No
visitor to Colorado should miss this trip to Cripple Creek, the
greatest gold mining district in the world. It combines a ride through
some of Colorado's most rugged mountains with a visit to America's
most famous gold mines.
Leaving
Colorado Springs the train passes through Manitou and immediately
begins its climb up the historic Ute Pass Canon, following
the famous old Ute Indian Trail; here the train crawls slowly
along ledges cut from sheer mountain precipices of solid granite
at a cost of more than $100,000 per mile; thence through the
beautiful mountain summer resorts of Cascade and Green Mountain
Falls, with their wonderful waterfalls and scenic attractions
annually drawing thousands of tourists; Woodland Park in its
gigantic natural amphitheater, is high above Colorado Springs, and
affords unsurpassed view of mountain and plain.
Your
journey carries you around the north and then the west sides of old
Pike's Peak, crossing Hayden's Divide, winding through a stretch of
country unchanged by the hand of man, but always climbing to higher
mountains with wonderful views of the main chain of the Rockies
to the westward, glittering superbly with eternal ice and snow.
At Gillette (a deserted
mining camp) an elevation of 10,000 feet is reached; at Victor Pass
you are 10,239 feet above sea level, an elevation within a few feet
as high as is attained by
the roads crossing the Continental Divide.
Just beyond Gillette
the line enters the Cripple Creek
mining district, and for the next ten miles you are passing over and
among the world's treasure
vaults, close to the shafts and tunnels of the great gold mines.
The views along this last
ten miles are a combination of scenic grandeur and gold mining
unequalled anywhere.
