Valentine Democrat

WILL DROWN A TOWN.

More Valuable for Storing Water than for Housing People.

A lively little Colorado town has been sentenced to death. It is to have four years of grace. Then they are going to drown it. Lyons is a flourishing village of about 800 inhabitants, 25 miles from Denver, with which it has direct railway connection. It was started about 25 years ago and seems good for ten times 25 years to come. It is solidly built, with stone church, stone houses and public buildings. It has a fire department, a telephone system and is piped for water and for acetylene gas, which it manufactures. It is in the center of a fertile valley, raising big crops of alfalfa, wheat, corn, sugar beets and fruit. Four years from now the whole place will be under 240 feet of water.

There is only one chink in the hills surrounding the basin where the town is built. Through this chink flows the St. Vrain river. The thing is too tempting. A dam, 2,000 feet long at the top and 250 feet high at its greatest elevation, will close that outlet and store up billions of cubic feet of water. A company to be capitalized at $5,000,000 is getting exceedingly busy and when they have remodeled that corner of Colorado its own Mother Nature won't know it.