Nostalgia & History > La Veta Pass 2

DRGW, http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,1368320 , has a posting that says “Steam Coming To La Veta Pass on May 26th, if all goes well.”

Helen Hunt Jackson http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/bits_of_travel_at_home in her book, “Bits of Travel at Home (1878)” in the chapter, “A New Anvil Chorus”, describes travel over La Veta Pass. In an earlier chapter, “Wahatoya [Twin Sisters; Spanish Peaks], Before the Graders”, Mrs. Jackson describes travel to the end of the rail at Cucharas and travel by carriage to the railroad construction site at Walsenburg. In this chapter “A New Anvil Chorus” the railroad has advanced over La Veta Pass to Garland City.

Below I have copied part of the chapter, “A New Anvil Chorus”.

“Ever since men began to dig for silver and gold in Colorado, one of the many hard things they have had to do, has been the journeying into the rich silver regions of the San Juan country. The great Sangre di Cristo range, with its uncounted peaks, all from twelve to fifteen thousand feet high, is a barrier which only seekers after gold or after liberty would have courage to cross. One of the most picturesque sights which the traveler in southern Colorado, during the past two or three years, has seen, has been the groups of white-topped wagons creeping westward toward the passes of this range; sometimes thirty or forty together, each wagon drawn by ten, fifteen, or even twenty mules; the slow-moving processions look like caravan lines in a desert; two, three, four weeks on the road, carrying in people by households; carrying in. food, and bringing out silver by the ton; back and forth, back and forth, patient men and patient beasts have been toiling every summer from June to October.

This sort of thing does not go on for many years before a railroad comes to the rescue. Engineering triumphs where brute force merely evades; the steam-engine has stronger lungs than mules or men; and the journey which was counted by weeks is made in hours. Such a feat as this, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (narrow gauge) is now performing in Colorado. A little more than a year ago, I saw the ploughshare cut the first furrow for its track through the Cucharas meadows at foot of the Spanish Peaks. One day last week I looked out from car windows as we whirled past the same spot; a little town stood where then was wilderness, and on either side of our road were acres of sunflowers whose brown-centered disks of yellow looked like trembling faces still astonished at the noise. Past the Spanish Peaks; past the new town of Veta; into the Veta Pass; up, up, nine thousand feet up, across a neck of the Sangre di Cristo range itself; down the other side, and out among the foot-hills to the vast San Luis valley, the plucky little railroad has already pushed. It is a notable feat of engineering. As the road winds among the mountains, its curves are so sharp that the inexperienced and timid hold their breath. From one track, running along the edge of a precipice, you look up to another which you are presently to reach; it lies high on the mountain-side, four hundred feet above your head, yet it looks hardly more than a stone’s throw across the ravine between. The curve by which you are to climb up this hill is a thirty-degree curve. To the non-professional mind it will perhaps give a clearer idea of the curve to say that it is shaped like a mule-shoe, - a much narrower shoe than a horse-shoe. The famous horse-shoe curve on the Pennsylvania Railroad is broad and easy in comparison with this. There are three of these thirty-degree curves within a short distance of each other; the road doubles on itself, like the path of a ship tacking in adverse winds. The grade is very steep, - two hundred and eleven feet to the mile; the engines pant and strain, and the wheels make a strange sound, at once sibilant and ringing on the steel rails. You go but six miles an hour; it seems like not more than four, the leisurely pace is so unwonted a one for steam engines. With each mile of ascent, the view backward and downward becomes finer: the Spanish Peaks and the plains in the distance, the dark ravines full of pine-trees in the foreground, and Veta Mountain on the left hand,—a giant bulwark furrowed and bare. There are so many seams on the sides of this mountain that they have given rise to its name, Veta, which in the Spanish tongue means ‘vein.’

From the mouth of the pass to the summit, is, measured by miles, fourteen miles; measured by hours, three hours; measured by sensations, the length of a dream, - that means a length with which figures and numbers have nothing in common. One dreams sometimes of flying in the air, sometimes of going swiftly down or up endless stairways without resting his feet on the steps; my recollection of being lifted up and through the Veta Pass, by steam, are like the recollections of such dreams.

