fill a vacancy in the office. In 1876 the postoffice was transferred to the ranch house and Mrs. Griff Evans became postmistress. John T. Cleave became postmaster in 1877, but did not move the office to its present location, at the junction of Fall river with the Big Thompson until ten years later. Many came to the Park to locate and stay during 1875. John Jones and John Hupp settled at Beaver Park; Abner Sprague and his parents in Moraine Park; H. W. Ferguson at the Highlands and Rev. and Mrs. E. J. Lamb chopped a wagon road through the timber to the present location of Long's Peak Inn. Mr. and Mrs. W. E. James started Elkhorn Lodge in 1877. The Estes Park hotel was built and opened in 1877. On the 20th of October, 1876, the first marriage was sol- emnized at the Ferguson cabin in the Park, the contracting parties being Richard M. Hubbell, now of Fort Collins, and Miss Anna Ferguson. Rev. J. F. Coffman performed the ceremony. The first term of a public school was held in one of the cottages at Elkhorn Lodge in the winter of 1881. Early in the eighties, Postmaster J. T. Cleave be- gan to keep household supplies and a few articles for sale and in the early nineties, C. E. Lester opened a store at the present village of Estes Park for the accommodation of tourists and summer visitors. The telephone line was completed to the Park in 1900, an office being opened at that time. The population of Estes Park increased gradually until 1903, when the Big Thompson canon road from Loveland to the Park, one of the finest scenic roads in the state, was completed. Since then, thousands of people have visited the Park each summer, many to spend the heated term in comfort and amid the most charming of surroundings with not a few to become permanent residents. A pretty village, with its fine hotels, one, the Stanley, cost- ing $250,000.00, its general stores, bank, shops and other public conveniences has been built up at the junction of Fall river and the Big Thompson, and the hillsides and small parks are dotted with neat cottages built to accommodate tourists and summer visitors. On Wind river, the Young Mens Christian Association of Colorado, has established permanent headquarters, where annual conferences of that organization are held. These conferences are attended every summer by hundreds of dele- gates. A fish hatchery, one of the best in Colo- rado is located on Fall river a few miles above the
[179]
HISTORY OF LARIMER COUNTY, COLORADO
village of Estes Park. A daily line of automobile steamers, carrying the United States mail, connect Loveland the nearest point on the Colorado & Southern railway, with Estes Park, and make the
YPSILON PEAK, FROM DEER MOUNTAIN DRIVE, ESTES PARK PHOTO BY F. P. CLATWORTHY
run between the two places in 2} hours. At the presidential election held in November, 1908, 173 votes were cast in the Park for president, which is an indication of the growth and importance of a community that has practically grown up in the past decade. More that 4,000 visitors and tourists
spent from a few weeks to a few months in the Park during the summer of 1909, and Estes Park is now the summer playground for thousands of people.
Ascent of Long's Peak
In Miss Isabella L. Bird's charming book, "Life in the Rocky Mountains," I find the following graphic description of the ascent of Long's Peak which she made in September, 1873, in company. with ex-Mayor Platt Rogers, of Denver, and Judge S. S. Downer, of Boulder, with "Rocky Mountain Jim" as guide. Rogers and Downer were then young men, who had accompanied Miss Bird to Estes Park from Longmont. Since then not a year has passed that large numbers of tourists and explorers have ascended the Peak and drunk in the glories so enthusiastically portrayed by Miss Bird. Her story is as follows:
"As this account of the ascent of Long's Peak could not be written at the time, I am much disinclined to write it, especially as no sort of description within my powers could enable another to realize the glorious sublimity, the ma- jestic solitude and the unspeakable awfulness and fascination of the scenes in which I spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
"Long's Peak, 14,700 feet high, blocks up one end of Estes Park, and dwarfs all the surrounding mountains. From it on this side rise, snow-born, the bright St. Vrain, and the Big and Little Thompson. By sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly arrests the eye. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked light- nings play around its head like a glory. It is one of the noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It be- comes invested with a personality. In its caverns and abysses one comes to fancy that it generates and chains the strong winds, to let them loose in its fury. The thunder becomes its voice, and the lightnings do it homage. Other summits blush under the morning kiss of the sun, and
[180]
HISTORY OF
LARIMER COUNTY, COLORADO
turn pale the next moment; but it detains the first sunlight and holds it round its head for an hour at least, till it pleases to change from rosy red to deep blue; and the sunset, as if spell-bound lingers latest on its crest. The soft winds which hardly rustle the pine needles down here are raging rudely up there round its motionless summit, The mark of fire is upon it; and though it has passed into grim repose it tells of fire and upheaval as truly, though not as eloquently, as the living volcanoes of Hawaii. Here under its shadow one learns how naturally Nature worships and the propitiation of the forces of Nature arose in minds which had no better light.
