End of Track San Juan Extension D. & R. G. R. R. Colorado

Jan 20th 1881

Dear John, Annie, Fred, Eliza, Mary, Lucy, Jenny,

     This is to be the letter to the boys and girls and I shall try for myself and Wille to tell you all about our journey.

     We left Logan at 4 1/2 and it was too misty to get a last look at Newton as we went over the mountain — our company numbered 45, we had a car to ourselves, but no room to spare.  Wille's head was in and out of the window all of the time — we had to stay on the platform in Ogden 3 or 4 hours — and at 12 1/2 we left there on the U. P. having a car to ourselves, and seats arranged to open out for beds, also we had along one car load of horses.  Our train was about 45 cars, with 3 Locomotives to go up Weber Canyon — during the whole of our journey to here being on a freight train we were put off on every siding we came to sometimes for hours — until the boys when the train began to slow would call out — 40 minutes for dinner — and at nearly every stopping place boys, men, and women came on the train with apples, canned fruit, pies, cakes, tea and coffee to sell and of course Wille had to have some apples.  There was also on board the whole of the time men selling books and eatables and they would loan us the book to read to entice us to buy them.  Wille went through his first tunnel in Weber Canyon, and in Echo Canyon we saw the stone walls that were built on the top of the mountains for defense by the Mormon army.  We left the Canyon at dark — slept in an upper berth — and the next morning found us at Green River on a side track — there is not much of a town but some very fine buildings — we had passed Evanston and Aspen and other places in the night.  We now went through what is called the Bitter Creek country, barren desert, sand and alkali and in the afternoon came to the Carbon coal mines—coal is abundant through this part of the country — here they run a tramway on an incline under ground, one end of which is down in the coal mine 1 mile away and the other end on a high heavy timber trestle work or building where they can dump the coal down into the R. R. car.  We also this day passed through some snow sheds some 1/2 mile long — slim, flimsy inch boards, — old lumber shanties, fence pole frame built fixings — Wille had his head out of course to see it all.  We stayed some time in Laramie and could see the large iron rolling mills, it was very windy but no snow on the ground — soon after we passed Fort Saunders a Military Post and then Sherman the highest point on the U.P.R.R. but not near so high as the passes on this R.R. Sometimes before we got up in the morning we reached Cheyenne — just half way to Omaha — 517 miles from Ogden — but we saw very little of the town.  Here our 2 cars were put on the Kansas Pacific R.R. and we started south for Denver, a few miles out the train was separated into two parts and while the Locomotive was taking one part at a time up to the summit the conductor told us that we could all get out and hunt moss agates on the hills — but after we did get over the divide we went along down hill lively through a very poor looking, rolling country, seeing one or two herds of Antelope — no snow at all on the ground.  Yesterday we crossed just after dark on the U.P. the largest, highest bridge on the Road, the Dale Creek.  In the afternoon we came to Greeley — the town founded by Horace Greeley for temperance people — but it looked as if whiskey was sold there.  Their corn was still in shocks in the fields — very like hay — houses very scattered, soil looked very poor, wire fences and no snow.  Twice our train had to stop and cool off one of the wheels, which smoked and blared for want of grease, and about dark on Christmas eve we entered Denver and were permitted to stay in the car all night.

God bless you all,
       J. H. Barker