APPENDIX SS. 1791 



half of which, I have been informed, has been paid in to the treasurer. The necessary 

 tools were purchased last summer, and it was intended to have the road completed 

 and open this winter, hut the small-pox epidemic, advancing up the Eio Grande, 

 reached that section and proved a terrible scourge. Most of the able-bodied men of 

 the country suffered from the disease, and at Tierra Amarilla, during the summer and 

 fall, there were over 200 deaths. I have been informed by one of the officers of the 

 company that work thereon Avill be commenced at both ends of the line as early as 

 practicable in the spring, opening it for summer travel. The directors being men of 

 capital and controlling all the trade and produce for miles about Tierra Amarilla, the 

 statement may be relied on, inasmuch as its construction will be a good speculation, 

 increase the business of the vicinity and probably not entail the expenditure of half, 

 perhaps not over a third, of the capital in opening the road to passengers and freight. 



The advantages of the San Antonio over the Chama route are as follows : 



1st. To Tierra Amarilla from Conejos several miles shorter ; to the Chama crossing, 

 en route to Pagosa, about the same, nothing more, certainly, with equally fine advan- 

 tages in the natural supplies of wood, water, and grass. 



2d. With no portion of the route in a region more elevated, it lies farther south, and 

 the general lines of drainage being from the summit of the range to the east and west, 

 it will be exposed to winds and storms from such directions only, and sheltered on 

 the north, leaving travel less liable to interruption. 



3d. It is a portion of the shortest and most practicable line between the railroad 

 and points in the southwest, as Fort Wingate and other Arizona posts, and should on 

 that account have been built by the government. The amount of freight in the shape 

 of Army and Indian supplies shipped to that point is very large. The charge of the 

 toll-road company, judging from the usual prices on the mountain roads of Colorado 

 and New Mexico, will be $2.50 per freight-team of six mules. 



No greater economic appropriation could have been made on the part of the govern- 

 ment than the amount for the construction of this line asked for in 1876. 



Turning to the San Antonio line, it will be seen to be but a portion of a mountain 

 route through and along western slopes of the ranges, which are all a continuation of 

 the San Juan Mountains, and part and parcel of the Rocky Mountain system, and as a 

 mountain line it is preferable to a highway on the plain, with its natural supplies of 

 wood, water, and grass. 



At this point it seems just that the conclusions drawn and recommendations made 

 in the prior report on lines of communication between Southern Colorado and Northern 

 New Mexico be referred to again. In that report the predictions made concerning 

 railroad extension and its probable influence on this subject were carefully stated, and 

 those predictions have been literally fulfilled. In that report two lines were described 

 as having been surveyed for improved roads ; over both of these lines charters for 

 toll-roads have been obtained, and the road over one line is in use. The recommenda- 

 tions made from this office, if followed out, would have resulted in economy to the 

 government and the roads would have been better made and sooner than now reported. 



3. Proposed lines. — 1st. By both the Chama and San Antonio routes, there is required 

 a long and unnecessary detour to Pagosa. Add to this a long inarch without water, 

 or dependence upon capricious rain-storms, and pools muddied oftentimes by sheep- 

 herds, between the Chama and the Navajo, and we find an imperative need of a shorter, 

 more direct route, well supplied with water, wood, and grass. 



The location I found preferable for so desirable a line, a cut-off on the Chama, may 

 from its situation, be known as the 



CHAMA NAVAJO. 



The great continental backbone, hemming in upon the north and east the lower 

 San Juan region, abruptly changes at about latitude 37°, the dividing line of Colorado 

 and New Mexico, from a chain of lofty peaks with high connecting mountains to a 

 series of lower ridges with high elevations detached and at greater intervals. Imme- 

 diately to its south, and at the very base of the Chama Peak, whose elevation is 12,200 

 feet, occurs an exceptionally fine pass, fully 3,500 feet below the head of a valley, 

 watered by the West Fork of the Upper Chama, completely protected on the north and 

 east by the mountains and outlying slopes, with the summit of the divide to the north- 

 west. This mountain valley lies sheltered and warm, exposed chiefly to winds from 

 the south only. Possessing the requisite elevation to impart to its grasses the peculiar 

 flavor of a mountain growth, it is perfectly adapted to heavy traffic, for which subsist- 

 ence for animals should be found in abundance, and is in every respect x>referable to 

 any already described as a short line to the west. 



Leaving the Chama route, on the upper part of that river, near the mouth of the 

 main tribntary that comes from the east, crossing the main stream and sweeping in a 

 curve to the south and west to avoid high basaltic mesas and vertical Avails of rock 

 that shut out the river from passage and approach as securely in some places as a box 

 canon, we reach the valley of the West Fork. On easy grades it can be ascended to 



