A View of the Mountains

Diaries from travelers along the South Platte River Road in the 1860s almost invariably report a grand sight at or near the Junction [Fort Morgan] between Beaver and Bijou Creeks - the Rocky Mountains. After trekking mile upon mile through the same desert wondering if the journey would ever end, the weary traveler saw Long’s Peak and a glimmer of hope on the horizon – the beginning to the end of a journey.

Thomas Worthington Whittredge painting "Indians Crossing the Platte" 1867

In November, 1865 Charles Young, a wagon-master freighting towards Denver described the sight that greeted him at the Junction:

It was early in November, the nights and mornings were cold and frosty, the air exhilarating. We were up the next morning at the usual time, and as the sun rose in all its splendor and warmth, one hundred miles in the far away distance could be seen with the naked eye, the gigantic range of the Rockies whose lofty snow-capped peaks, sparkling in the morning sun, seemed to soar and pierce the clouds of delicate shades that floated in space about them, attracted, as it were, by a heavenly magnet. It was a sight I had not dreamed of, and one that made an impression on my young mind to last through life.

Lyman Gibson Bennett, a civilian engineer working with the military traveled the South Platte River Road many times. In his journal detailing a March, 1865 trip along the South Platte River, he wrote:

It was a beautiful morning, the sun was bright and it was delightful to ravel [sic] in the thin pure air of the plains. After an hour or two the distant clouds in the west cleared away, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of the mountains. The first I was able to distinguish was Pikes Peak and afterwards Longs Peak. They were low in the horizon and difficult to distinguish from clouds. For a day or two I had been on the lookout for the mountains, and every fragment of cloud that I could discover peering up from the western horizon I would watch intently to see if it was not a mountain peek [sic], but it would gradually change its appearance or fade entirely away, so that It was something before I could be convinced that it was mountains and not cloud that I saw. When satisfied as to what they were my feelings were as buoyant and I felt as sprightly as a young and happy child We were near the end of our trip and I was soon to see the back bone of the continent. The Rocky mountains.

The day after passing the fort built at the Junction [Fort Morgan], John C. Anderson wrote:

Today I had my first sight of the Rocky Mountains In the far distance is to be seen a white Cloud which looks like it was just rising. The principal one is Longs Peak 14800 ft This is the Snow Capped Summits of the Rocky Range rising in grandeur and magnificence above the level plains. The contrast even at this distance is greater than one would suppose. The nearest is now about 90 miles off and some which we see very distinctly are considerably over 100 miles air line. They look to be some 10 or 12 miles off and are perfectly white. The rugged outline of each peak is very distinct. Immense crags and chasms are plainly visible as I write.

One last example comes from James Meline who accompanied General John Pope on a tour of the military forts under his command in June of 1866. Meline wrote poetically about his first view of Fort Wardwell [later Fort Morgan] with the mountains behind:

Jefferson spoke of the scenery at the point where the Potomac and Shenandoah mingle their waters as worth a voyage across the ocean. If he be right, the spectacle I now have before me is worth a journey across both oceans and more continents than exist. I am inclined to believe, though, that Jefferson had not seen much grand American scenery…. 

The point from which my first view of the mountains was obtained, is one hundred and thirty-five miles east of Long’s Peak, which looms up, the grand centre and pinnacle of the Rocky Mountain range in this latitude. The distance is less to the outside eastern boundary of the chain, which rises like a Titanic wall straight up from the body of the plain, but the Peak with its body-guard of grand snowy elevations, is plainly visible to the naked eye…. 

The first satisfactory view the European traveler obtains of the Bernese Alps…is at sixty miles. The view of these American mountains, at more than twice the distance, impresses me as incomparably finer; and I solemnly abandon the last of my cherished illusions on the subject of European scenery…. The English have made such a noise, in prose and verse…about Italian sunsets, that I could hardly trust the evidence of my senses when I saw their inferiority to those I had been looking at all my life in my native land…I have before me now a stretch of one hundred and twenty miles of snow-capped and snow-clad mountains, and these by no means the most elevated, nor the grandest…and pronounce it sublime.

The artist Thomas Worthington Whittredge accompanied General Pope’s party and many of his paintings are of the mountains from the plains of Colorado.

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Sources:

1. Young, Charles Edward, Dangers of the Trail in 1865: A Narrative of Actual Events (Geneva, NY: Press of W. F. Humphrey, 1912), pp. 67-68.
2. “Lyman Gibson Bennett diary - Jan. to Oct. of 1865,” Diaries Missouri Heritage Collection, pp. 75-81. Retrieved from http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/mack&CISOPTR=2317&REC=3
3. Anderson, John C., Journal MSS 143, retrieved from http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/Diaries&CISOPTR=4226 pp. 41-45.
4. Meline, James Florant, Two Thousand Miles on Horseback (NY: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), pp. 49-50.
5. Photo source: Thomas Worthington Whittredge painting "Indians Crossing the Platte" 1867