United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs
"South Cheyenne is deep and narrow, and nearly a mile long, with
perpendicular walls of solid granite rising hundreds of feet and in
places over a thousand feet, naked and smooth, with only occasional
rifts. It is winding in its course, and narrows into gloomy
rock-bound cells or widens into pleasant amphitheatres. A small
stream runs quickly through the narrow rocky bed, pushing out around
great boulders and leaping over the small ones, forming innumerable
cascades that foam and gurgle and sing low quiet songs. At the head
of the cañon the water falls three hundred feet, vainly trying to
find a resting-place in its seven leaps to the bottom. Stairs have
been built to the top of these falls, where are grand views of the
cañon and the plains."
The society in Colorado Springs and Manitou is thus detailed by Mrs.
Dunbar:--
"The society is the very best; people of culture and refinement, and
many possessing much wealth, have been attracted here by the climate
and surroundings, and these have drawn others of like tastes and
habits, till on this little mesa where the mountains and the plains
meet, there has grown up in a few short years a city of nearly six
thousand people, 'the cream of eastern society.' Although Colorado
Springs is pre-eminently a health resort, and THE health resort of
the West, and although 'wealthy invalids from the East make up a good
part of the population of the city,' others besides invalids are
settled here. Men of means from the East owning large herds of cattle
and sheep that roam over the great western plains from Montana to
Mexico have found it best to make a home for themselves nearer their
business interests, and seeking the best place have come to Colorado
Springs. Others interested in the mineral wealth of the Rocky
Mountains, especially in Colorado, Utah, and Old and New Mexico, have
also settled here.
"Unlike many of the towns and cities of the West, Colorado Springs is
not cosmopolitan; it has scarcely any French, German, or Irish
element. The people are from the older states of the Union, and from
Canada, England, and Scotland; hence an entirely English-speaking
community. The people as a whole are probably better educated and
possess more wealth than those of an eastern town of the same size.
It is more New-England-like in the general make-up of its social,
religious, and educational characteristics than any town west of the
Mississippi. The poorer people are a respectable class who have
received some social and educational advantages; none but
enterprising or well-to-do people would ever cross the plains to
establish a new home in the West."
On the same point, education, and the accessibility of Colorado
Springs, Dr. Solly writes:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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