"Long's Peak, the American Matter- horn, as some call it, was ascended five years ago for the first time. I thought I should like to attempt it, but up to Monday, when Evans left for Denver, cold water was thrown upon the project. It was too late in the season, the winds were likely to be strong, etc., but just be- fore leaving, Evans said the weather was looking more settled, and if I did not get farther than the timber line it would be worth going. Soon after he left. 'Mountain Jim, came in, and said he would go up as guide, and the two youths, Platt Rogers and S. S. Downer, who rode here with me from Longmont, and I caught at the proposal. Mrs. Edwards at once baked bread for three days, steaks were cut from the steer which hangs up conveniently, and tea, sugar and butter were benevolently added. Our picnic was not to be luxurious or 'well-found' one, for, in order to avoid the expense of a pack mule, we limited our luggage to what our saddle horses could carry. Behind my saddle I carried three pair of camping blankets and a quilt, which reached to my shoulders. My own boots were so much worn that it was pain- ful to walk, even about the Park, in them, so Evans had lent me a pair of his hunting boots, which hung to the horn of my saddle. The horses of the two young men were equally loaded, for we had to prepare for many degrees of frost. 'Jim' was a shocking figure; he had on an old pair of high boots, with a baggy pair of old trousers made of deer hide, held on by an old scarf tucked into them; a leather shirt, with three or four ragged unbut- toned waistcoats over it; an old smashed wideawake hat from under which his tawny, neglected ringlets hung; and with his one eye, his one long spur, his
knife in his belt, his revolver in his waistcoat pocket, his saddle covered with an old beaver-skin, from which the paws hung down; his camping blankets behind him, his rifle laid across the saddle in front of him, and his axe, canteen and other gear hanging to the horn, he was as awful looking a ruffian as one could see. By way of contrast he rode a small Arab mare, of exquisite beauty, skittish, high-spirited, gentle, but altogether too light for him; and he fretted her incessantly to make her
CLIMBING LONG'S PEAK
TIMBERLINE HOUSE, LONG'S PEAK
display herself, Heavily loaded as all our horses were, 'Jim' start- ed over the half- mile level grass at a hand-gallop, and then throw- ing his mare on her haunches, pulled up along- side of me, and with a grace of manner which soon made me forget his appearance, entered into a conservation which lasted for more than three hours, in spite of the manifold checks of fording streams, single file, abrupt ascents and de- scents, and other incidents of mountain travel. The ride was one series of glories and surprises of 'park' and glade, of lake and stream, of moun- tains on mountains, culminating in the rent pin- nacles of Long's Peak, which looked yet grander and ghastlier as we crossed an attendant mountain 11,000 feet high. The slanting sun added fresh beauty every hour. There were dark pines against a lemon sky, grey peaks reddening and etherealiz- ing, gorges of deep and infinite blue, floods of golden glory pouring through canons of enormous
[181]
HISTORY OF
LARIMER COUNTY, COLORADO
depth, an atmosphere of absolute purity, an occa- sional foreground of cotton-wood and aspen flaunt- ing in red and gold to intensify the blue gloom of the pines, the trickle and the murmur of streams fringed with icicles, the strange sough of gusts moving among the pine tops-sights and sounds not of the lower earth, but of the solitary, beast- haunted, frozen, upper altitudes. From the dry, buff grass of Estes Park we turned off up a trail on the side of a pine-hung gorge, up a steep pine- clothed hill, down to a small valley, rich in fine,
FRAME OF INDIAN WIGWAM, ESTES PARK
sun-cured hay about eighteen inches high, and en- closed by high mountains whose deepest hollow contains a lily-covered lake, fitly named 'The Lake of the Lilies.' Ah, how magical its beauty was, as it slept in silence, while there the dark pines were mirrored motionless in its pale gold, and here the great white lily cups and dark green leaves rested on amethyst-colored water.
