134 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
a photograph taken at this point, looking downstream. The first 
tunnel near milepost 350 is cut in the massive granite, which con- 
tinues to rise higher and higher in the canyon as the train proceeds. 
The part of the canyon in which the base of the quartzite is only 
a few score or few hundred feet above water level is its most inter- 
esting and picturesque part, which is all too soon passed by the 
trains. The canyon walls are nearly vertical, and the cliffs formed of 
the quartzite stand up like immense architectural structures and 
present great variety of form and color. The joints, which cut the 
rocks in at least two directions, give rise to smooth vertical faces of 
rock and to buttresses and minarets almost without number, The 
eanyon here is narrow and tortuous, and many magnificent vistas 
ean be had of the swiftly flowing river and the dark walls, which 
even at midday seem to envelop the deeper parts with a somber haze. 
From this apparently interminable narrow labyrinth the traveler 
at length emerges into a more open part of the canyon, where he 
may well be surprised to find dwelling houses and the station of 
Shoshone. (See sheet 5, p. 150.) Here is the intake of the great 
hydroelectric plant of the Colorado Power Co., whose transmission 
lines the traveler may have seen near Leadville and near Idaho 
Springs, west of Denver. The river is dammed at 
the small railroad tunnel just below Shoshone, and 
the water is carried through a tunnel cut in the sonid 
rock to the power plant, “whieh is 34 miles farther 
down the canyon.*t The traveler may not realize the quantity of 
water carried in this tunnel, but if he is making his journey in 
summer he is soon aware that practically all the water of the river 
has disappeared into the open mouth of the tunnel. 
The general attitude of the rock beds in this canyon and the adja- 
cent plateaus on the north and south is shown in figure 34, which rep- 
resents them as they would appear in a deep trench cut across the 
canyon at Shoshone. The beds dip to the south, and the Leadville 
limestone forms the surface of much of the plateau on the north, 
but the limestones and sandstones on the south are covered by a great 
Shoshone, 
Elevation 6,119 feet. 
Denver 350 miles. 
“In the canyon near Shoshone the 
Colorado Power Co. has built a large 
plant for generating electricity by wa- 
ter power—a hydroelectric plant. By 
mense steel tubes called penstocks, 
into which it is dropped to river level, 
175 feet below. In its fall it drives 
two large turbine wheels with a total 
r, 
smitted at a voltage of 100,000 
through wires carried on high steel 
towers for a distance of 180 miles to 
earries it } tran 
along the north wall of the canyon 
for 33 miles. When flowing at its full 
capacity this tunnel will deliver 1,250 
cubic feet of water every second to im- 
Denver and is used also at several in- 
termediate points. 
’ 
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