The Two Great Canyons
Excerpts From Letters Written on a Western Journey
BY
Cyrenus Cole
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
The Torch Press
Nineteen Hundred Eight
To Mrs. N. D. Pope
of Lake Charles, Louisiana,
These excerpts from letters written for the Cedar Rapids Republicanand Evening Times are dedicated, because she made all the ways pleasantones and all the places happy ones for three men—one of whom is herhusband
[Pg 7]
I
Yellowstone National Park, Mammoth Springs Hotel, August 14, 1908: Wehave reached the first hotel station on the tour of the YellowstoneNational Park, which, according to the legend on the arch over theentrance, has been set aside “For the benefit and enjoyment of thepeople.” We left Minneapolis on the night train and found ourselvesthe next morning in the wheat country, on the state lines of Minnesotaand North Dakota. In the wheat country there is nothing impressive,except the magnificent distances. As far as the eye can reach, andthat is very far, one sees a level expanse, covered with wheat, somein the shock and some still on the stalk. The towns, also, lackimpressiveness. Most of them are mere wheat stations. Fargo andBismarck and Mandan are, however, not without commercial and historicinterest.
At Bismarck, I recalled what Mr. Bryce[Pg 8] wrote in “The AmericanCommonwealth.” He was present, in 1883, when the corner stone of thestate house was laid, with imposing ceremonies, General U. S. Grantand “Sitting Bull” being among the honored guests. Mr. Bryce recordsthat one of the orators upon that occasion remarked that Bismarck wasdestined to “be the metropolitan hearth of the world’s civilization.”Mr. Bryce says he asked why the state house was “not in the city,” but“a mile off, on the top of a hill in the brown and dusty prairie,” andhe was told, by the enthusiastic spirits of the place, that in a fewyears that hill would be the center of the city that was to be. But thestate house still stands out of town. Many hopes in real estate areunrealized, but let us hope they have only been deferred. A hundredyears from now all the open country may be teeming with populations. Inmuch of the wheat country there are no country homes, only places inwhich the wheat growers live long enough to plant and to gather theircrops. The wheat fields end in the Bad Lands, and these would not beso interesting, were they not so dreary. On the Little Missouri onebegins to see patches of alfalfa. It was on this river[Pg 9] that TheodoreRoosevelt ranched, equipped with a college diploma and his indomitablespirit. One ascends gradually into the mountains, up the YellowstoneRiver, to Livingston, where they break the transcontinental journeyfor the Yellowstone National Park trip. It is fifty-five miles fromLivingston to Gardner and five or six miles from Gardner to the MammothSprings Hotel, the last five miles being covered by stages.
The hotel is crowded. People are coming and going. They jostle eachother and rush about frantically, looking for baggage and worried aboutmany things. Those who have “done” the Park are anxious to g