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Show I , " Beauties and Resources of Colorado. X BY REV. T. H. M ALONE. "Colorado arid Her Wonderful Resources Re-sources and Beauties" -were most eloquently elo-quently elaborated upon at a recent session of the Denver Chamber of Commerce by Rev. T. H. Malone, editor edi-tor of The Intermountain Catholic The address has occasioned much favorable comment throughout the country. We reproduce it in part: "Denver, nucleus of all inland west-cm west-cm trade and of all Colorado trade, which but a generation apo was a frontier fron-tier town with all the doubtful prospects pros-pects of existence and all the elements of instability of a thousand other mining min-ing camps which are today not even a memory! 'Terhaps a traveler's stay takes him into the mountains. He finds all the conveniences of travel to be had anywhere any-where in the world. He may jro south towards the New Mexican border, pasfinpr throup-h Colorado Springs, home of culture and elegance; Pueblo, TMttsburc of the West: Canon City, laden with orchard fragrance, an.1 on to Walsenburs:. Alamosa. Conejos or Trinidad, all centers of buy human lifp; or west to tho T'tah state line, visitin? Leadville, formerly the fireat silver mining- camp, now one of the wonders of the West in gold: Asnen. Olpnwood. with its unsurpassed springs, fitted up with all the eloR.in-rif-s of life, though situated in the heart of the mountains, and thm into the fruit country, with Grand Junction st a its center, where the peaohe;! rival in sweetness of taste and beauty of colorinsr those of any other part of the-world. the-world. 'Nor should be omitted the great 3 cattle ranches scattered through the mountains, and over the eastern part of iho country, to which the tourist mav turn his steps, and marvelous gold mine? of the Cripple Creek district, which have be.m hj recently opened up bv the efforts of the tireless prospector, that riysses of the Western world. "Through canyons ancient and awe-inspiring, awe-inspiring, dark ' with perpetual twilight, twi-light, nast tumbling mountain streams nernally wreathed with foam, up the .sides of massive mountains, dark with pine or rugged and bare with cliffs of gravis'ri grnr.:te: here and there clumps of scrub-oak. and everywhere gorgeous mountain flowers, like stars, of every shade of color, gleam against the somber som-ber granueur of the mountains: harebells? hare-bells? anonmnff, vioiet-hued columbines colum-bines and pertstemon. blue as the veins of Cynthia's eyes, pr.le pink prim-ros. prim-ros. ox-eyed dairies, roses, thickets of mountain raspberries: or. following fvrnie Md mountain trail, made generations genera-tions ago by Colorado's native son. the Indian.' th1" traveler leave the modern world behind in its representative, the railroad, and climbs the mountain side: what exhilaration in the winy mountain moun-tain air. and in the views' from nnints inaccessible save by footpaths. Up. up. mo heie-ht nTtained. to fe but others si ill more lofty. Or. perhaps, on a , summer evening the train leaves him at the entrance f one of our many natural nat-ural parks. The sun is just setting in a glory indescribable bv pen or brush. Before him riso from the level floor of the park towers and minarets and pagodas pa-godas such as no one spot in all the world has assembled together. They ' rival the vision of Eastern splendor and call to mind visions of the giories that must belong to the far-famei Taj- Mahal, or cities of the mirage, which have no earthly counterparts. And behind be-hind their battlements and minarets h pp..R (bp glory of the everlasting bills, not boldly outlined as at noonday, noon-day, but softened as if by a great green velvet mart'e. "Coloradoartf and Denverites are known throughout all the civilized world for intense love of home. Tt was this love that broue-ht back the-rarly the-rarly immigrant when, discouraged, he had returned to his Eastern home; it was this love for her hills- and plains that kept the pioneer true through reverses re-verses of fire and flood that would have .liaheartened the most high-spirited: his Colorado home is to every man today to-day what it came to be to the first plainsman the love of his youth, that M-ong. sweet first love which always I j?bi1es in memory a the best of life-? experiences. Of him are the poet's words the truest ever written: " 'An exile from home, splendor dazzle? in vain.' "The unsurpassed climate, winters neither too fold nor summers too hot. air that f-timuiates like wim. sunshine P rpetual. beautiful scenery, health and iiergy producing:, all these furnish the rhaim that is perpetual and never to b forgotten. The"e more than any mineral or .agt ic ultural wealth have power to make men love the country, and :f such a thing were necessary, be I - j ii tor here rather than rich elsewhere. "After the famous Pike's peak ex-j ex-j f iti meiit the country began to fill ud rapidly from the East, r -. "The early settlers of Colorado were ' nu n of peculiar boldness, daring and enterprise. They