Coloradans spent the 19th century building a vast rail network, then spent the 20th century ripping it out.
RTD is now rebuilding a fractional spine of that system for $6.5 billion. The first leg of FasTracks, the West Corridor line, is scheduled to open in May 2013, after years of planning, studies and meetings. Construction armies are now rebuilding a west corridor rail system — for $707 million — that was in place from 1891 to 1950.
A fast, cheap trip from Denver to Lakewood and Golden on comfy rail cars with big picture windows first became a reality in 1891. Then William Austin Hamilton Loveland and associates opened the Denver, Lakewood & Golden Railway (DL&G). Loveland had come to Colorado with the 1859 gold rush. Real estate and railroading soon made him a wealthy man. A founder of both Golden and Lakewood, he hoped to expedite growth of both towns by making them easy commutes from the then booming city of Denver.
As owner of the Rocky Mountain News from 1878 to 1886, Loveland, like his predecessor William N. Byers, editorially as well as financially pushed streetcar service into mushrooming suburbs. These streetcar suburbs thrived during Denver’s 1870 to 1893 boom when a tiny town in the middle of nowhere grew into the second largest city in the West.
Riding that boom, Loveland founded Lakewood in 1889. Its growth accelerated two years later when the DL&G arrived. A century later, Lakewood is the fourth largest city in Colorado.
Loveland had help promoting Denver’s western suburbs from the prince of all promoters, Phineas T. Barnum, of Barnum and Bailey Circus fame. P.T. Barnum platted Barnum on the south side of the tracks between Federal and Sheridan boulevards. He persuaded the DL&G to build a spur line through Barnum which he promoted as the healthiest suburb on the planet. He hyped its sunshine, blue skies and dry champagne air as a sure cure for even those with one foot in the grave.
To bring settlers to such westside paradises, the DL&G kept modernizing its services. The entire line was electrified in 1909 by a new owner, the Denver and Intermountain. In 1914, The Denver Tramway Company, RTD’s forerunner, took over the line. The Denver Tramway Company operated the Lakewood and Golden line until 1950, when it abandoned its electrified streetcar system for rubber-tired diesel buses.
The old yellow streetcars will be reincarnated as RTD’s shiny white passenger coaches when the West Corridor line opens as a 12.1-mile light rail transit corridor between Union Station and the Jefferson County Government Center in Golden. Major stations will serve the Auraria campus, Lakewood, the Federal Center and Red Rocks Community College.
Today as you drive out West Sixth or West Colfax avenues, you are treated to construction that sometimes looks like a giant extension of the Elitch Gardens roller coaster. The line climbs out of the South Platte Valley through Lakewood Gulch and follows West 13th Avenue through tunnels and bridges climaxing with a 1,576-foot-long leap over Indiana Street. From that 63-foot high trestle, the line tunnels under I-70 and bridges over West Colfax to end at the Jeffco government center.
Loveland died in in 1894, but his railroad is coming back to life as Denver’s largest 21st century construction project.
Tom Noel welcomes comments at his website, .
