Characteristics ~ Climate ~ Agriculture
~ & More
Altitude and Climate
Laramie City has an altitude of "7,170"
feet above the level of the sea, which necessarily gives a
light, dry and healthy atmosphere; foggy, damp weather being
entirely unknown in this locality, to the oldest inhabitant. We
have pleasant summers, and mild winters. Very little snow falls
on the Laramie Plains. A snow to the depth of one foot is a
great surprise, and that very rarely lasts three days. The
temperature is remarkably even. The thermometer very seldom
indicates higher than 85 degrees in summer, and very few times
does it get below zero in winter. There are not probably ten
days during any winter in this valley that it does not thaw for
several hours during the middle of the day. But we have within
the borders of our Territory the climate of all seasons at all
times. Points whence we may behold at a single glance the
majesty, the fury, the gentleness, the beauty, and the
desolation, spread before us like a vast immovable panorama.
There are nooks in the mountains where eternal snows, spring
flowers and ripening fruits may be seen within an area of a few
feet. Again while we have in some of our mountain parks and
valleys a climate equal to that of Maine, we have as a
counterpart in the Wind River and numerous other valleys in the
North Western part of our territory a climate equal to that of
South Carolina, and a soil far superior.
Scenery
Here, tongue and pen alike fail to
convey any adequate impression to one who has not seen and felt
the grandeur, sublimity and illimitable vastness of a view from
the Rocky Mountain peaks. As the traveler leaves behind the
valley of the Missouri and is whirled rapidly over the plains, a
feeling comes over him that he is leaving the old world that has
hitherto held him a prisoner, and gradually rising higher and
higher to a new and loftier sphere. New types of plants and
animals appear; antelope and buffalo bound over the plains with
no shelter or hiding place except in the vastness of their
realm. The gaze wanders north and south, but finds no resting
place. At length towards the setting sun, white clouds seem to
start from the horizon towards the sky, which take shape as we
approach, and at last we see the snowy range, rising like a
leviathan, stretched from pole to pole, whose huge ribs are clad
in dark evergreen, and whose frosty crown has dared the summer's
sunshine for centuries, and yet maintained an immutable,
un-melting coldness. We penetrate the canons and find strange,
rare and beautiful flowers clinging to the rude abrupt cliffs
which overhang the dashing, foaming torrents beneath. Strength
and beauty mingle in magnificent disorder. We are in a flower
garden and by a fountain which nature made and walled in, in one
of her wild, weird moods. It is the sculpture of the Great
Artist, executed in bas-relief, and with our ever varying
emotions, we fancy we stand in a recess of His studio, and with
breathless awe await His presence. We ascend some lofty peak and
a world of mountain, valley, stream and plain surround us on
every hand. The inspiring grandeur kindles the drowsy adoration
in our souls, and we involuntarily worship. The view is
indescribable; the emotions awakened inconceivable. It is only
by seeing that a true conception of the view can be gained; and
to him that has seen, how puny seem all the monuments and
structures which the hand of man has reared.
Where will you find in the broad world
such grand, beautiful scenery as surrounds us at Laramie City?
Our sunsets, painted by nature's own Great Artist, display such
gorgeous colors, and reveal such imponderable touches of light
and beauty, mellowed with ten thousand rays of the golden sun,
that the very soul is entranced and spell-bound.
Grazing and
Agriculture
Through the Laramie Plains run four
beautiful streams, viz: the Big and Little Laramie rivers. Rock
Creek, and Medicine Bow Creek, all of them streams large enough
to float ties, timber, lumber, and fencing material iron immense
forests of pine and spruce which cover the entire mountain
region west of us. And while we were for a time eclipsed by the
great work of our government in the construction of our national
highway, the Union Pacific railroad, for the development of this
country, we need but look for a moment at nature's own provision
in furnishing this vast store of wealth, together with the much
cheaper water transportation of the same to our very doors, to
see how futile and insignificant is man's wonderful enterprise.
In addition to those streams mentioned, there are scores of
smaller streams and tributaries available for stock water and
irrigating purposes. Throughout the great Northwest no place can
be found of an equal area which com-bines as many advantages for
stock raising as the Laramie Plains. The uplands being covered
with a short dry looking bunch grass, very nutritious, and upon
which stock will fatten winter or summer. The low lands furnish
all the necessary hay for domestic stock; while the foothills
furnish shelter and feed during storms.
Immense herds of cattle and horses,
numbering away up into thousands, have for years roamed on these
plains and adjacent foothills, increased and grown fat, without
great portions of them being seen, except at what the
stock-growers call the "annual round-up," which occurs every
spring, when all unite and bring all stock together, where each
owner "cuts out," counts and brands his herd, including his
portion of the increase.
Sheep raising is also becoming a source
of great interest and a grand success; there being over twenty
thousand head now owned in this county, as shown by the last
assessment roll.
The words of Horace Greeley, with regard
to this Rocky Mountain region, "that it cost no more to raise a
cow than it did to raise a chicken," are emphatically true in
this locality.
