Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad

“ In this way thousands of tastes are gratified every year, and each one wonders why all others cannot see with him in his place advantages incomparable and quite inexpressible. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad can reel off, so to speak, two dozen mineral springs and health and pleasure resorts on its lines in one small publication, not mentioning at all the places that are famous as scenery, passes, heights, cañons, mountains and astounding feats of railway construction. ”

“ This sort of thing does not go on for many years before a railroad comes to the rescue. Engineering triumphs where brute force merely evades; the steam-engine has stronger lungs than mules or men; and the journey which was counted by weeks is made in hours. Such a feat as this, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (narrow gauge) is now performing in Colorado. ”

“ Colorado said “Play ball,” and in the first inning he won the respect of the other players and the applause of the people. He has been successful because he deserved success.
Three months after the completion of the line to Creede, each train brought to the camp from two hundred to three hundred people, all the side-tracks were blocked with freight and a ceaseless stream of silver was flowing into the treasury of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company. The lucky prospector built a cozy cabin in the new camp and saw a city spring up almost in a day. ”

“ Faith in the success of these mines has caused the Denver and Rio Grande to build two hundred and fifty miles of railroad over mountains and wide plains which of themselves would never support the line. Faith in these mineral treasures has caused hundreds of men to follow the railway, and has set on foot little towns all along its track ”

“ The Denver and Rio Grande has been compared to an octopus. This is really a compliment to its engineers. It sucks nutriment from every place where nutriment is to be found. To do this it has been forced to climb mountains, where it was thought locomotives could never climb. In one place, called the Royal Gorge, the difficulties of blasting a road-bed into the side of the mountain were so great that it was thought expedient to carry the track upon a bridge, and this bridge was hung from two rafters, braced against the sides of the gorge. ”

“ The winter climate of Colorado, on the whole, presents advantages for the invalid and the pleasure-seeker that can not fail to command attention. The Denver & Rio Grande is not alone a summer road. Its trains run on schedule time all the year round, and give to the travelling public all the comforts, conveniences, elegancies, and luxuries to be found on any line, with the added attraction of scenery the grandest in the world. ”

“ Nor had they sufficient reason to suppose that the Denver Company had finally abandoned its purpose of constructing a road through the ca non. We have already referred to the completion of the road from Denver to Pueblo, and from Pueblo to Ca non City, by July, 1875. In 1873, the Denver Company commenced the construction of one of its branches,-the Denver and Southern Railway. Commencing at Pueblo, it completed that road to Cucharas, fifty miles from Pueblo, by February, 1876 ”

“ This railway strikes almost due west from Denver and crosses the continental divide at an altitude of over two miles. While it is one of the most astonishing pieces of railroad in the world, its windings and severe grades have made operation difficult and expensive, and the road has been built only as far as Craig, Colo., less than halfway to Salt Lake City. The great difficulty has always been the crossing of the divide. ”

“ Engine the 107 was not rebuilt for a long time and was never again employed in passenger service. The foreman in one of the repair shops wrote to Philadelphia and learned that the 109 was completed on Thursday and the 107 on Friday. As I said a while ago, railroad employees are not superstitious,—they will all tell you so,—much less railway officers; but it is a fact to-day that a new locomotive or a locomotive that has been rebuilt is never taken out on the Denver and Rio Grande on Friday. ”

“ For years he lived there, dividing his time between fighting the Indians and feeding the passing emigrants and their stock. Then the first railroad to Denver was built, taking another route from the Missouri, and Barker's occupation was gone. He retired with his gains to St. Louis and lived in comfort.
Years passed on, and the “extension” over which our train is to pass was planned. The old pioneers were excellent natural engineers and their successors could find no better route than they had chosen. ”

“ No other railway, perhaps, can claim to traverse such a variety of scenes; but mountain and cañon did not delay it half as much as disputes with another pioneer company that claimed the path it wished to take. Some ten years after it had started from Denver City, however, these disputes came to an [Pg 406] end, and the difficult road was pursued right and left. It is hard to say if it will ever cease to grow in length, since the merchants are ever finding fresh markets of fruit and minerals for the engineers to take the iron road to. ”

