[Illustration: Jack Rigg, 1960] MINING GHOSTS OF THE STORIED SAN JUANS In saying farewell to the unique high-country places, you are left with many dramatic memories other than of towns alone. There are shaft houses or portal-houses like that of the Copper Vein mine at Summitville which provided Thomas M. Bowen with wealth to defeat Horace Tabor in his bid for the seven-year term for U.S. senator; or aerial tramways like the Tabasco mine’s crossing Cinnamon Pass to its mill. [Illustration: D.K.P., 1960] _L’Envoi_ If you have read this far, we hope that you have attempted one or more of the short trips. Perhaps you have done the whole suggested tour around Colorado and seen all forty-two of our selections. Whichever you have attempted, you must have come away awe-struck by the prodigious energy and enterprise of the pioneers. Their feats of transportation over villainous terrain, and of building shaft houses, dwellings and even towns on the face of cliffs or at the top of mountains, were so herculean as to seem incredible. The pioneers’ amazing accomplishments lie crumbling now. What cost them so much are largely regarded today as mere relics for curiosity or spots for souvenir-hunting—an attitude that raises my blood pressure to the danger mark. No one would think of chipping off a piece of tile from a fireplace in Spain or a bit of wood from a Tudor cottage in England. Yet they will do the equivalent in Colorado. True, our past and our heritage are much closer to us here, but they should be no less dear. For my part, they are even dearer for being just around memory’s corner and being almost within touch. When I stand on the rock dams of Lake Caroline (which my father named for me) and think of what effort a man would need to expend, working alone at 11,800 feet altitude with only a couple of hired workmen and a team of horses to build these dams, I cannot bear for one rock to be dislodged. There were not only the rock dams of Lake Caroline but the concrete and rock dams of Ice, Ohman, Steuart, and Reynolds Lakes and the great earthen dam of Loch Lomond, the main lake of the reservoir system. I cannot remember the actual building of these dams; but I can remember the many horseback rides in later summers when my father and I went to check on the head gates and on what serious damage the severe winters had done to his engineering work.