The summit is over nine thousand feet above the sea-level, - the highest point reached by a railroad on this continent. Two miles beyond, and a hundred or two feet lower down, is the “Summit House,” at which we passed the night. It is a little four-roomed house built of mud and set down in a flower-bed of larkspur, hare-bells, penstemons, gilias, white, yellow, and purple asters and wild strawberries; just above the house a spring of pure water gushes out. The ceaseless running of this water and the wind in the pines are the only sounds which break the solitude of the spot. Once at night and once in the morning, the sudden whistle of the steam-engine and the swift rush of the train going by fall on the silence startlingly, and are gone in a second. The next day we drove eighteen miles westward, following the line of the railroad down the canyon for six or eight miles, then bearing off to the right and climbing the high hills which make the eastern wall of the San Luis Park. On our right rose the majestic Sierra Blanca,—the highest mountain in Colorado,—bare and colorless in the early morning light; but transformed into beauty later in the day when mists veiled it and threw it, solid gray, against a sunny blue sky, while transparent fringes of rain fell between us and it, making a shifting kaleidoscope of bits of rainbow here and there. The meadow intervals skirting the San Luis Park at this point are very beautiful: fields high with many-colored grasses and gay with flowers, with lines of cotton-wood trees zigzagging through wherever they choose to go, and the three grand peaks of the Sierra Blanca towering above ail; to the west and south a vast outlook, bounded and broken only by mountain-tops so far away that they are mistily outlined on the horizon. Leaving these meadow intervals, you come out on great opens where nothing but sage-brush grows.

‘Good to make fires of; makes desperate hot fires,’ said our driver.

It looked as if it had been burned at the stake already, every bush of it, and been raised by some miracle, with all its stems left still twisted in agony. There cannot be on earth another so sad-visaged a thing as a sage-bush, unless it be the olive-tree, of which it is a miniature reproduction: the same pallid gray tint to its leaf; the same full and tender curves in its marred outlines; the same indescribable contortions and writhings of stem; those which are short seem to be struck low by pain, to be clasping and clutching at the ground in despair; those which grow two or three feet high seem to be stretching up deformed and in every direction seeking help. It would be easy to fancy that journeying day after day across the sage-brush plains might make a man mad; that he might come at last to feel himself a part of some frightful metempsychosis, in which centuries of sin were being expiated.

Surrounded by stretches of this dreary sage-brush stands Fort Garland, looking southward down the valley. It is not a fort which could resist a siege, - not even an attack from a few mounted Indians; it must have been intended simply for barracks; a few rows of low mud-walled buildings placed in a sort of hollow square with openings on three sides; a little plat of green grass and a few cotton-wood trees in the centre; two brass field-pieces pointing vaguely to the south; a score or so of soldiers’ houses outside; some clothes-lines on which red shirts, and here and there a blue coat, were blowing; a United States flag fluttering on the flag-staff, one soldier and one sergeant; that was all we saw in the way of defenses of the San Luis Valley. There are two companies stationed at the post, - one a company of colored cavalry, - but a quieter, more peaceful, less military-looking spot than was Fort Garland during the time we spent there it would he hard to find. Over the door-way, in one of the mud-houses, was the sign “Hotel.” This hotel consisted apparently of three bedrooms and a kitchen. In the left-hand bedroom a traveling dentist was holding professional receptions for the garrison. The shining tools of his trade were spread on the centre-table and on the bed; in this room we waited while dinner was being served for us in the opposite bedroom. It was an odd thing at a dinner served in a small bedroom, to have a man waiter stand behind your chair, politely and incessantly waving a big feather brush to keep the flies away.

Garland City, the present terminus of the San Juan branch of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, is six miles from Fort Garland. The road to it from the fort lies for the last three miles on the top of a sage-grown plateau. It is straight as an arrow, looks in the distance like a brown furrow on the pale gray plain, and seems to pierce the mountains beyond. Up to within an eighth of a mile of Garland City, there is no trace of human habitation. Knowing that the city must be near, you look in all directions for a glimpse of it; the hills ahead of you rise sharply across your way. Where is the city? At your very feet, but you do not suspect it.