did not pas.i on after having exhausted all the wealth of the land: some did. of course, when the placers gave out and all the gold was Fupposeil to have been washed out of the sands of the various creeks, the unstable un-stable left and their loss was but their country'r gain. Men of power and ptamir.a remained, however, and through d-irk and troublous times tried by lire and flood and Indian arrowgave ar-rowgave evidence of the faith that was in Ib'-m. Some of them are with lis tacitly, sturdy rmd straight as our mountain pines, with courage like the v f int of the mountain and souls as crys tal pure as the lakes that nestle in the bosom .,f the eternal hills. "Passing over the great looses suf-1eif-fi by the h:irdy little community by 1he ftnrtifr of Cherry creek in her early ,istory, and those sustained by fire, f-he had also to contend with blockades Jue to Indian warfare. And the hor-' r irs of such warfare can never be adequately ade-quately told. N.nv-r will the massacre f that noble man, Agent Meeker of the White River agency, and his little ! band of assistants be forgotten, nor the other atrocities wrought on scattered settlers in the mountains and immigrants immi-grants coming across the plains by ' ' bands of redskins. Glancing over old affidavits collected from those who suffered suf-fered from their depredations, affidavits that were made lor the purpose of presenting pre-senting the whole Indian situation at Washington, the story is found repeated repeat-ed over and over again: 'Wife and family destroyed by the Indians, horribly horri-bly mutilated, attacked a train, killing kill-ing so many persons, bodies mutilated In every conceivable manner, stock run off, property burned; so many Indians 'limped up, pretending to be friendlv; when people at a disadvantage attack-: attack-: ed them, killing them, mutilating bod ies.' and so on through unspeakable crimes committed ngainst helpless wn-, wn-, mankind and on the dead bodies of all "Then the breaking out of the civil war so soon after the founding of the Mate where, through the gallantry and flash of our soldiers, the Texas invasion was repelled and Colorado saved to the Union. To say nothing of their action at the front, the bravery of Colorado men has not lessened nor their alacrity to heed the country's call to arms as has just been shown in Cuba and the J'hilippines. "Colorado's resources seem almost infinite. in-finite. Gold production and ranching , first made its prosperity. Then came i the discovery of silver. Then of many Wnr ,rmS,of mineral weaiLh-coal, Ton, oil, marbie, etc. Then her capac- l - -- ity for agriculture, then fruit farming, now manufactures. Everything that a state can do Colorado .seems able to do. "It has been admitted by Andrew Carnegie that no manufactory in the United States can manufacture steel more cheaply than it can be manufactured manu-factured in Colorado. Colorado possesses pos-sesses every advantage of the raw materials ma-terials and will in the day of large manufacture possess superior advantages advant-ages of access to the markets of the west. "The industries that are carried on extensively and which give employment to thousands of. men are such as the wheat and fiour industry, in which forty-five flouring mills are engaged in the state, having a total grinding capacity ca-pacity of 7,500 barrels per day. Paper mills, which furnicfh a large part of the market throughout Colorado and the adjoining states. Cotton mills, which have demonstrated the possibility of successful manufacture of cotton fabric fab-ric in the west. "Agriculture in every branch nourishes nour-ishes and is today the foremost industry, indus-try, offering particular inducements to people of moderate means who ought to follow an out-door life. The total area of the state is 60,000,000 acres, of which 4.500.000 acres are now under irrigation ditches and only. 2,000,-000 2,000,-000 are under cultivation. There are 30.000,000 acres of grazing land; 6,000,000 , acres of wooded land; 6,000.000 acres of forest land, and about 8.000.000 acres j of arable land which is t-usceptible of irrigation. "Under irrigation, with a constant sun, there is no failure of crops, but large and abundant harvests are the rule. "Fruit raising is becoming an important im-portant industry, and the rare quality of Colorado melons and peaches is opening a large market for them in Chicago, St. Louis and all the large cities of the country, including New York. "Development of agriculture in Colorado Colo-rado since 1&S0 has been the wonder of wtetern civilization, and it has been accomplished by means of irrigation, together with unequaled climate and soil. "'Colorado, with an average annual precipitation of rain and snow of only about fifteen inches and considerably over 300 sunny days is, except close to the streams, too dry for agriculture, unless un-less its naturally rich soil is artificially irrigated. Since li80, about 12,000 miles of main irrigating canals, with an equal mileag-e of lateral or distributing canals have been