46 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
CRIPPLE CREEK BY WAY OF THE “SHORT LINE.’™ 
The trip from Colorado Springs to Cripple Creek over the “ Short 
Line” affords the traveler an opportunity to see some fine and ex- 
tremely diverse mountain scenery and to visit one of the active gold- 
mining districts of Colorado. 
The route extends directly west from Colorado Springs, past some 
cf the big mills that were built to reduce the Cripple Creek ores, and 
then passes up along the right side of Bear Creek canyon. Here the 
sedimentary rocks are upturned so steeply that they stand on edge 
‘and make great hogbacks across the country. (See p. 40.) The 
train passes the limy outcrop of the Niobrara and then goes through a 
projecting point of the Dakota sandstone. Just beyond this ledge 
the railroad crosses Bear Creek canyon and swings back on the other 
side. At the point where it crosses the canyon the Dakota sand- 
stone abuts “end on” against the granite of the mountain. Such a 
contact is not normal, and it means that the two diverse kinds of 
rocks were brought into contact by a great break, or, as the geologists 
call it, a fault, in the rocky crust of the earth, the granite having been _ 
thrast up out oe place until it rested against the broken edges of the 
beds of sandstone. This fault is the one that separates the granite 
from the red sandstone a few rods below the station of the Cogwheel 
Road in Manitou, and its course is marked by Ute Pass, which it pro- 
duced and through which the Midland Terminal Railway (formerly 
the Colorado Midland) finds a way to Woodland Park. South of 
Bear Creek the fault is marked by the base of the mountain, and to it 
is due the abrupt change from steep mountain slope above to flat- 
lying plain below. 
The “Short Line” climbs the mountain front, gradually attain- 
ing higher and higher altitudes, until it rounds Point Sublime, from 
which the traveler can look down nearly a thousand feet into North 
Cheyenne Canyon. The view from this point is shown in Plate 
V, A. Beyond this point the railway winds in a serpentine 
course around spurs and ravines as it adjusts its course to the contour 
of the slopes. But here and there a mountain spur is so large or so 
rugged that the cost of grading the roadbed around it would be 
very great, so the train plunges through the spur by a tunnel that 
reaches its very core, and in some places it crosses on high trestles 
rushing torrents that cascade down the steep granite walls, as shown 
in Plate X XVI. In this manner the train circles around the slopes 
*2 At the time this guidebook goes | resumed and that the traveler will have 
to press the Cripple Creek Short Line | the opportunity of taking the trip here 
is not in nig ha no trains having | described. Otherwise his best substi- 
been run on it for two years. It is | tute is a trip by automobile to this 
hoped, however, mut operation will be | world-renowned camp. 