We have one impediment to agriculture,
and that is lack of rain; but this obstacle is being removed, by
the construction of irrigating ditches; and experience teaches
that this method renders a crop more certain than trusting to
the rains, even in rainy regions, for there they have their wet
seasons and their droughts approaching at times almost to famine
as we know by personal experience of the wet seasons of Iowa and
the droughts of Kansas. In all rainy regions we find plain,
plodding farmers who sow their seed "trust to luck, stare fate
in the face" and reap their harvest whatever it may be without a
glow of triumph. While here in the absence of such showers an
equivalent, yea more, must be supplied. We construct our
irrigating ditches, conveying the water from the streams out on
the high lands, thereby redeeming immense tracts of land as it
were from the desert, and render the same green and fertile by
such means. We sow our seed and at proper times raise a gate,
furnish our soil with as much water as is necessary for the
growth of our crop; close the gate, and the water passes on its
mission of redemption to gladden the heart of the next man; and
so on to all who will partake of its redeeming powers. And we
reap our harvest with a glow of pride that our neighbors over
the Missouri never feel. This is one instance of the triumph of
energy and skill over the adverse elements; and we feel a
triumph worthy of pride in the actor and admiration in the
spectator.
At least one million acres of the land
of this great valley are susceptible of a high state of
cultivation and will produce as great a yield per acre, of roots
and vegetables, and most of the cereals as any place on this
Continent. All the tame grasses grow luxuriantly here, by
irrigation.
P. G. Murphy, has grown, right within
the limits of our city, hundreds of bushels of Swedish turnips;
each single turnip would weigh from five to twenty eight pounds,
a great many of which have been shipped to different parts of
the country by parties who, like ourselves, were loth to believe
their own eyes when first beholding these wonderful vegetables.
Potatoes and onions are also very
profitable and yield wonderfully.
The land of these plains is now all
surveyed and in market ready for settlement.
Large
Springs
of Water
The foot-hills all around us abound in
large springs of the purest water, a series of which break forth
from their rocky fountain in the Black Hills at a distance of
less than three miles from our city, forming a beautiful brook
which runs through the town, sending its branches through all
the Streets, beautifying them, and promoting the growth of trees
and shrubbery, which are already extensively cultivated.
Lime,
Building
Stone,
and Gypsum
On the east side of our city, commencing
at a distance of one mile and extending to the Black Hills, just
beneath the surface, are found immense beds of the finest
building stone, including stratified lime and sandstone, while
all around us, near the foothills, are large beds of gypsum, of
a fineness equal to that of any part of the world.
Plumbago
and Kaolin
South of Laramie City, at a distance of
eleven miles, is found a strata of pure kaolin, the largest
deposit and of the finest quality of any yet found in the United
States; discovered and owned by N. K. Boswell of this city,
which in connection with the vast deposits of graphite (or
plumbago,) found in the Black Hills, is undoubtedly soon to
become a great source of wealth. Situated as it is in the midst,
almost centrally, of the great mining region of the Rocky
Mountain, where there is such a wonderfully increasing demand
for crucibles, fire-brick and furnace lining that will stand the
test or heat required for the smelting of our refractory ores.
And from our own observation and experience we venture the
opinion that graphite and kaolin, combined in proper
proportions, will afford the cheapest and most durable furnace
lining now in use. Again, with such a deposit of kaolin as this,
we may soon reasonably expect large manufactories of Porcelain
and Queensware to be erected in our vicinity, and our city
becomes the known rival of Philadelphia in the manufacture of
these wares.
Soda
At a distance of from seven to eleven
miles south-west of Laramie City, are found a series of deposits
of soda; all except one of which, by analysis, are nearly pure
sulphate of soda, (glauber salts). The one exception containing
fifteen per cent, of borate of soda, fifteen per cent of nitrate
of soda, sixty-five per cent of sulphate of soda, and the
remaining five per cent, being lime, magnesia, and earthy
matter. This analysis made from the dry salt, after losing the
water of crystallization in which it is found. A company has
been formed under the name of the "Wyoming Soda Company," by
capitalists in St. Louis, Missouri, and works are to be erected
in Laramie during the year, A. D., 1875, for the manufacture of
carbonate and bi-carbonate of soda, with a capacity to
manufacture ten tons of the bi-carbonate per day. This resource
and enterprise will be of no small importance to our city,
Coal and
Iron
Wyoming is already well known as the
coal region of the west; more than one-half the surface of our
territory is underlain with beds of bituminous and lignite coal
of splendid quality, a great many of which are of almost
fabulous thickness, furnishing a supply of fuel sufficient to
support an immense population for centuries, in fact
inexhaustible.
Again, at a distance of twenty miles
from Laramie City, north-east, we have the Iron Mountain
District, a large district containing mountains of iron ore in
quantities and of a fineness surpassing anything of the kind
this side of the Alleghenies. In short, our territory so abounds
in coal and iron, that situated as we are, almost in the center
of the great west, where an immense demand for these minerals is
rap-idly springing up, and where we shall have an inexhaustible
market at our very doors, and on all sides of us, this one
resource alone will, when developed, make Wyoming to the west
what Pennsylvania is to the east. Developments already made both
in coal and iron, bear us out in this assertion.
|
