COLORADO 



1489 



COLORADO 



formerly, but the stock is better bred and 

 better cared for. Much land that is still too 

 dry for growing crops affords excellent grazing, 

 and cattle and sheep seem to find the dried 

 grass of the plains quite to their liking in the 

 winter, even when the light snow has sifted 

 over it. In the southern part of the state 

 there are hundreds of thousands of sheep. 



Commerce and Transportation. Since the 

 manufactures of Colorado are so specialized, 

 its commerce is necessarily considerable, for 

 it produces much more of certain things than 

 it can use, while of general merchandise of all 

 sorts it manufactures but little. From Denver 

 as a center, vast quantities of metals, live 

 stock, sugar, hay and fruit are sent in all 

 directions. 



All transportation in Colorado must be by 

 rail, since the rivers are not navigable, and 

 Colorado is better supplied with railroads than 

 is any other mountain state. To say that 

 Colorado has almost 6,000 miles of railway tells 

 but inadequately the transportation story, for 

 the building of much of it has been a matter 

 to try men's souls. It has not been a mere 

 question of marking out a roadway and laying 

 the ties and the rails, for through all the moun- 

 tain section there was scarcely to be found a 

 rod of level ground on which to build. The 

 rocks had to be blasted out and leveled down; 

 the chasms spanned by bridges that look frail 

 but will not tremble as the heaviest express 

 trains thunder over them; the persistent up- 

 grade conquered by means of sharp zigzags 

 that climb little by little to the pass, in some 

 places 11,000 feet in altitude, from which is 

 begun the equally perilous descent on the 

 other side. On the way to Cripple Creek, for 

 instance, the town comes into view, lying in 

 its mountain hollow, almost an hour before 

 the train draws in to its station, and all that 

 time is spent in making the descent by a 

 series of "loops" made necessary by the steep 

 grades. What it has cost, not only in money, 

 but in energy, in courage and even in life, to 

 build the various roads over the mountains 

 cannot be apparent to any but a trained en- 

 gineer. 



The chief roads of the state are the Atchison, 

 Topeka & Santa Fe; the Chicago, Burlington 

 & Quincy; the Colorado & Southern; the 

 Union Pacific, and the Denver & Rio Grande. 

 The last-named has the greatest mileage of any 

 road within the state, partially because it 

 makes the highest mountain climb. Part of 

 its way lies through the Royal Gorge. Besides 

 94 



these standard-gauge roads there are narrow- 

 gauge railways at various places in the moun- 

 tains where the regular type could not prove 

 profitable. In addition to the steam roads 

 there are electric lines in and about the larger 

 towns, and no well-settled portion of the state 

 lacks good transportation facilities. 



Educational and Other Institutions. Colo- 

 rado has always encouraged education, and as 

 a result stands to-day educationally among the 

 foremost states. There are included in the 

 state system the normal schools at Greeley and 

 Gunnison, the University of Colorado at Boul- 

 der, the Agricultural College at Fort Collins, 

 the State School of Mines and the Industrial 

 School for Boys at Golden, and the Home and 

 Training School for Mental Defectives at Den- 

 ver. There are also other institutions of high 

 rank, notably Colorado College at Colorado 

 Springs and the University of Denver. The 

 percentage of illiteracy is small, only 3.7 per- 

 sons out of every hundred over ten years of 

 age being unable to read and write; the show- 

 ing would be far better than this were it not 

 for the foreign-born element. 



Of charitable and corrective institutions the 

 state has the usual variety. Besides county 

 and city institutions, there are under state 

 control an insane asylum at Pueblo, a soldiers' 

 and sailors' home at Monte Vista, a school for 

 deaf and blind at Colorado Springs, a workshop 

 for the blind in Denver, a state prison at 

 Canon City and a reformatory at Buena Vista. 

 Colorado has tried certain experiments in its 

 corrective institutions, some of which have 

 worked out very well. The Colorado idea as 

 put into practice in the state penitentiary is 

 becoming the model for many other states. 

 The prisoners in the penitentiary are paid for 

 the work which they do for the state, whether 

 it be road-making or the manufacture of arti- 

 cles used in state institutions, and half of what 

 each man earns goes to his wife and children, 

 while the remainder becomes his at his dis- 

 charge. In sentencing to the penitentiary the 

 indeterminate sentence has been adopted, so 

 a man need not be released until it is felt that 

 there is a likelihood of his becoming a good 

 citizen. At the industrial school at Golden, to 

 which juvenile offenders are sent, the honor 

 system prevails, and no boy is held in confine- 

 ment or uniformed in any way to look like 

 a prisoner. The innovation which has at- 

 tracted most attention, however is the juvenile 

 court. This was not the first such court estab- 

 lished in the country, but it has become by far 



