The Coolidge examiner., 1933-03-24


ganizing stage-coach companies;
talking politics!
Good Motor Roads.
AS you explore ColOrados noun
tain region, rich alike in gold and
superb scenery, you find excellent
motor roads penetrating the rough
est terrain. The states mountain
highway system has opened up this
region of tumbled peaks only in re-
cent years. Twenty years ago the
states summer land" consisted al
most exclusively of the fOOthill
country and the eastern slopes Of
the front range.
Now. with four excellent main
highways crossing the Continental
divide and with network of
minor roads and trails available, in
creasing numbers of the holiday
crowds are pushing into the back
country, where the scenic beauties
are more marked.
Gold was only the curtain-raiser
for the amazing drama of minerals
that has unfOlded in Colorado. Sill
yer was discovered in paying guam
titles six years after the gold rush.
Four years later, in 1868, more
ounces of silver were produced than
gold, and this has been the case ever
since.
When Leadville's bonanza silver
mines came intosheavy production,
in 1879, the dollar value of the sill
yer mined each year actually
passed that of gold. Colorado had
become primarily silver state. One
reason for the tremendous produc-
tion of silver in COloradO-an aver
age of more than 300 tons of it a
year-is the complex nature of the
states ores. Many contain mix
lures of gold, silver, copper, lead
and zinc. Thus silver has been a
by-product in numerous properties
and has often paid the freight for
gold.
Tin and aluminium, cadmium and
cobalt, manganese, mercury and
mOlybdenum. antimony and arsenic,
zinc and zircOn-dip almost where
you will into the alphabet of min
erals and you will find substances
mined or minable in Colorado. Some
deposits are awaiting a turn in
economic conditions before they
can be touched. Others have had
their day.
Just now Colorado is sitting on
top of the molybdenum world. A
mine at Climax, near Leadville, is
turning out ore that produces each
year several million pounds of this
rare metal that makes steel of our
steel age tougher, stronger and hard
er. From this one mine comes more
than four-ffths of the entire world
output of molybdenum. Vanadium,
another rare and valuable metal
used in steel manufacture, is flow
ing from a mine at Rifle, in western
Colorado. This is one of the larg-
est vanadium mines in existence and
yields one-ffth of the world supply.
Beside precious and rare metals.
coal may seem grimy interlOper,
but it is mineral king of Colorado.
1t passed GOLD few years ago.
Close to three-quarters of a billion
dollars worth has been dug dur
ing the states life.
Saved by Irrigation.
Irrigation was the savior of Colo
RADIO. Most of the treasure seek
ers who went out in 80 and go had
only the desire to collect gold quick
ly and return to the East. 1t was
believed that the country could not
support a permanent population.
But few men planted gardens in
the river bottoms, led water to them
in crude bitches, and obtained
astonishing yields.
Cooperative groups built larger
bitches at higher levels and threw
up diversion dams. Development
has gone on until now every one
of the many streams that flow from
the mountains is taken bodily over
by irrigatOrs as soon as it reaches
the foothills.
AS one drives through the highly
developed irrigated region north
and west of Denver, one comes
every few miles to great factories
of steel and glass, each dominated
by a tall smOkestack. These, one
learns, are one of the fruits of ir-
rigation. In them millions of tons
of beets that grow in the surround
ing fields are turned each year into
hundreds of millions of pounds of
sugar. In 1880 Colorado factories
produced nearly third of all the
sugar produced in the United States.
This white, crystalline gold from
Colorado's plains has been worth
in excess of S50OOO,OOO in single
year. more than ten times the value
of the yellow gold that was dug In
1881 from the mountains.