The sunset light was fading when we reached the edge of the ravine in which the city lies. It was like looking unawares over the edge of a precipice; the gulch opened beneath us as suddenly as if the earth had that moment parted and made it. With brakes set firm, we drove cautiously down the steep road; the ravine twinkled with lights, and almost seemed to flutter with white tent and wagon-tops. At the farther end it widened, opening out on an inlet of the San Luis Park, and in its centre, near this widening mouth, lay the twelve-days’ old city. A strange din arose from it.

‘What is going on?’ we exclaimed.

‘The building of the city,’ was the reply. ‘Twelve days ago there was not a house here. To-day there are one hundred and five, and in a week more there will be two hundred; each man is building his own home, and working night and day to get it done ahead of his neighbor. There are four saw-mills going constantly, but they can’t turn out lumber half fast enough. Everybody has to be content with a board at a time. If it were not for that, there’d have been twice as many houses done as there are.’

We drove on down the ravine. The hills on either side were sparsely grown with grass, and thinly covered with piñon and cedar trees; a little creek on our right was half hid in willow thickets. Hundreds of white tents gleamed out among them; tents with poles; tents made by spreading sail-cloth over the tops of bushes; round tents; square tents; big tents; little tents; and for every tent a camp-fire; hundreds of white-topped wagons also, at rest for the night, their great poles propped up by sticks, and their mules and drivers lying and standing in picturesque groups around them. It was a scene not to be forgotten. Louder and louder sounded the chorus of the hammers as we drew near the centre of the “city;” more and more the bustle thickened; great ox-teams, swaying unwieldily about, drawing logs and planks; backing up steep places; all sorts of vehicles driving at reckless speed up and down; men carrying doors; men walking along inside of window-sashes, - the easiest way to carry them; men shoveling; men wheeling wheelbarrows; not a man standing still; not a man with empty hands; every man picking up something, and running to put it clown somewhere else, as in a play, and all the while, “clink! clink! clink!” ringing above the other sounds, the strokes of hundreds of hammers, like the anvil chorus.

‘Where is Perry’s Hotel?’ we asked.

One of the least busy of the throng spared time to point to it with his thumb as he passed us. In some bewilderment we drew up in front of a large unfinished house, through the many uncased apertures of which we could see only scaffoldings, rough boards, carpenter’s benches, and heaps of shavings. Streams of men were passing in and out through these openings, which might be either doors or windows; no steps led to any of them.

‘Oh, yes! Oh, yes! can accommodate you all!’ was the landlord’s reply to our hesitating inquiries. He stood in the door-way of his dining-room; the streams of men we had seen going in and out were the fed and the unfed guests of the house. It was supper-time: we also were hungry. We peered into the dining-room: three tables full of men; a huge pile of beds on the floor, covered with hats and coats; a singular wall, made entirely of doors propped upright; a triangular space walled off by sail-cloth,—this is what we saw. We stood outside waiting among the scaffolding and benches. A black man was lighting the candles in a candelabra, made of two narrow bars of wood nailed across each other at right angles, and perforated with holes. The candles sputtered, and the hot fat fell on the shavings below.

‘Dangerous way of lighting a room full of shavings,’ some one said.

The landlord looked up at the swinging candelabra and laughed.

‘Tried it pretty often,’ he said. ‘Never burned a house down yet.’

I observed one peculiarity in the speech at Garland City. Personal pronouns, as a rule, were omitted; there was no time for a superfluous word. ‘Took down this house at Wagon Creek,’ he continued, ‘just one week ago; took it down one morning while the people were eating breakfast; took it down over their heads; putting it up again over their heads now.’

This was literally true. The last part of it we ourselves were seeing while he spoke, and a friend at our elbow had seen the Wagon Creek crisis.

‘I’m waiting for that round table for you,’ said the landlord; ‘I’ll bring the chairs out here ’s fast ’s they quit ’em. That’s the only way to get the table.’

So, watching his chances, as fast as a seat was vacated, he sprang into the room, seized the chair and brought it out to us, and we sat there in our ‘reserved seats’ biding the time when there should be room enough vacant at the table for us to take our places.