"From this we ascended into the purple gloom of great pine forests which clothe the skirts of the mountains up to a height of about 11,000 feet, and from their chill and solitary depths we had a glimpse of the golden atmosphere and rose-lit sum- mits, not of 'the land very far off,' but of the land nearer now in all its grandeur, gaining in sub- limity by nearness-glimses, too, through a broken vista of purple gorges, of the illimitable Plains lying idealized in the late sunlight, their baked, brown expanse transfigured into the likeness of a sunset sea rolling infinitely in waves of misty gold.
"We rode upward through the gloom on a steep trail blazed through the forest, all my intellect con- centrated on avoiding being dragged off my horse by impending branches, or having the blankets badly torn, as those of my companions were, by
sharp dead limbs, between which there was hardly room to pass-the horses breathless, and requiring to stop every few yards, though their riders, ex- cept myself, were afoot. The gloom of the dense, ancient, silent forest is to me awe-inspiring. On such an evening it is soundless, except for the branches creaking in the soft wind, the frequent snap of decayed timber, and a murmer in the pine tops as of a not distant water-fall, all tending to produce eeriness and sadness 'hardly akin to pain.' There no lumberer's axe has ever rung. The trees die when they have attained their prime, and stand there, dead and bare, till the fierce mountain winds lay them prostrate. The pines grow smaller and more sparse as we ascended and the last stragglers wore a tortured, warring look. The timber line was passed, but yet a little higher a slope of moun- tain meadow dipped to the south-west towards a bright stream trickling under ice and icicles, and there a grove of the beautiful silver spruce marked our camping ground. The trees were in miniature, but so exquisitely arranged that one might well ask what artist's hand had planted them, scattering them here, clumping them there, and training their slim spires towards heaven. Hereafter, when I call up memories of the glorious, the view from this camp- ing ground will come up. Looking east gorges opened to the distant Plains, then fading into pur- ple grey. Mountains with pine-clothed skirts rose in ranges, or, solitary, uplifted their grey summits, while close behind, but nearly 3,000 feet above us, towered the bald white crests of Long's Peak, its huge precipices red with the light of a sun long lost to our eyes. Close to us, in the caverned side of the Peak, was snow that, owing to its position, is eternal. Soon the afterglow came on, and before it faded a big half-moon hung out of the heavens, shining through the silver blue foliage of the pines on the frigid background of snow, and turning the whole into fairyland. The 'photo' which accom- panies this letter is by a courageous Denver artist who attempted the ascent just before I arrived, but after camping out at the timber line for a week, was foiled by the perpetual storms, and was driven down again, leaving some very valuable apparatus about 3,000 feet from the summit.
"Unsaddling and picketing the horses securely, making the beds of pine shoots, and dragging up logs for fuel, warmed us all. 'Jim' built up a great fire, and before long we were all sitting round it at supper. It didn't matter much that we had to drink our tea out of battered meat-tins in which
[182]
HISTORY OF £ LARIMER COUNTY, COLORADO
it was boiled, and eat strips of beef reeking with pine smoke without plates or forks.
"Treat 'Jim' as a gentleman and you'll find him one," as I had been told; and though his manner was certainly bolder and freer than that of gentle- men generally, no imaginary fault could be found. He was very agreeable as a man of culture as well as a child of nature; the desperado was altogether out of sight. He was very courteous and even kind to me, which was fortunate, as the young men had little idea of showing even ordinary civilities. That night I made the acquaintance of his dog 'Ring,' said to be the best hunting-dog in Colorado, with the body and legs of a collie, but a head approach- ing that of a mastiff, a noble face with a wistful human expression, and the most truthful eyes I ever saw in an animal. His master loves him if he loves anything, but in his savage moods ill-treats him. "Ring's" devotion never swerves, and his truthful eyes are rarely taken off his master's face. He is almost human in his intelligence, and, unless, he is told to do so, he never takes notice of any one but 'Jim.' In a tone as if speaking to a human being, his master, pointing to me, said, 'Ring, go to that lady, and don't leave her again tonight.' 'Ring' at once came to me, looked into my face, laid his head on my shoulder, and then lay down beside me with his head on my lap, but never taking his eyes from 'Jim's' face.
