Post 00545
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Pike’s Peak exhibits a number of scenic attractions and is bordered by other excellent ones. Near are the Royal Gorge, Cripple Creek, and the fossil-beds at Florissant. The Garden of the Gods, Manitou Mineral Springs, Glen Eyrie, Crystal Park, the Cave of the Winds, and Williams, Ruxton, and South Cheyenne Cañons are some of its attractions.
The fossil-beds at Florissant are one of the most famous of fossil-deposits. Here was an old Tertiary lake-basin. In the deposit which filled it–a deposit of fine volcanic sand or ash, sediment, and other débris–is a wonderful array of fossilized plants and insects of a past age. All are strangely preserved for us in stone. A part of the lake appears to have been filled by a volcanic catastrophe which overwhelmed animals, plants, and insects. Whole and in fragments, they are lying where they fell. Here have been found upwards of one hundred recognizable plants, eleven vertebrate animals, and a few hundred insects. Among the fossil trees are the narrow-leaf cottonwood, the ginkgo, the magnolia, the incense cedar, and the giant redwood. Water erosion through the ages has cut deeply into these fossil-beds and worn and washed away their treasures. This deposit has been but little studied. But what it has yielded, together with the magnitude of the unexamined remainder, makes one eager concerning the extent and the nature of the treasures which still lie buried in it.
Helen Hunt, whose books helped awaken the American people to the injustice done the Indian and to an appreciation of the scenic grandeur of the West, lived for many years at the foot of this peak. Much of her writing was done from commanding points on the peak. She was temporarily buried on Cheyenne Mountain, and on her former grave has accumulated a large cairn of stones, contributed singly by appreciative pilgrims.