Trouting on the R.io Grande 
By C. A. COOPER 
A Summer Re^mble With a Burro Train in the 
Rocky Mountains 
C. A. Cooper was born in Troy, N. Y., in 1850. Eight years later his 
parents moved to Owosso, Mich., then a small town in the midst of a 
primeval wilderness of oak, beech, maple and hickory. Deer and small game 
were plentiful there, and when ten years of age, Mr. Cooper was presented 
with a Kentucky rifle and a shotgun by his father, who, being an ardent 
m 
sportsman, taught him how to use them. 
Leaving school when nineteen years of age, he followed railroading for ten 
years, and then, fascinated by a hunting trip for big game to Colorado, moved 
to that State, where he has since been engaged in mining and assaying. Re¬ 
cently, with his son, he has engaged in the real estate business in Denver. 
Mr. Cooper has been successful in business. He is naturally enthusiastic, 
and believes it pays to work and play hard. For nearly fifty years he has taken 
an annual outing, which, he thinks, has proved beneficial rather than detri¬ 
mental to his business life. He has represented his county in the State Leg¬ 
islature, and held office in the town where he resided. 
C. A. COOPER. 
I N the southwestern part of the Centennial 
State, at an altitude of 9,000 feet, lies a 
strip of mountain meadow which I pretend 
to own. Like most high meadows it is a little 
scooped-out place, fenced with mountain peaks 
and barred with a canon. Under the homestead 
act I have improved the place by cutting down 
trees, erecting a cloth house, digging up the soil 
for worms and making narrow roads between 
the house and the river. 
As the county clerk seems to think 1 do not 
really own it, it must be one of the few places 
which Dame Nature still holds in trust for her 
worshippers, and consequently, my claim cannot 
extend beyond a conditional life lease. In any 
event I am satisfied and do not care to reap 
exclusively that intended for the brotherhood 
of man; neither do I want to see the surveyors 
who will some day duive stakes in my meadow; 
nor the old man Avarice who will follow them 
and record a deed for land when he only wants 
an exclusive fishing right. When that time 
comes I'' shall move to another well-known far¬ 
away spot and wait for the arrival of cabins 
and tell-tale paths before proceeding to the 
meadow reserved for my last fishing and, as 
that place has always seemed a little more like 
paradise than any yet found, I have often 
thought I should like to start from it when 
making my journey over the long trail and be 
guided over the uncertain places by the mur¬ 
murs of a wild duck’s wings. 
Perhaps I also am selfish in thus minutely 
providing for the future, and perhaps this bit 
of sentiment is but an echo from the Jicarilla- 
Apache Reservation, where the souls of depart¬ 
ing braves are thought to enter the bodies of 
wildfowl. And then, too, when ready to occupy 
my final frontier Elysium I may find it dese¬ 
crated by paths made by other calculating aero- 
planists, who have noticed its advantages as a 
starting point, and thus will my selfishness have 
been repaid. 
However this may be, I wish to again call 
attention to these mountain meadows and tell 
how they appear to differ from those of the 
flat lands in possessing definable lengths and 
breadthfi. Eiavc you noticed that the latter, with 
their sweet, outdoor odors, their waves of green, 
their grand vistas are, because of their depress¬ 
ing and unsightly fences, guarded by the spirit 
of the open only in a half-hearted way? That 
the former are made sacred by the majesty of 
their mountains and a sense of freedom so vast 
it can never be told? That each canon, meadow, 
glen, mountain and bit of sparkling water seems 
to have its own protecting angel? 
We are continually building from our long¬ 
ings castles innumerable on these verdure-clad 
spots. We can always see the lighted tent at 
nightfall, the contented horses in the meadow, 
the smoke of our camp-fire home; always feel 
the restful silence of the mountains, the mystery 
of dawn, the wonders of the heavens, the power 
of the marching mountain shadows. Once we know 
them we are haunted by the purity of these up¬ 
land regions. We long again to say, “That is 
the odor of the balsam, the wild sage, the juni¬ 
per, the columbine, the marsh, the deer, the elk.” 
The trail between civilization and my claim 
on the upper Rio Grande is safe enough now, 
though not such as an invalid would select for 
a day’s ramble. It has its ups and downs. In 
a commercial sense its ups and downs are worth 
recording. Its first active commerce began in 
1873. At that time Del Norte, Colo., was a 
small promising frontier town and practically 
the end of the wagon road which extended— 
on paper—from Pueblo to Silverton, the new 
Western El Dorado. Silverton needed the goods 
rapidly accumulating at Del Norte more than 
one hundred miles away; Del Norte needed a 
hero to take them across the intervening moun¬ 
tains. Happily for every emergency one is 
found. 
In this case the proposition looked good to 
a man named Brewster. He had been over the 
obscure and precipitous trail and was not dis¬ 
mayed by the lack of fruit and milkshake stands. 
His rates were ten cents per pound for groceries 
and whiskey, and he had a wonderful special 
tariff for eight-foot showcases. 
At first he put on one train, twenty-one 
burros. As his net income exceeded fifty dol¬ 
lars per day, he put on another train and then 
another. Other heroes took notice of his three 
daily meals and went to New Mexico for burros 
and mules. The burro language soon became 
very popular along the trail. Lee and Ed. Hol¬ 
lingsworth had added twenty-one animals; John 
Eoote, twenty-one; Jim Galloway, twenty-one; 
Sam Miner twenty-one, and Joe Lacome, two 
hundred. 
When the business had become well estab¬ 
lished a trust was formed, prices agreed upon 
and stopping stations built. These stations were 
for protection from inclement weather and con¬ 
sisted of log cabins and large corrals. They 
were one day’s journey apart, the first being 
at Antelope Park; the second, known as Carr’s 
Cabin, was at the head of a canon two miles 
below Timber Hill; the third at the mouth of 
Pole Creek; and the fourth at Howardsville. 
As time went on the wagon road crept up the 
trail, necessitating changes in the stations. With 
the wagons came people anxious to furnish en¬ 
tertainment for man and beast, notably W. D. 
Watson, who built at Grassy Hill, and John 
Barber, at Lost Trail Creek. Naturally, their 
charges were high. It is said some mathe¬ 
matician of the time figured that hay was sold 
at the rate of six hundred dollars per ton. At 
Barber’s place much gambling was done, the 
poker tables often showing thousands of dol¬ 
lars in currency. 
Every year, without variation, and until the 
completion of the wagon road to Silverton, the 
first pack trains _ would leave the. terminal sta¬ 
tions on the tenth day of May and as regularly 
close the season on Oct. 15. There was not 
much pure ecstasy about the first month’s work 
in the spring. At this time the trains bound for 
Silverton were obliged to encamp five miles be¬ 
low the top of the range in order to cross upon 
the night crust. The camp site was on the side 
of a high, wind-swept ridge where the snow 
was often three feet deep and trees scarce. The 
elevation was 11,000 feet and the morning tem¬ 
perature below zero. 
Regularly, at 2 o’clock in the morning, the 
animals were collected and fed, breakfast eaten 
and the start made at three, sharp. Seldom 
was the start propitious. Men of all nation¬ 
alities composed the packing force and 'each 
knew a few words not found in the dictionary 
of his country. At first there would be a faint, 
smoky sound, easily distinguishable in that clear 
atmo,sphere. As the saddling and packing pro-' 
gressed, pronounced scintillations hovered about 