"The long shadows of the pines lay upon the frosted grass, an aurora leaped fitfully, and the moonlight, though intensely bright, was pale red, be- side the leaping flames of our pine logs and their red glow on our gear, ourselves, and Ring's truthful face. One of the young men sang a Latin student's song and two negro melodies; the other, 'Sweet Spirit, hear my prayer.' 'Jim' sang one of Moore's melo- dies in a singular falsetto, and all together sang "The Star-spangled Banner' and 'The Red, White and Blue.' Then 'Jim' recited a very clever poem of his own composition, and told some fearful Indian stories. A group of small silver spruces away from the fire was my sleeping-place. The artist who had been up there had so woven and interlaced their lower branches as to form a bower, affording at once shelter from the wind and a most agreeable privacy. It was thickly strewn with young pine shoots and these, when covered with a blanket, with an inverted saddle for a pillow, made a luxurious bed. The mercury at 9 p. m. was 12 degrees below the freezing point. 'Jim,' after a last look at the horses, made a huge fire, and stretched himself out beside it, but 'Ring' lay at my back to
keep warm. I could not sleep, but the night passed rapidly. I was anxious about the ascent for the gusts of ominous sound swept through the pines at intervals. Then wild animals howled, and 'Ring' was perturbed in spirit about them. Then it was strange to see the notorious desperado, a red-handed man, sleeping as quietly as innocence sleeps. But, above all, it was exciting to lie there, with no better shelter than a bower of pines, on a mountain 11,000 feet high, in the very heart of the Rocky Range, under twelve degrees of frost, hearing sounds of wolves, with shivering stars looking through the fragrant canopy, with arrowy pines for bed-posts, and for a night lamp the red flames of a camp fire.
"Day dawned long before the sun rose, pure and lemon-colored. The rest were looking after the horses, when one of the students came running up to tell me that I must come farther down the slope, for 'Jim' said he had never seen such a sun- rise. From the chill, grey peak above, from the everlasting snows, from the silvered pines, down through mountain ranges with their depths of Ty- rian purple, we looked to where the Plains lay cold, in the blue grey, like a morning against a far horizon. Suddenly, as a dazzling streak at first but enlarging rapidly into a dazzling sphere, the sun wheeled above the grey line, a light and glory as when it was first created. 'Jim' involuntary and reverently uncovered his head and exclaimed, 'I be- lieve there is a God!' I felt as if, Parsee-like, I must worship. The grey of the Plains changed to purple, the sky was all one rose-red flush, on which vermilion cloud-streaks rested; the ghastly peaks gleamed like rubies; the earth and heavens were new-created. Surely 'the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands .! ' For a full hour those Plains simulated the ocean, down to whose limitless expanse of purple, cliffs, rocks and promon- tories swept down.
"By seven we had finished breakfast and passed into the ghastlier solitudes above, I riding as far as what, rightly or wrongly, is called the Boulder field, an expanse of large and small boulders with snow in their crevices. It was very cold; some water which we crossed was frozen hard enough to bear the horses. 'Jim' had advised me against taking any wraps, and my thin Hawaiian riding- dress, only fit for the tropics, was penetrated by the keen air. The rarified atmosphere soon began to oppress our breathing, and I found that Evan's boots were so large that I had no foothold. For- tunately, before the real difficulty of the ascent
[183]
HISTORY OF
LARIMER COUNTY, COLORADO
began, we found, under a rock, a pair of small over-shoes, probably left by the Hayden exploring expedition, which just lasted for the day. As we were leaping from rock to rock, 'Jim' said, 'I was thinking in the night about your traveling alone and wondered where you carried your Derringer, for I could see no signs of it.' On telling him that I traveled unarmed he could hardly believe it, and adjured me to get a revolver at once.
