THE PLAINS AND COLORADO 115 



Arriving at Denver we spent a few days mak- 

 ing preparations for the drive into the mountains. 

 Our destination was about one hundred and fifty 

 miles to the southwest, high up in the main 

 chain of the Rocky Mountains, then only to be 

 reached by stage or private conveyance. 



Fourteen miles from the town of Leadville, 

 at an elevation of nine thousand two hundred 

 feet above the sea, surrounded by mountains, 

 some of which attain an altitude of nearly four- 

 teen thousand feet, are two small bodies of 

 water, from their proximity to each other known 

 as Twin Lakes. The smaller of these is a mile 

 long, oval in shape, the larger one perhaps ex- 

 ceeding it three times in size. Here an early 

 settler, by name Derry, had a hay ranch and 

 summer grazing ground. A rude house of 

 entertainment for hunters and fishermen was also 

 maintained by this hospitable pioneer. There 

 was no other habitation for miles ; mountain 

 peaks towered above it on every hand, framing 

 an upland valley containing the Twin Lakes. 



A word as to the house which the Derrys had 

 built. It was a wooden structure, of course, but 

 displayed in its construction not only the fertility 

 of resource that is one of the attributes of the 

 pioneer, but much of Yankee ingenuity. It was 

 roofed entirely with tin, not in the conventional 

 way, each separate plate having once been an in- 



