Wheeling Sunday Register

COLORADO'S BEAUTIES.

A Letter from a Bellaire Lady at Chautauqua Park, Colorado.

CHAUTAUQUA PARK, COL., June 8.

To the Editor of the Sunday Register.

This is the time of year when the fancy of persons living in the hot dusty cities turn to thoughts of a life in the country out in the pure fresh air by the brookside, and in the shades of the cool green groves and mountains.

Through the columns of your very enterprising paper we desire to tell our many friends in your vicinity something of what a summer spent here in the Rocky Mountains implies.

This Park is only forty miles from Denver by rail, and is one of the most delightful localities in the State. We leave the Denver and Rio Grande railroad at Larkspur, and enjoy a stage ride of six miles over a splendid road. One has a fine view of mountains and lovely green valleys, with Pike's Peak looming up in the distance.

The Park contains about five thousand acres, and every variety of scenery, while the mountains directly west of us and at whose base the houses are situated are full of deer, grouse and rabbits, while it is nothing strange to run across bear, and occasionally a mountain lion blocks up the mountain trail. We have several times stood in the front door and watched the pretty deer at the "deer lick," about 250 yards away. They come there in the morning in droves of from three to fifteen and finally saunter off very leisurely among the rocks.

Then we have a soda and an iron spring near by and a few yards away is the entrance to the Hundred Falls canon, where the cold sparkling water rushes and hurries down over the rocks, some near a hundred feet in depth, thus making many beautiful falls as it hurries down to irrigate hundreds of acres of beautiful farming land in the valley just below.

What joy there is in living here if it were but to breathe this pure, health giving air, at once light and cool, coming as it does from the everlasting snows of the Rocky Mountains and balmy with the thousand odorous breathings of the perfumed pines and laden with the breath of myriads of flowers.

Then we have here a peculiar formation of rocks, bright red in color, that rise right up out of the level plain for several hundred feet. Standing thus perpendicular and alone, they resemble the old ruined castles of ancient days, with their turrets, gables, and fantastic shapes.

The Park has lately been opened as a health and pleasure resort, by Mrs. Olive Wright, the lady who so ably represented Colorado at the World's Fair, at New Orleans. She has made a careful study of Colorado's natural advantages, with a view of aiding those who, as health or fortune seekers, desire to locate in this delightful region. After years of careful investigation, this seemed to be the most desirable location for a home like resort for invalids and a recreation ground for the well. There will be no attempt to make it a fashionable resort. Still Colorado is not lacking in fashionable resorts by any means, for Manito, Colorado Springs and Idaho Springs, vie with any of the resorts East in the way of elegant dressing, fine laces and diamonds, and all the fashionable and all the fashionable adjuncts of a Saratoga life, in the far West. Mrs. Wright may well be enthusiastic over the prospects of success for this delightful resort, which nature has so bountifully endowed with every element of enjoyment, and she industriously improved the opportunity she had for advertising its merits during the past Exposition season at New Orleans.

The glowing accounts of the mineral wealth of Colorado has been so extensively advertised that it has to a great extent over-balanced the notoriety she is entitled to because of her beautiful scenery and the curative properties in the air for all pulmonary diseases. But gradually this fact is becoming known, and we hear almost every day of some of the most wonderful cures of consumption or asthma or consumption from living an out-door life here in the mountains.

I think a good way to see Colorado would be to start from Denver on the Denver and Rio Grande R. R. at 7:30 a. m., come to Larkspur, take the stage for Chautauqua Park, stay here for several days then go to Palmer Lake, Colorado Springs and Manito, only 40 miles south of here. Manito is situated at the foot of Pike's Peak, which can be ascended either on foot or on horseback, the distance from the base being 12 miles. One would need to spend several days there in order to visit the different canons, the Cave of the Wind, Rainbow Falls and the Garden of the Gods. Then the Springs there are a never ending source of pleasure. Their waters are delicious and sparkling, palatable to the taste, and their well established medicinal qualities and largely to their value.

Then take the D. & R. G. R. R. for Silverton, and on this part of the tour you will see La Veta Pass, in crossing the Sangre de Christi range, the San Louis Valley, Toltec Gorge and the Animas Canon Valley. At Silverton one is in the very heart of the silvery San Juan country. There he should take the stage for Ouray. Along this route the scenery between Durango and Ouray is probably unequalled anywhere else in North America.

Then there is Leadville, and no tourist should imagine that he has seen Colorado if he has not seen Leadville. But I leave a more detailed account of these world-renowned places for a future letter, and hoping that many of your citizens will come here this summer and learn what it is to live out doors in this wonderful region, for he who has made the railway trip only has a knowledge of the grandeur of the scenery, but has not felt what it is to be in the mountains, and to breathe the mountain air.

MARGUERITE PATTERSON.