154 



CITIES, AMERICAN. (CASox CITY.) 



fer-boat system. The same system is employed 

 by roads crossing the Mississippi. In addition 

 to the 2 railroads named, the city has 4 trunk 

 lines the Missouri-Pacific, the Iron Mountain, 

 the St. Louis and Southwestern, and the " Big 

 Four." In addition to the St. Louis and New- 

 Orleans and the Ohio river packets, the city 

 has a local business served by local packets. 

 These ply between Cairo and Paducah and Ga- 

 yoso. The annual shipments by rail and river 

 from the city aggregate nearly $80,000,000, di- 

 vided as follows: $6,500,000 by river south; 

 $4,500,000 by river north; $30,000,000 by rail 

 south, and more than $37,000,000 by rail north. 

 There are 4 banks 2 national and 2 savings ; 

 3 building and loan associations ; a Federal cus- 

 tomhouse and post-office, which cost $271,260 ; 

 a county courthouse ; an opera house, which 

 cost $50,000 ; a United States Marine Hospital ; 

 an infirmary, under the care of the Catholics: a 

 private sanitarium ; a public library, the gift 

 to the city of Mrs. Anna E. Saffone, valued at 

 $50,000; several hotels; 8 public-school build- 

 ings ; churches of various denominations ; and 2 

 lines of street cars 1 electric, each operating 

 5 miles of track: both reach St. Mary's Park 

 and the grounds of the Three States Fair and 

 Racing Association. Gas and electricity are em- 

 ployed in lighting. The water works, erected at 

 a cost of $100,000, have 20 miles of mains and a 

 capacity of 2,000,000 gallons daily. There is a 

 volunteer fire department and a thorough sewer- 

 age system. Three daily and 5 weekly news- 

 papers are published. There is an active board 

 of trade. The city is the great distributing point 

 for the product of the immense hardwood forests 

 of Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi in fact, 

 of all the vast country through which the Ohio 

 and Tennessee rivers flow, and also that which is 

 reached by the great lines of railroad centering 

 here. Hardwood lumber is turned out by the 

 sawmills, which in a radius of 40 miles from the 

 city number 860. Twenty-five firms and corpora- 

 tions handle the lumber business in and about 

 the city, and among the factories is to be noted 

 that of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, 

 employing 170 men and boys, and making the 

 tables of all the sewing machines turned out by 

 the factory at South Bend, Ind., and a portion 

 of those for the factory at Glasgow, Scotland. 

 The establishment has a capacity of 1,500 tables 

 daily. Another firm, turning out the various 

 kinds of wagon and agricultural-implement 

 stock, consumes its own sawdust and shavings 

 by a system of automatic collectors and boiler 

 feed. This department consumes 15,000 feet of 

 oak and about 25,000 feet of gum, cypress, and 

 poplar daily ; and in another building curtain 

 poles are fashioned at the rate of 9,000 a day, 

 equipped with rings made also in the establish- 

 ment. A large company, capitalized at $200,000, 

 manufactures, in addition to all classes of build- 

 ing and furnishing material, egg cases, and fruit 

 and vegetable packing boxes. Another, with a 

 capacity of 1,000,000 feet of lumber a month, 

 ships sycamore and poplar logs to Chicago to a 

 packing-box factory ; and there are also various 

 concerns manufacturing barrels, staves and 

 heads, and hoops. In all, there are more than 

 30 manufacturing establishments, employing 

 over 1,000 men. The city is the natural gate- 



way between the grain fields of the Northwest 

 and the consuming markets of the South and 

 Southwest, and in 1891 20,000,000 bushels of 

 grain were shipped from the elevator of the 

 Illinois Central Railroad to New Orleans, for 

 export to Europe and South America. For 100 

 miles in either direction the country is one vast 

 cornfield. The traffic of the lower Mississippi is 

 greatly augmented by the output of the Ohio 

 river at this point, the single item of coal afford- 

 ing employment to a large fleet of towing steam- 

 ers and barges. In 1890, 13,500,000 bushels were 

 delivered at New Orleans alone. The altitude of 

 the city varies from 270 to 377 feet above sea 

 level. Contrary to the reputation given the city 

 by Dickens, it has been pronounced by the United 

 States Surgeon-General "quite as healthful as 

 any other place in the Union." Nearly 7,000 

 acres, known as the Drainage District, are under 

 development by the trustees of the city, whose 

 predecessors lifted the load of debt of the origi- 

 nal City and Canal Company in 1846, and led to 

 the resuscitation of the place. The levees inclos- 

 ing this district are 15| miles long, and in their 

 construction 1,684,558 cubic yards of earth were 

 used. The cost of the work done was $320,000. 

 Eight large sewers have been put in, 4 of which 

 are 40 inches in diameter, and lead to the rivers, 

 with automatic gates at the river end that close 

 immediately if the river rises. A portion of the 

 district is under cultivation, and schools and 

 mills have been established. 



Canon City, a city of Colorado, county seat 

 of Fremont County, 41) miles west of Pueblo and 

 161 miles southwest of Denver, on Arkansas 

 river, a mile below the Royal Gorge. It lies 

 near the eastern base of the Rocky mountains, 

 in a natural park protected by mountains and 

 foothills on three sides, and has an altitude of 

 5,329 feet above sea level. About 2,000 acres of 

 the open park immediately northeast of the city 

 will be irrigated by the State canal now under 

 construction by convict labor, 85 miles in length, 

 from the Grand Canon of the Arkansas to the 

 Fontaine Qui Bouille. There are already 100 

 miles of irrigating ditches in the county, and in 

 addition to the crops of cereals and grasses there 

 are large orchards and nurseries near the city 

 which in 1892 shipped 172,840 pounds of grapes 

 and 151,800 of strawberries, as well as pears, 

 peaches, and apples. Canon City is the natural 

 point of supply for the coal and mining camps 

 of the county, which is second to Las Animas 

 County only in production of coal, the output in 

 1892 being 497,322 tons. It contains gold, sil- 

 ver, lead, iron, copper, and zinc, as well as 106 

 oil wells, the refineries of which product are at 

 Florence, 8 miles from the county seat. Canon 

 City has a population, by the census of 1890, of 

 2,825, having increased more than 88 per cent, in 

 the decade from 1880. It is on the main line of 

 Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, and is the ter- 

 minus of the Pueblo branch of the Atchison, 

 Topeka and Santa Fe. In addition to carrying 

 passengers, a daily mail and express service is 

 also had by a stage line to Cripple Creek, a large 

 and prosperous gold camp. The streets, which 

 are broad and level, are shaded with mature 

 trees, with a stream of pure mountain water on 

 either side. They are graded, 'and have substan- 

 tial sidewalks. The business houses and resi- 



