Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1879 — The Desert of Colorado. [ARTICLE]

The Desert of Colorado.

The San Francisco Argonaut says: “ For what purpose the Colorado desert was made is one of those mysteries which have so far proved past finding out—so utterly barren, so apparently worthless, so dreary and desolate, so scorched with blazing sun, so blistered with burning winds. The rocky hills that bound it are more forbidding than the dreary desolation of the sandy plains. The hills are absolutely destitute of verdure, treeless, soilless, colorless. Through the center of the plain, and parallel with the railroad, runs a mountain range of shifting sand, like snows piled up in banks, drifting and moving with the winds. The plain is not entirely destitute of vegetation, but the vegetation is as worthless as the sand in which it grows. There runs midway between San Bemardina and Yuma one small, beautiful stream of clear, sweet water, properly named the ‘ White-water,’ but along its pebbly margin there grows no flower, shrub, nor tree.”