Stuck in summer traffic on Interstate 70, motionless motorists can look down into Clear Creek Valley at an inspirational scene. That cheerful whistle and those halos of smoke come from the Colorado Historical Society’s Georgetown Loop Railroad.
Its summer excursions begin this Memorial Day weekend. While stalled in the present, Coloradans might find transportation tips for the future aboard this narrow gauge antique chugging out of the past.
Nineteenth-century Coloradans devoted themselves to building a spider web of steel that reached nearly every corner of the state. Larger cities and towns concentrated on building street railways to carry folks around town and out to expanding suburbs. By 1900, Colorado had a statewide system of rail mass transit. In Denver, you hopped off trains at Union Station and crossed Wynkoop to the Denver City Railway Company with horse-drawn streetcars to every neighborhood in the city and many suburbs.
Twentieth-century Coloradans, however, seemed hell-bent on ripping out rail systems. Old rail grades became paved highways. Towns from Aspen to Victor had street railways, but asphalted them to accommodate automobiles. As street railway tracks were buried 2 feet deep and expensive to rip out, you sometimes see tracks or their cracks popping up through the urban asphalt.
Coloradans are spending billions to rebuild rail systems scrapped by previous generations. Some towns are restoring their street railways. Volunteers have reinstalled and operate the Fort Collins Municipal Railway from City Park to Old Town. In metro Denver, the Regional Transportation District’s zippy light rail system generally follows ghost tracks of the past. Sometimes, as on the Lakewood and Golden line, RTD will actually use a surviving rail grade.
Miraculously, one Colorado railroad was never abandoned. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge has been running ever since 1882. Colorado’s most popular summer smoke-and-cinders thriller, this serpentine pilgrimage up el Rio de las Animas de los Perditos en Purgatorio (please pardon my Spanish) draws almost 200,000 riders a year.
Last week, we rode on the most elegant of Colorado’s surviving passenger trains. The Royal Gorge Route Railroad, a 1999 reopening of the 1879 line, offers coach, vista dome, wine express, gourmet lunch, gourmet dinner, murder mystery, wine dinner and even cab rides through the Royal Gorge. The two-hour round trip from Cañon City’s gloriously restored Santa Fe Depot to Parkdale slithers along the Arkansas River, which is bubbling with rafters, kayakers and wildlife. At a stop under the Royal Gorge suspension bridge, passengers get a spectacular look from open gondola cars at the 1,000-foot-deep canyon. Pinched into a narrow spot only 40 feet wide, the train has to go out over the river on its famous hanging bridge.
Andrew Fournier, formerly of Montreal’s Ritz Carlton and the Broadmoor, is the new chef for the Royal Gorge lunch and dinner service. Andre serves fine food with wines from Cañon City’s own Holy Cross Abbey Winery. More than 102,000 passengers rode the Royal Gorge last year.
Consider touring Colorado this summer on Amtrak, Cripple Creek & Victor, Cumbres & Toltec, Durango & Silverton, Georgetown Loop, Leadville, Colorado & and Southern, Pikes Peak Cog, Rio Grande & San Luis, Royal Gorge and the Rio Grande Ski trains. These leisurely, scenic relics offer an escape from gas station nightmares, highways clogged with view-blocking SUVs and trucks, and road rage on freeways that are no longer free.
Tom Noel (www.coloradowebsites.com/dr-colorado) teaches history at the University of Colorado Denver and appears as Dr. Colorado on Channel 9’s “Colorado & Company” every other Tuesday. His most recent book is “Guide to Colorado Historic Places” (Westcliffe, 2007).
