Colorado -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Outdoor books; Rocky Mountain National Park (Colo.) -- History; Rocky Mountains
Helen Hunt, whose books helped awaken the American people to the
injustice done the Indian and to an appreciation of the scenic
grandeur of the West, lived for many years at the foot of this peak.
Much of her writing was done from commanding points on the peak. She
was temporarily buried on Cheyenne Mountain, and on her former grave
has accumulated a large cairn of stones, contributed singly by
appreciative pilgrims.
South Cheyenne Cañon, like Yosemite, gives a large, clear, and
pleasing picture to the mind. This is due to the individuality and the
artistic grouping of the beauty and grandeur of the cañon. The cañon
is so narrow, and its high walls so precipitous, that it could justly
be called an enormous cleft. At one point the walls are only forty
feet apart; between these a road and a swift, clear stream are
crowded. Inside the entrance stand the two "Pillars of Hercules."
These magnificent rock domes rise nearly one thousand feet, and their
steep, tree-dotted walls are peculiarly pleasing and impressive.
Prospect Dome is another striking rock point in this cañon. The cañon
ends in a colossal cirque, or amphitheatre, about two hundred and
fifty feet deep. Down one side of this a stream makes its seven white
zigzag jumps.
Pike's Peak wins impressiveness by standing by itself. Cheyenne Cañon
is more imposing by being alone,--away from other cañons. This cañon
opens upon the plains. It is a cañon that would win attention
anywhere, but its situation is a most favorable one. Low altitude and
a warm climate welcome trees, grass, bushes, and many kinds of plants
and flowers. These cling to every break, spot, ledge, terrace, and
niche, and thereby touch and decorate the cañon's grim and towering
walls with lovely beauty. Walls, water, and verdure--water in pools
and falls, rocks in cliffs, terraces, and domes, grass and flowers on
slopes and terraces, trees and groves,--a magnificence of rocks, a
richness of verdure, and the charm of running water--all unite in a
picturesque association which makes a glorious and pleasing sunken
garden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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