"On arriving at the 'Key Hole' (a literal gate of rock), we found ourselves absolutely on the knife- like ridge or backbone of Long's Peak, only a few feet wide, covered with colossal boulders and frag- ments, and on the other side shelving in one pre- cipitous, snow-patched sweep of 3,000 feet to a picturesque hollow containing a lake of pure, green water. Other lakes, hidden among dense pine woods, were farther off, while close above us rose the Peak, which, for about 500 feet, is a smooth, gaunt, inaccessible-looking pile of granite. Passing through the 'Key Hole,' we looked along the nearly inaccessible side of the Peak, composed of boulders and debris of all shapes and sizes, through which appeared broad, smooth ribs of reddish-colored gran- ite, looking as if they upheld the towering rock-mass above. I usually dislike bird's-eye and panoramic views, but, though from a mountain, this was not one. Serrated ridges, not much lower than that on which we stood, rose, one beyond another, far as that pure atinosphere could carry the vision, broken into awful chasms deep with ice and snow, rising into pinnacles piercing the heavenly blue with their cold, barren grey, on, on for ever, till the most distant range upbore unsullied snow alone. There were fair lakes mirroring the dark pine woods, canons dark and blue-black with unbroken expanses of pines, snow-slashed pinnacles, wintry heights frowning upon lovely parks, watered and wooded, lying in the lap of summer; North Park floating off into the blue distance, Middle Park, closed till another season, the sunny slopes of Estes Park, and winding down among the mountains the snowy ridge of the Divide, whose bright waters seek both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There, far below, links of diamonds showed where the Grand River takes its rise to seek the mysterious Colorado, with its still unsolved enigma, and lose itself in the waters of the Pacific; and nearer the snow-born Thompson bursts forth from the ice to begin its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Na- ture, rioting in her grandest mood, exclaimed with voices of grandeur, solitude, sublimity, beauty and infinity, 'Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful
of him; or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?' Never-to-be-forgotten glories they were, burnt in upon my memory by six succeeding hours of terror. You know I have no head and no ankles, and never ought to dream of mountaineering, and had I known that the ascent was a real mountaineering feat, I should not have felt the slightest ambition to per- form it. As it is, I am only humiliated by my suc- cess, for 'Jim' dragged me up, like a bale of goods, by sheer force of muscle. At the 'Key Hole' the real business of the ascent began. One thousand feet of solid rock towered above us, four thousand feet of broken rock shelved precipitously below; smooth granite ribs, with barely foothold, stood out here and there; melted snow refrozen several times presented a more serious obstacle; many of the rocks were loose and tumbled down when touched. To me it was a time of extreme terror. I was roped to 'Jim,' but it was of no use-my feet were paralyzed and slipped on the bare rock-and he said it was useless to try to go that way and we retraced our steps. I wanted to return to the 'Key Hole,' knowing that my incompetence would detain the party, and one of the young men said almost plainly that a woman was a dangerous encumbrance, but the trapper replied shortly that if it were not to take a lady up he would not go up at all. He went on to explore, and reported that further prog- ress on the correct line of ascent was blocked by ice; and then for two hours we descended, lowering ourselves by our hands from rock to rock along a boulder-strewn sweep of 4,000 feet, patched with ice and snow, and perilous from rolling stones. My fatigue, giddiness and pain from bruised ankles and arms half pulled out of their sockets, were so great that I should never have gone half-way had not 'Jim,' nolens volens, dragged me along with a patience and skill and withal a determination that I should ascend the Peak, which never failed. After descending about 2,000 feet to avoid the ice, we got into a deep trough with inaccessible sides, partly filled with ice and snow and partly with large and small fragments of rocks, which were constantly giving way, rendering the footing very insecure. That part to me was two hours of painful and un- willing submission to the inevitable; of trembling, slipping, straining, of smooth ice appearing when it was least expected and of weak entreaties to be left behind while the others went on. 'Jim' always said that there was no danger, that there was only a short bad bit ahead, and that I should go up, even if he carried me.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.