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The Cliff Ruins Of Colorado

The Cliff Ruins Of Colorado image
Parent Issue
Day
18
Month
September
Year
1896
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The cliff rums oí the San Juan and the Mancos have been the center ■ of attraction, have been viewed frona all sides, and their wonders have been told and retold to the world time aud time again. Scientific men have visited the región, have penetrated somhwestern Colorado and have considered that section a place of especial interest, because the cliff and cave dwellings are probably the oldest in this strange land, being the first built in that naysterious journey southward of a great but unknown people. For 20 years the prospector has folio-wed the San Juan river and gazed with careless unconcern on the rough and broken walls, so fuil of interest to the archajologist. But the 'miud of the prospector has no room for curios, and he has no time for archíeolcgical investigaron. He sees only the glitter of the gold in the sand, and thinks only of the time when he shall have made his stake. In No vember of 1892 hundreds of gold hunters rushed madly into the canyon north of the Navajo mountain, traveled 30(f miles over bleak, desert tablelauds, suffering terribly from the cold, hunger and the long, wearisome journey. In a few days they had staked off all the available land for 50 miles up and down the river and then returned home without having obtained so much as a color of gold, and today have nothing to show for it but the stakes. It is one of the most wildly picturesque and beautiful regions in the world. The bleak old Navajo mountain rises abruptly and towers like a grim sentinel over the surrounding mesas, while in a canyon gorge more than 3, 000 feet below its base the Rio San Juan appears like a silver thread. The canyon is several miles wide, and a descent can be made to the river only by a precipitous trail, but as the river approaches the great Colorado the canyon becomes . more narrow and the wall more perpendicular, and when it merges into the Grand canyon it is scarcely more than a deep, dark channel. A few miles from the Colorado river, where the canyon is not more than 800 or 1,000 feet from wall to wall, and where the walls are perpendicular and smooth, on the right wall are the pictures of seven warriors with bows drawn to the last notch, while across the river on the opposite side are the pictures of seven antelope, apparently in full run to escape the hunters. These pictures are well executed and are in the most inaccessible places. Evidently the artist had to be lowered from a ledge hundreds of feet above the picture and held suspended while he performed his tedious task. There are many places in the mystic southwest where such

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News