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<br />GUNNISON RIVER DIVERSION PROJECT
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<br />18:)
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<br />sold for the opening run of the fifteen-mile stretch of canyon,
<br />good publicity having been insured by giving free tickets to
<br />members of the press. The Gunnison Boys' Band accompanied
<br />the excursionists, making the canyon walls echo with its
<br />music. The last mile of tracks, costing more than the entire
<br />line through the Royal Gorge, had taken a year to build. The
<br />terminus, Cimarron, was nothing more than a tent city at this
<br />time, with only one log house on the townsite.
<br />Early in December, 1882, Byron H. Bryant, in charge of
<br />construction for the Uncompahgre Extension of the Denver
<br />and Rio Grande, received a telegram from the line's chief
<br />engineer, J. A. McMurtrie, asking him to undertake an explora-
<br />tion of the Black Canyon from Cimarron at the end of the road
<br />downstream to Delta. Immediately Bryant organized a survey-
<br />ing crew with C. E. Telvirer of Aspen in charge, and including
<br />H. C. 'Wright, transitman, James Robinson, levelman, Gunder,
<br />topographer, McDermott as rodman, Usher as head chainman,
<br />and a pack train outfit headed by Charles Hall.
<br />
<br />The party left Grand Junction on December 12, and pro-
<br />ceeded up the north rim of the Black Canyon to Crystal River,
<br />about five miles downstream from Cimarron, where it en-
<br />camped high above the river. A few days later the men started
<br />their line downstream from Cimarron, spending their first
<br />night with an old frontiersman and contemporary of Kit
<br />Carson and Jim Bridger, Captain Cline, who had a home up
<br />the Cimarron and who claimed to have run the Gunnison in
<br />a canoe some years before, a most unlikely feat.
<br />
<br />Bryant expected to make the survey through the canyon
<br />in some twenty days, and the party was provisioned for that
<br />period. As it developed, the work took from sixty-five to sixty-
<br />eight days, about ten days of which were spent in moving from
<br />the north to the south side of the canyon when further move-
<br />ment along the north side became impossible because of steep
<br />walls and open water.
<br />Every morning the workmen would leave their rim camp
<br />and clamber down into the chasm depths, returning to the rim
<br />that evening. This arduous procedure left little time for actual
<br />surveying, as one might judge from Bryant's account of the
<br />daily routine:
<br />One of our camps was made On precipitous side of the range, 500
<br />feet below top, and daily task consisted of climb of 500 feet to top
<br />of range, a climb down a much more precipitous slope 2600 feet to
<br />river, a scramble up or down river to our work, when we would do
<br />such work as time would permit, and then climb up 2600 feet and
<br />down 500 back to our camp.
<br />This type of activity was wearing on the men, When the
<br />transfer was made from the north to the south rim, all but
<br />three of the crew quit. These three, Gunder, Robinson, and
<br />Wright, with Bryant, completed the suivey while Charles Hall
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