DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE 3 
by private irrigators and irrigation companies and py the Goy- 
ernment in carrying the waters of the rivers onto the thirsty land. 
The climate at the lower levels is generally mild, and where the 
lands have been thus watered crops of various kinds, including 
fruits, are raised in abundance. Agriculture and coal mining are 
the principal industries, but they are restricted to certain tracts 
near the railroads. at 
Beyond the Wasatch Mountains lies what is known as the Great 
Basin, which stretches westward from them farther than the eye 
can see. This is really an immense surface basin, rimmed about by 
higher land that prevents the streams within it from reaching the 
ocean. If the rainfall were heavy the streams would find outlets, 
but as it is only a few inches a year the evaporation equals the rain- 
fall and the region is a desert; so little water is available that enough 
can not be had for irrigation except near its margin and in small 
areas where the conditions are exceptional. Near the border of 
the basin there are a few fresh-water lakes, but most of the lakes 
within it are salty, like Great Salt Lake, which the traveler will see 
at the western terminus of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Rail- 
road. In the interior of the Great Basin there were once many 
lakes, but they dried up ages ago, leaving their bottoms snow-white 
with deposits of soda, borax, and common salt. The principal occu- 
pation in this region is metal mining, and the mines are in the 
isolated mountain ranges that corrugate the floor of the basin and 
break the monotony of its surface. 
West of the Great Basin are the Sierra Nevada and the great in- 
terior valley and coastal features of California. 
DENVER, COLO. 
The traveler who is unfamiliar with the West will find much to 
interest him in and about Denver. The city has sprung up in a 
short time; it is, indeed, but little more than 50 years old. Its popu- 
lation, according to the census of 1920, was 256,491. The traveler 
who may have thought of Denver as a city in the center of a great 
mountainous empire may be disappointed in finding, when he arrives 
there, that it is a city on the plains, 15 or 16 miles east of the foot- 
hills and 50 to 60 miles east of the Continental Divide, or the main 
crest of the Rocky Mountains. (See Route map, sheet 1, p. 32.) 
Although it is on the plains, Denver, in common with many towns 
in and near the mountains, owes its first settlement to the discovery 
of gold, which was found in the sand of Cherry Creek by a band of 
prospectors who were bound to the mountain region. The sand 
was not commercially productive, but the camp established for the 
purpose of working it has grown and is to-day a fine city with 