constructed at a cost of $12,-Oufl.000, $12,-Oufl.000, by means of which the waters of the rivers of lesser streams' fed by the melting snow and perpetual springs of the mountains have been diverted to supply the soil with moisture. "Finst Positive security against drought. "'Second Water supplied when needed need-ed and in stated amounts, a regulated I amount being particularly necessary with certain crops and certain s-oils. "Third Very frequently irrigating vater is a great fertilizer. "Fourth Insufficient rainfall remedied reme-died by irrigation is of immense advantage ad-vantage to farmers in harvesting grain and hay. "Gieat and vast as are the material resources of Colorado, and energetic as are her people in following material pursues, it should not be condufied that material things are paramount in the minds of Colorado's people. "Attractive gold and silver are to be sure, and these, together Avith other vast possibilities in industrial pursuits which I have hastily sketched to you, have no doubt attracted worldwide attention at-tention to Colorado and Denver Den-ver Queen City of the Plains j indeed she is. but that which is her chiefest glory and her unalloyed pride is her system of education, j "The people of Denver, and. indeed, of all the state, have realized that there are higher, nobler and loftier aspira-I aspira-I tiens than the pursuit of precious metals. met-als. .As a consequence, there has been builded in Colorado a public school system sys-tem which, from the material and intellectual in-tellectual point of view, stands unsurpassed unsur-passed in America. The s-chool buildings build-ings themseives stand unrivaled and ! unsurpassed; the best and most progressive pro-gressive teachers that can be secured find employment in the schools of the state. "Colorado's climate is noted for its dryness, its sunshine and its temperate-nti?s. temperate-nti?s. Put in a professional way, these characteristics are 'diminished barometric baro-metric pressure, dryness of the atmosphere, atmos-phere, almost complete absence of fog. great amount of sunshine, attenuated atmosphere, moderate wind movement and large amount of electricity.' "The average number of sunny days is extremely high. The sun shines sixty-four sixty-four hours out of ev:ry 100 it is above hoiizon: 3-10 out of 365 is the average. Chic:iga'.s average is 1S9, 56 per cent of all possible sunshine; Philadelphia only 37 per cent. "The dryness of the climate is proverbial. pro-verbial. The average mean relative humidity hu-midity it? only 52 per cent. Its absolute moisture averages but 1.8 grains of vapor to the cubic foot. While the annual an-nual rainfall of Chicago k? 34.42 inches, of Denver it is 14.5, and of Colorado Springs 14.4, and of some places much lc-j-5. There are never periods of prolonged pro-longed cloudiness or rain. In fact, a cloudy day is welcomed as a change from the brilliant sunshine. And rainy days to Colorado children are never the bugbtars they are elsewhere. Colorado has more sunshine than any state in the Union except Florida. "I am probably rehearsing an old story in telling about Colorado's wonderful won-derful climate, but there is, on the other hand, a great amount of ignorance ignor-ance about us. For instance, it is a common belief that our winters are extremely ex-tremely cold, and that Denver is a city of hii! and ravines. People often express ex-press surprise in the east to learn that one can bicrcle with more comfort in Denver than in many localities elsewhere, else-where, because it is level. 'Why, I thought you were in the mountains.' And so it Is about the winters. 'You ought not to feel the cold, you come from Denver.' Now, the fact is, we have very open, pleasant winters, with a modicum of bad weather. People can be out of doois with comfort almost every day. Our storms come up quickly quick-ly and are violent while they last, but they are Just as soon over with. There is none of that disagreeablenesis which makes winter in the east a long period of staying indoors and bundling up when going out. It never rains in winter win-ter in Denver. And the day after a heavy fall of snow the dufit may be fiying in the sunny parts of the road. No slush. It is marvelous how quickly the snow melts and evaporates, owing to the dryness of the air. Like those Isles of the Blest that the ancients located in the western sea-3. Colorado has all that makes a land beautiful and suitable for man's habitation. habita-tion. Not the least in happiness-giving attributes is her grand scenery, those mountains that lift their heads up to the verv throne of God, and down whose sides sweep the celestial, life-giving life-giving zephyrs of heaven. His glorious sun shines in undimmed luster upon pilgrims from every land who Journey seeking the shrine of health. God has ; filled the earth with healing springs-until springs-until the land in one Bethesda, forever stirred by angels, whose pulsing wings drive afar every baleful and noxious thing and keep the air wholesome for ! God's stricken children."' |