SITUATION OF THE CITY. 5 



sharply to the east and cuts through the southern continuation of the Mos- 

 quito and Colorado Ranges in deep canon valleys, the last well known to 

 tourists as the Royal Gorge. About midway in the Upper Arkansas Valley 

 the present bed of the stream is confined within a narrow rocky canon, 

 called from the prevailing rock of the surrounding hills Granite Canon. 

 Both above and below this canon the foot-hills of the bordering ranges 

 recede again, leaving a valley bottom from six to ten miles- in width. But 

 little of this area is occupied by actual alluvial soil, its surface consisting 

 mostly of gently sloping, gravel-covered terraces. In the area above the 

 canon, which is about twenty miles long, the eye is at once arrested by its 

 basin form. In the center is a relatively wide stretch of meadow land imme- 

 diately adjoining the river, on either side of which mesa-like benches slope 

 gently up to the foot-hills of the mountains, three or four miles distant, 

 which rise abruptly from these terraces in broken, irregular outlines. The 

 suggestion thus offered by its basin shape and terrace-like spurs that this 

 portion of the valley was once filled by a mountain lake is confirmed, as 

 will be seen later, by the geological facts developed during the present 

 investigation. 



On the tipper edge of one of these terraces, on the east side of the val- 

 ley, is situated the city of Leadville. From the north bank of California 

 gulch it extends along the foot of Carbonate hill to the valley of the east 

 fork of the Arkansas, covering, with its rectangular system of streets and 

 contiguous smelting works, an area of nearly 500 acres, while on the hill 

 slopes immediately above are situated the mines which constitute its wealth. 

 On Plate 1 1 is given the reproduction of a photograph of the city, taken 

 from a point in its western outskirts on Capitol Hill ridge, near the junc- 

 tion of the two branches of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and about 

 west of the Harrison smelter. Although the plate leaves much to be de- 

 sired in point of distinctness and the shape of the mountain spurs back of 

 the town are necessarily obscured by foreshortening, it serves to give a 

 general idea of the city and its surroundings. The square building with 

 cupola, on the extreme left, is the court-house, back of which the wooded 

 ridge in the middle distance is Yankee Hill; a similar building to the right 

 toward California gulch is the high school. The chimney in the middle is 





