Show A TRIP WORTH TAKING staff correspondence cot there are numerous excellent creaso reasons ns for visiting denver and colorado springs but the very best reason of all has nothing to do directly with either except as a starting point from which to make a pilgrimage D to cripple creek over the colorado springs cripple creek district railway otherwise known as the short line this is a one day trip with scarcely more than an hour to spend between trains at the terminus in cripple creek but it is the most wonderful and thrilling scenic journey that can be mode by rail writers of more than ordinary talent have tried to tell the sensations they felt as their train penetrated the gorges climbed the sides and scaled the very summits of the stupendous elevations but not one has succeeded to his own or any other spectators satisfaction it is called the trip that bankrupts the english language and the term is not exaggerated ag for at almost every point on that sinuous serpentine trail between and up and over the eternal mountains one can only gaze and gasp at the heights and depths at the imminence of some super ponderous crag or rocky wall and then out over a limitless stretch of diminished peaks and boundless plains there are but two places on the road after it leaves colorado springs and begins the ascent where the track is straight for as much as an eighth of a mile all the rest is a succession of curves winding to right or left along the mountain sides and anon leaping some gorge or canon to reach a footing upon an adjacent eminence mountain scenery such as one can behold nowhere else lights and shadows that hold the contrasts of life and death colors that seem meant for some celestial sphere come and go in panoramas that change so rapidly are so vast so gorgeous and withal so overpowering that words fail utterly and the silence of awe alone is left to express ones sense of a world too great for description and up there high in the are towns made famous by the search for gold bull hill victor anaconda and cripple creel creeks are the best known names perhaps but there are others too where mines and mills and smelters shelters sm elters are working night and day to furnish the world with gold 9 old the metal that is at once its blessing and its curse its most useful and most useless toy but not all the gold that has been is being or may yet be taken from these hills can ever give to an intelligent appreciative mind the sensations of delight and the ineffaceable f memories of just one trip over the short line to cripple creek |