DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE 3 



by private irrigators and irrigation companies and oy the Gov- 

 ernment in carrying the waters of the rivers onto the thirsty land. 

 The climate at the lower levels is generally mild, and Avhere 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. 



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 saltj^, like Great Salt Lake, which the traveler will see 

 at the western terminus of the Denver & Kio 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 sprimg 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 

 Avho 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 



