Rail developments kept area's progress on track

In the two decades from 1870 to 1890, railroads spread across Colorado like cracks in a windowpane. By the early 20th century, half a dozen lines branched through the Pikes Peak region, issuing towns along their way.

Before 1870, however, it seemed to the settlers in south-central Colorado that they would be forever dependent upon wagons and stagecoaches. The transcontinental rail line, the Union Pacific, lay far to the north in Wyoming, where engineers had found the best crossings of the Continental Divide. But as its rails were being laid in 1867, plans were being made for a connection from Cheyenne to Denver, and the Kansas Pacific was pushing westward from Kansas City. Reaching out for the riches that lay within Colorado's mines, both lines arrived in Denver in 1870.

While Gen. William Jackson Palmer worked for the Kansas Pacific, he planned a north-south route from Denver to Texas that would link with the railroads in Mexico. The Denver & Rio Grande never made it to Mexico, but it was the first rail line to penetrate into El Paso County.

Palmer thought the site at the confluence of Monument and Fountain creeks would be a railroad stop; the steam-driven engines needed to take on water or coal about every 10 miles and to make longer servicing stops about every 70 miles. But his plan for the Fountain Colony blossomed into his version of Utopia.

The Denver & Rio Grande reached Colorado Springs in October 1871. Then it headed south toward its Mexican destination. Financial troubles, though, forced Palmer in 1878 to lease the railroad to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and abandon the Mexico plan.

By the time of his death in 1909, Palmer had lost control of the Denver & Rio Grande . But Palmer and his railroad had built a tourist industry in the Pikes Peak region and a branch to the spa town of Manitou.

Palmer's narrow-gauge railway belched and snorted its way through canyons and around mountain crags on 3-foot-wide tracks.

Another railroad, the Colorado Midland, became the first standard- gauge line (with 4-foot, 8-inch tracks) to challenge the Rockies. It was formed in 1884 by a group of investors put together by banker Irving Howbert. The next year, dynamic businessman James J. Hagerman took it over and the Midland started making tracks through Ute Pass, eventually reaching Grand Junction.

The plan was to continue west to Salt Lake City, but the discovery of gold in Cripple Creek in 1890 changed that. The Midland's organizers decided to head south from Divide to the gold camp, but construction snags brought the project to a halt. Some of the same organizers formed a new company, the Midland Terminal Railway, and built a line from the Colorado Midland to Cripple Creek. It started running in late 1894.

Transporting gold ore wasn't the only business of the Colorado Midland. It courted passengers with wildflower excursions from Colorado Springs and Manitou to the meadows of Elevenmile Canyon west of Florissant. For $1 a ticket, passengers could enjoy the scenic trip up the pass, then picnic and collect armloads of flowers to take home.

Howbert was involved in the formation of another regional railroad in 1897, the Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railway, known as the Short Line. Its backers included mining tycoons Winfield Scott Stratton and James F. Burns, and it competed with the Midland for freight and passengers. The Short Line ran along the present route of Gold Camp Road, cutting a stunning swath through the mountains: Vice-president Theodore Roosevelt called it "the ride that bankrupts the English language." It also was 11 miles shorter than the Midland route.

A different kind of train, the Manitou & Pikes Peak Railway, ascended from Manitou to the summit of Pikes Peak. This tourist- thriller used a gear or cog wheel that meshed into a rack in the center of the rails to climb the steep grades.

The railway was built by mattress tycoon Zalmon Simmons, a visitor to the Pikes Peak region in the late 1880s who thought there should be a better way to get to the top of the peak than a two-day mule ride. On June 30, 1891, the first passenger train carried a Denver church choir to the summit.

Spencer Penrose, owner of The Broadmoor hotel, bought the railway in 1925 and spent $500,000 to upgrade it. The cog trains remain one of thearea's most popular attractions.

The other railroads never recovered from World War I, when they were nationalized. The Short Line shut down in 1918. W.D. Corley bought the right-of-way in 1922 and turn-ed it into an auto toll road; it's now the Gold Camp Road. The Midland also ceased service in 1918, but the line from Colorado Springs to Divide was acquired by the Midland Terminal (by then owned by Penrose and A.E. Carlton) and ran gold ore to the Golden Cycle Mill on Colorado Springs' westside until 1949. Its shops and yards on 21st Street are occupied by Van Briggle Art Pottery and Ghost Town, and U.S. Highway 24 follows its route through Ute Pass.

The last Denver & Rio Grande passenger train ran through the Royal Gorge on July 27, 1967. Its Colorado Springs depot lives on as Giuseppe's restaurant on Sierra Madre Street. Engine No. 168, which pulled the first passenger train from Denver to Ogden, Utah, in 1883, was restored by the Colorado Midland chapter of the National Railway Historical Society and is on display in Antlers Plaza.

Successors to some of the railroads still run through Colorado Springs. The Union Pacific absorbed the Denver & Rio Grande and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe is heir to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. Only the Manitou & Pikes Peak railway still exists as it did in the early 20th century.

Copyright 2001
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