Summer Attractions Colorado 1917, School

For the summer season 1917, the Union Pacific Railroad produced a tourist brochure that included educational opportunities. “Three of the leading educational institutions of Colorado conduct summer schools which rank with the best in the United States.”

“Colorado State Normal School, Greeley, Colo.—Summer School. June 18 to July 28, 1917. Both regular and special faculty, with lectures by leading educators of the United States. Weekend visits to Estes Park arranged.”
          “University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.—Fourteenth annual summer session June 25 to August 4, 1917. Two hundred courses. Daily open lectures of general interest and educational value.”
          “Colorado Agricultural College, Fort Collins, Colo.—Summer season opens June 18 and closes July 28, 1917. Courses in Agriculture, Mechanical Arts, Automobile and Tractor Engineering, Home Economics, and Teacher Training.”
          “The Y.M.C.A. Estes Park Conference opens June 7 and closes September 3. It is in the nature of a religious chautauqua. This well equipped permanent camp, with accommodations for 500 guests, is open to the public.”

Photo of the Colorado State Normal School courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection

Quoted text from a free promotional booklet “Colorado for the Tourist,” produced by the Union Pacific Railroad for the summer tourist season of 1917.

Colorado Summer Attractions 1917, Part 2

Land of Unrivaled Scenery

The Union Pacific’s 1917 promotional booklet Colorado for the Tourist described the state in elegant and compelling language designed to lure travelers—for the benefit of both the railroad and the state.

“Of all the superb playgrounds of the peerless West none posses more charm or greater variety than those of Colorado. The vigor-restoring climate is a factor when those on vacation bent are considering where to go. No corner of the globe offers more attractions than this domain of the Rocky Mountains, where the Crest of the Continents attains its highest and most rugged altitudes, and the resort places and camping grounds accommodate every purse, whim or desire. Fishing and hunting in season are beyond compare. This book is a picture story of these exceptional summering places and of the most accessible of all out National Parks – Rocky Mountain National Park. Denver, the gateway to this wonderland, is less than thirty hours from Chicago via Union Pacific.”
          “Whatever else Colorado may be—whether leader among precious metal producing states or producer of richest crops of fruit and grain—it will also always be the mecca of the heat-oppressed and scenery-loving American tourist.”
          “Colorado is learning, like Switzerland, to capitalize its marvelous scenery. Its citizens realize that with all its native gold, the Centennial State, with its wealth of climate, health and picturesque settings, is, after all, first and foremost, the logical playground of the Continent.”
           “Colorado has many advantages over Switzerland. Altitudes that are barely accessible in the European republic are reached with greatest ease in Colorado. Whereas, in the Alps it is almost as much as one’s life is worth to ascend to 10,000 feet, in Colorado the traveler finds two of the greatest mining camps in the world at that approximate height—Leadville being slightly higher and Cripple Creek a trifle lower. Each is a modern city and their combined production of metals has added more than $700,000,000 to the wealth of the world.”
         “The snowy peaks, silvery mountain streams and shimmering lakes, set like jewels in the mountain sides, together with other attendant charms of Colorado, rank with those of any high altitude territory in the world. Added to these is an advanced degree of civilization, with comforts and conveniences of living and travel that are unexcelled.”

Illustrations and quoted text from a free promotional booklet “Colorado for the Tourist,” produced by the Union Pacific Railroad for the summer tourist season of 1917.

Colorado Summer Attractions 1917, Part 1

Colorado For The Tourist was a 48 page publication designed to entice vacation travel on the Union Pacific Railroad. Produced for the 1917 summer tourist season, the front and back covers are illustrated in color. The booklet includes 37 pages of black and white photographs of Colorado’s scenic wonders and eight pages describing places to visit within the state. And, of course, the benefits of travelling on the Union Pacific line were emphasized.

“The Union Pacific is the only line that is double-tracked all the way from Chicago to Colorado. It is the only line that is protected all the way by Automatic Electric Block Safety Signals. It has the only roadbed that is ballasted with Sherman gravel, a superior ballast [layer of crushed rock on which railroad track is laid] which insures freedom from dust and dirt…These important, exclusive features, added to the expense of eliminating grades and curves, cost the Union Pacific $269,700,000 and it has won for the line the name to which it is justly entitled, “The Standard Road of the West.”
          “Three daily trains are operated Chicago to Denver, via Omaha, and two daily trains from St. Louis to Denver, via Kansas City. The dining car service on all trains is maintained at the highest standard.”
          “…tourists destined to Yellowstone National Park, to California, the Pacific Northwest or Alaska, may visit Colorado, also Salt Lake City, on the way, without extra fare.”

Illustrations and quoted text from a free promotional booklet “Colorado for the Tourist,” produced by the Union Pacific Railroad for the summer tourist season of 1917.

Siting a Reservation at White River

D.C. Oakes

Colorado Territorial Governor McCook wanted to establish a new Ute Indian Agency in the northern part of Colorado. He sent Indian Agent Daniel C. Oakes on a mission to find a good location.

On September 15, 1869, Agent Oakes reported to Governor McCook:

          “I proceeded with the contractors to White River, on the Ute Reservation, [travelling] via Rawlings’s Springs, on the Union Pacific Railroad, and Bridger’s Pass, reaching there on the 7th of September.”
          “…I found a most excellent and desirable location for the agency on White River…It is below a deep canyon, and at the upper end of a broad and beautiful valley, extending about twenty miles down, and averaging from one to three miles in width, of good, arable land.”
          “White River at this point contains a great abundance of water for mill and irrigating purposes…There is plenty of good cottonwood timber along the stream, and pine in the mountains some six miles distant. The side valleys and adjacent hills afford abundant pasturage for the stock of the agency and the Indians…It is a warm valley, and stock will subsist the year round upon the pasturage. A better place could not be found in the northern part of the reservation, in my opinion.”

Photo courtesy the Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Quoted Text from Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1869