1891 Pikes Peak Railway Rocky Mountains Colorado Vintage Old Photos Article

This historic 132+ year old ORIGINAL vintage article, Up Pike's Peak by Rail, was carefully removed from the Illustrated American Magazine, published in 1891. 

It contains 2 pages with 3 illustrations / engravings.  Page size is 9 x12”.  (00072)   2/23

Vintage illustrations include:   

    Approach from the Summit of Pike’s Peak
    The “Grecian Bend” on the Pike’s Peak Railway
    A Street Grade Past Rose Emma Falls

Condition:  Good Condition with some light toning to the pages due to age. Small one inch closed tear at the top left front page.

Excerpt from the article:

The Righi Culm is five thousand nine hundred and five feet above the level of the sea. For years it was the pride of tourists in Switzerland to have climbed to the summit and seen the sun rise there from. Nowadays one makes the ascent by rail, and people are prouder than ever of the achievement. They think that the railway is about as big a thing as the mountain.

Stay-at-home Americans amuse themselves in the White Mountains by going up Mount Washington by rail. Mount Washington is six thousand two hundred and twenty-six feet high, and, when the railroad was completed, the hotel-keepers thought they had a tremendous attraction.

If Mount Washington were placed on top of the Righi, and you went to the height reached by the railways of both combined, you would still have a climb of two thousand feet to make before you attained the elevation to which the Pike's Peak Railway takes its passengers.

Pike's Peak is 14,147 feet in height—only about seventeen hundred feet less than Mont Blanc. To make the ascent of the latter is a feat of a lifetime, and an operation requiring pluck, care, endurance, and deliberation. The Pike's Peak Railway enables one to get nearly as high up in the air without inconvenience, destroying the romance of mountaineering with ruthless American iconoclasm.  (00072)
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