OCR Text |
Show 17 to the northern bank of the Conejos. The map will show the limits entire of the great valley heretofore inappropriately called San Luis Park, and the streams that enter it, some siuking soon after their emergence from the canons of the lower foothills, and others, especially those following from the San Juan range and to the south of Del Norte, reach the Rio Grande upon the surface. The soil on the western side is covered with a heavy, dark, pulverulent loam, well packed, being the direct result of denudation of the basaltic- capped foot- hills of the eastern flanks of the San Juan range. The part of the valley coming under my observation is limited to the route traversed, except at points where detours for observations were made. The lands crossed, one and all, are susceptible of cultivation if water ean be had, and will grow, with certainty, corn aud the other cereals ; and, approaching the Rio Grande, the altitude is not too great to allow maturing of the vegetables and more tender crops, with fruit. A proper system of irrigation, embracing the Rio Grande and creeks to the south that debouch from the San Juan range as far as to include the San Antonio, would do much in bringing under cultivation large tracts of fine soil, now of but little valu. e even for grazing purposes, and all of which is most favorably situated, offering good natural slopes for the irrigating canals and ditches. In this area, many of the agricultural productions that will find a ready market, should the mining- regions to the north and west be opened up successfully, can be grown. By common consent of the most intelligent persous among the little settlements along the Conejos, the climate is unsurpassed; certainly during our stay of a few days in August in this vicinity nothing better could have been desired; the warmth of the day being succeeded by the still coolness of the night, that in the dry plateau- regions lends a charm inexplicable, and affords the settler a security from disease not usually appreciated. The region of the San Luis Valley and its surrounding subdrainage basins, to the extended glades of many of which the name of parks might well be given, deserve a notice at the hands of foreign and domestic immigrants annually seeking homes in the western domaiu. The Rio Grande, where crossed, at a ford a little to the north of the mouth of the Conejos, having low banks, marked only here and there by sparse cotton woods and willows, was in August a stream between 30 and 40 yards in width, with swift current, and a maximum depth of about 4 feet. In times of high water, this ford is impassable except by swimming. Not far to the southward appear wide- mouthed canons of basaltic- capped islands of sediments, formed during the Lake period, whose steep flanks approach farther on in caiion form. The source of the Rio Grande is a region marked by some of the greatest elevations found in the heart of the continent, aud in an area in which the annual amount of precipitation, pretty equally disposed throughout the seasons, is great, probably exceeding 40 inches, and reaching as high as 60 inches near the crests of the highest ridges. This river, of caiion rather than alluvial banks, meets in its course a large variety of geological strata in its long journey from a point on the continental divide in the Rocky Ranges to its meeting with the Gulf of Mexico, as the range of elevations in its profile from upward of 12,000 feet above tide to sea- level would indicate. The Conejos takes its rise in the heart of the San Juan range, near the summit of the continental divide, and within stone- throw of the source of the South Fork of the Alamosa Creek, both of which join the |