Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1882-07-14
CHIHUAHUA.
An Old Kansan Explores the Inner Re
cesses of this Ancient City.
The Results OF His Cogitations.

miles bv rail south of FL Paso, Texas,
and goo miles north of the CITY of
Mexico. with which it will be connect
ed by rail within two years.
1t is the largest city in the extreme
northern Mexico, has had brilliant
past. and seems destined to a prosper
GUS future. 1t will be visited, within
the next twelve months, by thousands
of western people, including a large
proportion of Kansans, drawn by bust
ness, pleasure and curiosity.
Chihuahua is the capital of the state
of Chihuahua, the northeastern state of
the Republic of Mexico; is the seat of
| Justice for the county of Iturbide, and
the military headquarters of the depart
ment at present commanded by Gen.
Fuero. 1t is the site of a government
mint and generally the political and
commercial capital of the North. 1t is
the first point reached by the great
Mexican Central railway, Gan extension
of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
SYSTEM and no city of Importance
will ever be built for two hundred
miles in any direction.
Chihuahua has municipal govern
ment, the present Mayor being Don
Juan N Zubiran, for many years the
Mexican consul at Ell Paso, Texas, and
one of the most progressive of the pub
lie men of Mexico. He speaks and
writes English with huency, and is the
friend of every respectable American
who comes to Chihuahua. He is an
encyclopedias of Mexican history and
politics.; has known every Mexican
political or military chief of prominence
from the days of Santa Anna, and was
the devoted personal friend of late
President Juarez. Kindly, affable, a
friend of popular education. he has laid
the city of Chihuahua under everlast-
ing obligations, and is the creditor of a
large number of foreigners for informa-
ton extended.
Chihuahua is well paved, has water
works of an ancient pattern, and is
lighted with naptha lamps; it has
several hotels, mostly frequented by
Americans; two American barber shops,
and one bootblack of native origin. 1t
has banks, stores of all kinds, theatre,
plaza de tOrOS, from which the bulls
and natGdOrS have, however, departed,
and which is occupied at present by a
Mexican circus company which per-
forms every Sunday. The clown talks
Spanish, and is therefore unable to bore
Americans.
Historically Chihuahua may be said
to be comparatively modern place for
Spanish American city. 1t lays no
such claim to antiquity as Santa Fe or
several other towns in Mexico. 1t was,
in fact, as Senior Zubiran says, nothing
but grasshoppers' until 1902, when the
great silver mine of Santa Eulalie at
tracted attention to the neighborhood.
The town grew after the fashion of min
ing towns in other times and centuries,
and in 1718, by royal authority, the
settlement was organized as village
under the name of San Francisco de
chihuahua. The immense richness of
the mines, the fact that there was no
other town of Importance within hun
dreds of miles, and the wealth and en-
ergy of its inhabitants combined to
make Chihuahua marvel of prosperity.
Other colonies and towns were the out
growth of missions, and were located
on the sight of Indian pueblos. Chi
huahua sprang into existence under the
shadow of its mountain, Ell Coronel,
1.-The Colonel" the product of mining
and commerce. When Capt. Zebulon
M. Pike was detained here prisoner in
1906, he found fine city of $4,000
people. 1t is well authenticated that in
the middle of the last century the town
had 10000 inhabitants. Its rulers were
merchants and mine owners. 1t was
also manufacturing town, and within
the last fifty years articles from the
state of chihuahua were sold in great
quantities at Santa Fe.
The era of greatest prosperity wa:
, probably reached about 1927, when the
great church on the plaza, called the
Cathedral, but which it is not, as Chi
huahua, has not and never has had ;
bishop, was commenced. 1t was bull
as the parish church of Chihuahua
by the business men of the city
out of a fund raised by contri
; button of II 1-2 cents on eacl
mark, or eight ounces of silver pro
duced in the vicinity. Commenced il
1727, the exterior was completed il
1741; the interior was not finished til
1761. The building proper cost 5000,
600; of the cost of the interior no on
presumes to make an estimate. IL
, those days the banks of the little rive
, Chuvisca, which flows by the town
> were lined with smelters and re
: ductiOn works, and immense pile
of waste can still be traced TO
/ miles. Outside of the present cit,
the foundations of ancient house
p can be traced, scattered over a larg
4 district Here was a great city, enor
: nous in its wealth, with its fine Ala
e media thronged with pleasure seeker
: every morning and evening, and yet a
2 utterly shut out from every foreig1
: country as if it had been situated in tn
D interior. The Spanish erected a NOR
than Chinese wall about the country
, Within a few years it has required tw,
, months for letter to reach Chihuahu
: from the United States.
h When the decline of Chihuahua be
| gan is hard to state. Probably wit
I the abandonment of the policy of en-
\ shaving the Indians and working then
f in the mines. The staggering blow wa
dealt by the Mexican revolution whic
lasted from 1910 TO 1921. The clever