What an indescribable scene it was! The strange-looking wall of propped doors which we had seen was the impromptu wall separating the bedrooms from the dining-room. Bedrooms? Yes, five of them; that is, five bedsteads in a row, with just space enough between them to hang up a sheet, and with just room enough between them and the propped doors for a moderate-sized person to stand upright if he faced either the doors or the bed. Chairs? Oh, no! What do you want of a chair in a bedroom which has a bed in it? Wash-stands? One tin basin out in the unfinished room. Towels? Uncertain.

The little triangular space walled off by the sail-cloth was a sixth bedroom, quite private and exclusive, and the big pile of beds on the dining-room floor was to be made up into seven bedrooms more between the tables after everybody had finished supper.

Luckily for us we found a friend here,—a man who has been from the beginning one of Colorado’s chief pioneers, and who is never, even in the wildest wilderness, without resources of comfort.

‘You can’t sleep here,’ he said. ‘I can do better for you than this.’

‘Better!’

He offered us luxury. How movable a thing is one’s standard of comfort! A two-roomed pine shanty, board walls, board floors, board ceilings, board partitions not reaching to the roof, looked to us that night like a palace. To have been entertained at Windsor Castle would not have made us half so grateful.

It was late before the ‘city’ grew quiet, and long after most of the lights were out, and most of the sounds had ceased, I heard one solitary hammer in the distance, clink, clink, clink. I fell asleep listening to it. At daylight the chorus began again, dinning, deafening on all sides; the stir, the bustle, every motion of it began just where it had left off at bed-time. I sat on a door-step and watched the street. It was like a scene in an opera. Every man became dramatic from the unconscious absorption in his every action. Even the animals seemed playing parts in a spectacle. There were three old sows out with their broods in search of early breakfast, and they wore an expression of alertness and dispatch such as I never before saw in their kind. There were twenty-three in all, of the little pigs, and very pretty they were too, - just big enough to run alone, - white, and black, and mottled, no two alike, and all with fine, pink, curly tails. How they fought over orange-peels, and sniffed at cigar-stumps, and every other minute ran squealing from under some hurrying foot! After a while, two of the mothers disappeared incontinently, leaving their broods behind them. The remaining sow looked after them with as reproachful an expression as a human mother could have worn, thus compelled to an involuntary baby-farming. She proved very faithful to the unwelcome trust, however, and did her best to keep all the twenty-three youngsters out of harm, and the last I saw of her, she was trying to persuade them all to go to bed in a willow thicket.”

Picture 1 below is DPL, CHS.J797. “Men look out from the windows of a Denver and Rio Grande Railroad train on La Veta Pass, Huerfano County, Colorado. Dump Mountain is in the distance. [between 1882 and 1900?]”

Picture 2 below is DPL, Z-5482. “View of a Denver and Rio Grande Railway train, with a locomotive and mixed cars, at Mule Shoe Bend on Veta Pass (La Veta Pass) in Costilla County, Colorado. The train approaches a rusticated stone trestle with a stone embankment. Lettering on railroad cars reads: ‘D.&R.G.R.W. and D.&R.G.R.R.’ Snow covers the hillsides. [between 1881and 1889]”

Picture 3 below is DPL, X-8588. “Drivers have lined up carriages and wagons full of people on the main street of Garland, Colorado, to pose with other men, two cows, and a burro. The large building on the corner is probably the Perry House; other signs on the street read, ‘Dentist,’ ‘Billiard Hall,’ ‘Books and Stationery,’ ‘People's Meat Store,’ and ‘Drug Store.’ A hill with brush is behind the town, and the Sierra Blanco mountain range is in the distance. [between 1877 and 1878]”

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flynn Wrote:
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<snip>
> Picture 2 below is DPL, Z-5482. “View of a
> Denver and Rio Grande Railway train, with a
> locomotive and mixed cars, at Mule Shoe Bend on
> Veta Pass (La Veta Pass) in Costilla County,
> Colorado. The train approaches a rusticated stone
> trestle with a stone embankment. Lettering on
> railroad cars reads: ‘D.&R.G.R.W. and
> D.&R.G.R.R.’ Snow covers the hillsides. ”
<snip>

Can someone place this on a map?
Has anyone been to this location in recent years? That stonework would be neat to see if any of it still exists -- which I doubt...
Thanks,
-Wes