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Show LITTLE COTTONWOOD. No pnrt of Utah has been so much the Eut ject of comment for the past tiro ypars, or bo widely known, Salt Labo Ciry excepted, as Little Cottonwood. Cotton-wood. Tho maiden bJuh of the Emma, as her store of flittering treasure began be-gan lo be revealed, was widely trumpeted trump-eted from America to Europo, for there was a great de.ire to exchange her nrgentiferoua deposits for English gold. Then discovery followed discovery, somo valuable, many comparatively valueless, until the Flagstaff, Savage, Montezuma, South Star or Vallcjo, Davenport, and numbers of others . proved to bo valuable mines, while a larfo number of prospects were recorded, re-corded, stamping Little Cottonwood as a'mining region of great richness with every assurance of a permanency. And it is possible that fifty years from now the work of mining within a radius of a mile and a half from Alta will be prosecuted on a scale fifty-fold larger than it is to-day, for the ore deposits present indications of immensity that can only be realized by porsonal observation. That pros-1 pcotiDg haa been largely prosecuted in , thia district the public have been often j advised, yet probably few would imag-1 ino that nearly fifteen hundred locations loca-tions have been made in Little Cottonwood Cotton-wood alono, as the books of Mr. Mo- Donald, the recorder, show; independent independ-ent of some two hundred to two hundred hun-dred and fifty locatioDs entered in tb.3 old Mining Lake district records. And yet new discoveries are claimed almost daily, a portion of which at least must prove valuable. Looking at the actual condition of affairs to-day, and the prospective future, if we were goiDg to build in AlLa we would build of rock or some other durable material, satisfied that tho present lumbor town, though rapidly extending, must give way to ! one of greater permanence and less liability to destruction by fire. The traffic between Sandy station, on the U. S. R. R., and Alta, close to the Little Cottonwood mines, is very large, both in passengers and freight. To meet the demands of the former Mr. Fairfield's line of stages and saddle horses furnishes excellent transportation. transporta-tion. He has the sixteen miles, or so, of road between Sendy and Alta stocked with about sixty head of superior supe-rior stage and saddle horses; is gentlemanly gentle-manly and courteous; keeps his line in good condition, and is served by tage drivers fully competent to handle the lines and who are very accommodating accommo-dating and obliging men. So much, of the way to get to Cottonwood after leaving the Utah Southern railroad. At the mouth of the canyon stands the Flagstaff smelting works, a la:ge, dingy-looking building, t: the left, as seen from the stage road; while nearly in the middle of the opening of the gorge, the outside rock-work of a fine building is going up for the Davenport smelter. About a mile above, and fairly iu the canyon is Granite, a city, young but pretentious, not quite so large as Salt Lake, but with aspirations aspira-tions which look to carrying away from New York the title of "Empire city." Travelers can see the outskirts of Granite, if they look very sharp, ere they fairly ascend the '"bench" and before Granite proper is distinguishable distinguish-able with a field-glass not so much because of distance as for the difficulty of seeing through an elevation in the ground; and it is an unsettled question whether Granite will not yet be extended up the canyon to the point where the granite and limestone formations for-mations join, some six or seven miles above the town of to-day, and where argentiferous galena deposits are first reached. Little Cottonwood is a short canyon, rough and broken most of the way up, with jagged peaks of light colored granite piercing "the blue of the upper deep," fringed and shaded with a moderate mod-erate growth of timber which relieves the monotony of the huge piles of rock. Some seven miles up the granite gran-ite formation terminates and the limestone lime-stone formation commences, the point of junction being very clearly marked on each side of the gorge. And a Bhort distance above, the caoyon ; widens toward the head, forming form-ing a beautiful amphitheatre I which slopes gracefully upwards every way except towards the west or down the canyon to the dividing ridge separating Little Cottonwood from Big Cottonwood, Parley's Park and American Fork, In the basin of thia amphitheatre lies Alta, and just above it the famous Emma Hill, the distance from the town to the summit which looks down into Big Cottonwocd being little over a milo. As we propose devoting a few articles arti-cles to Little Cottonwood, at reasonable intervals, this will suffice for the initial odc, having fairly arrived at the capital of the district. |
