Saguache County Colorado ~  1870

Saguache County is bounded north by Lake; east by Fremont and Huerfano; south by Conejos, and west by Lake. It occupies the northern extremity of the beautiful San Luis park, which, now that a portion of it has been sold to Europeans by ex-Governor Gilpin for $2,500,000, bids fair to come into much more general notice. As yet, it is the most sparsely settled county in the Territory. It is a fertile and finely watered region, and officers inducements to stock raisers and farmers, elsewhere unequalled. Its valleys are great natural meadows, covered with the richest vegetation, and its table lands afford the finest natural pasture lands in the world. The mountain scenery, hemming it in on three sides, is grand in the extreme. Near the centre of the county is the Saguache Lake, from which it is named, and which is certainly a most remarkable sheet of water. Its waters ebb and flow with the regularity of the tides, and yet it is a comparatively small body of water, measuring but twenty-four miles in length, and not more than ten in width at the widest part. When at low ebb it is scarcely more than an ordinary swamp; while at full tide it has considerable depth. Some observers have attempted to show a similarity between its waters and those of the Great Salt Lake of Utah, and there is a crazy theory afloat that there is a subterranean communication between the two!

The population of Saguache, chiefly adventurous Americans, with their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, numbers between 300 and 400. A few are engaged in cultivating vegetables and the cereals, and find ready market for their produce in the mining settlements along the upper Arkansas, etc. It is a beautiful county, and cannot fail to be densely populated at no distant day.

Rocky Mountain Directory & Colorado Gazetteer

Source: Rocky Mountain Directory and Colorado Gazetteer, 1871, S. S. Wallihan & Company, Compilers and Publishers, Denver, 1870.