Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1882-04-29
a COUNTRY OF GREAT ENTER
PRISES.

DENVER, Coll, April *, 1867.
To the MINING JOURNAL:
The population Of Colorado has now
reached about two hundred and fifty
thousand but it represents and sup
ports very much larger number of
people. A mining town in the
mountains with three hundred per-
sons will probably not include over a
score of ladies or dozen children.
The miners family is east. Only in
Denver is there the ordinary proper
ton of women and little people.
Hence the general reader will be little
surprised at the great amount of cap
ital invested in Colorado, the magni-
tude az its mining interests, and the
extent of its railways. This State
has as ample railway facilities as
Iowa, while the latter has seven times
the population.
But it is not alone in mining and
railway enterprises that Colorado is
large. The State is great in all its
plans to provide food for its constant
ly increasing number of people. Re-
irigerator cars We're invented in Den
yer, and thousand of these are now
on the track. They are filed in Cal
ifornia with the choicest fruits and
vegetables, sealed up air-tighF, and
opened in Denver as fresh and sweet
as when they left the gardeners baLdG.
Gigantic canals are constructed 10 ir-
rigate the dry land of Colorado for
these apparently sterile and worthless
acres only need water at the right
tine 10 make them more productive
than the black loom Of Illinois.
The grandest of the irrigatiug en-
terrrises is nearly ready TO reclaim a
vast area near Denver. A canal was
begun nearly two years ago and to
construct the tunnel at Platte Cauo
through which the water is frat OBJ
tained a double force of men were
kept employed night and day for a
year and a-la!f. After this these
human beavers constructed iluu.e
5000 feet long, sc feet vide, feet
deep, and employed Hank 8 TO 6
inches thick lor bottom and s:des,
Then followed the eartlwork Ct the
canal proper, which extends sixty enc
miles in one main channel, then 1T
separates into two branches and runs
twenty-one miles further. A good
sized schooner could sail in this anti
fcal stream, for it is forty-fve feet
wide and carries SIX ard a.half feet
depth OF water. A halt million aeI ea
of land will be fed by the canal.
The county CT A:apahoc, in which
Denver is situated, will ny means of
this stream, he transferred into gar
dens and orchards, yielding enough
not only to supply the sixty thousand
inhabitants of Denver but to fui nish
half the State besides.
On similar scale is the National
Mining md Industrial Exposition to
be held al Denver in August next.
1t seems strange that the youngest
State in the Union should attempt an
enterprise which any of the older
communities would long hesitate to
carry. But Colorado is, as regards
natural resources, the richest State in
the Union and her citizens are de-
termined that the facts shall be made
known in order to encourage immi-
grafton and secure the investment of
additional capital. She has more
iron and coal than Pennsylvania, and
hence it seems absurd to her people
that they should haul the commonest
articles of ironware fifteen hundred
miles and neglect the means lying
within her own soil. The came
thought applies to porcelain, glass,
cement, copper and lead mauufac-
lures, and thousand ether thiDgs.
Colorado's citizens believe that with
in ten years they will ship more man
! ufactured goods down the slopes of the