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Updated: June 20, 2025
They pierced a mountain range in Colorado and carried the waters of the Gunnison River nearly six miles to the Uncompahgre Valley through a tunnel in the solid rock. The great Roosevelt dam on the Salt River in Arizona with its gigantic curved wall of masonry 280 feet high, created a lake with a capacity of fifty-six billion cubic feet, and watered in 1915 an area of 750,000 acres.
In its principal course this canyon is a bright red homogeneous sandstone, and the walls are often vertical and of great symmetry. Farther down, its walls are rugged and angular, being composed of limestones. The principal tributaries from the south are the Blue, which heads in Mt. Lincoln, and the Gunnison, which heads in the Wasatch Mountains.
It will be remembered that at that time the main lines of the Rio Grande lay by the banks of the Gunnison, through the Black Cañon, over Cerro Summit, and down the Uncompaghre and the Grande to Grand Junction, the gate of the Utah Desert. John Cassidy was an express messenger whose run was over this route and whose heart and its secret were in the keeping of Nora O'Neal.
All these canyon names, from Green River Valley to the Grand Wash, were applied by Powell. Between Labyrinth and the next canyon, Gray, so called from the colour of its walls, 2000 feet high, is Gunnison Valley, where the river may first be easily crossed.
On it were written the words, in pencil: "To the Rovers and their friend: "If you want to keep out of trouble you will return to Gunnison at once. If you dare to push on to Larkspur Creek it may cost you your lives. We are watching you, and are fully armed, and you had better be warned in time. "Dick! Tom! Jack! Come here and see what I have found!"
Then comes Gunnison Valley, and it was there that Powell was to return to us. The first indication of descending waters was a slight swiftness, the river having narrowed up to its canyon-character. At one place it doubled back on itself, forming in the bend a splendid amphitheatre which was called after Sumner of the former party.
"It'd be a shame not to hear me talk a little.... Turn around now an' greet an old pard of the Gunnison days." Folsom turned as if a resistless, heavy force was revolving his head. "By Gawd!... Wade!" he ejaculated. The tone of his voice, the light in his eyes, must have been a spiritual acceptance of a dreadful and irrefutable fact perhaps the proximity of death. But he was no coward.
"O-o-o-oh, the wench!" he hissed, pulling his guns. Cassidy, absorbed in the photo, heard a door slam; and it came to him instantly that Nora had boarded the train at Gunnison, and that some one was showing her over to the head end. As he turned to meet her, he saw Buck staggering toward him, holding a murderous gun in each hand.
Desolation is a fine chasm, whose walls are 2400 feet. The view on page 206 gives an excellent idea of their average character. The mouth of the Uinta River, not far above its head, is 4670 feet above the sea, while Gunnison Valley is 4083, showing a descent for the river, in Desolation and Gray, together of 587 feet. Desolation is full of rapids, some of them bad.
The golden goal this season is the great Gunnison Country; and soon trains of burros, packed with pick and shovel, tent and provisions, will be climbing the Range.
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