“ In all the world there is no place so beautiful, imposing, sublime and awful, that may be so easy and comfortably visited, as the Black Cañon, for the iron horse of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad has a pathway through the cañon, and he draws after him coaches as handsome and pleasant as those which he draws on the level plain. Along many miles of this grand gorge the railroad lies upon a shelf that has been blasted in the solid walls of God's masonry ”

“ Already the night had fallen and all was darkness except where the light from the locomotive sent its fierce thrust of illumination into the night, straight along the steel rails with sudden, quick thrusts as the "General Denver" rounded a curve. "My but it is great!" cried Jim with enthusiasm, as on the engine roared into the depths of the mountains. In a short time the moon rose over14 the crest of the range, shining with a pure brilliance that the work-a-day sun can only dream of.
After several hours of uneventful progress the train ran into a long siding and came to a gentle stop. ”

“ The General is still living—is in active service—having, during the last thirty years been connected with construction of many of the important railroads of the West, among them the Texas and Pacific Railway, Missouri, Kansas and Texas, International and Great Northern and Fort Worth and Denver City. ”

“ Moffat saw that a number of important lines were making Denver their western terminal—particularly the Burlington and the Kansas stems of the Union Pacific and the Rock Island. He felt that he might pick up traffic from these roads and carry it straight over the mountains to Salt Lake City, a railroad center suffering the same disadvantages as Denver. He sent surveyors up into the deep canyons and the impasses of the Rockies. When they brought back the reports of their reconnoissances, practical railroad men laughed at Mr. ”

“ She can not hope to compete with Denver for the northern half of the State, but she does not intend to lose her grip upon the great, rapidly-developing, money-producing San Juan, Gunnison and Rio Grande regions. And as the visitor sees the railway yards crowded with loaded freight trains destined for every point of the compass; notes the throng of laden carts in the furrowed streets; observes how every warehouse is plethoric with constantly changing merchandise, often stacked on the curbstone under the cover of a canvas sheet because room within doors can not be found ”

“ In a word, Denver seemed, within a remarkably short period, to have settled down into the perfect repose, so far as crime was concerned, of the New England village.
But with the approach of railroads there came a change—a radical and important change. The building of a new railroad in any section always introduces a large element of irresponsible and vicious people. In the West the percentage of this element is larger than in the East. ”

“ Kasson wanted a rival railroad. Again, gentlemen, it will further appear in evidence that this was an additional subsidy of lands, that instead of connecting with the main line at the one hundredth meridian, this Kansas company was authorized to change its route and build the road to Denver, from Denver up to Cheyenne, and receive all the lands on either side of whatever route they may fix upon, and not requiring them to unite with the main line until they got fifty miles west of Denver. ”

“ This spot is not only the center of the United States and of the continent, but, if Denver had contrived to carry the Pacific Railroad by the Berthoud Pass, would have been the center station upon what Governor Gilpin, of Colorado, calls the “Asiatic and European railway line.” As it is, Columbus in Nebraska has somewhat a better chance of becoming the Washington of the future than has this block-house. ”

“ We were in the West several years before the railroad was completed to Denver, and the overland trains became an every-day sight to us. Citizens used oxen a great deal for transportation, and there is no picture that represents the weariness and laggard progress of life like an ox-train bound for Santa Fé or Denver. The prairie-schooner might set out freshly painted, or perhaps washed in a creek, but it soon became gray with layer upon layer of alkali dust. ”

“ The mountain ramparts practically lock Denver in upon its western side, and the railway makes a direct plunge into the mass. The South Boulder canyon affords the causeway for the railway through the first clump. Certainly the gorge is well named, for its sides are ragged in the extreme, precipitous, and strewn with ugly, projecting masses of rock.
Being unhampered financially, the engineers were enjoined to carry their work out upon the most solid lines. Timber trestling across clefts on the hill-side was to be avoided ”

“ Yet this does not mark the uppermost limit of civilisation among these rocky fastnesses, because there are several prosperous mining camps at 13,000 feet or more.
The highest artery of traffic in Europe is the wonderful Stelvio road which enables the Tyrol to be crossed at an altitude of 9,042 feet. This is a zigzagging highway for vehicular and pedestrian traffic. In Colorado, the Denver & Rio Grande railway crosses the backbone of the continent through three passes, each over 10,000 feet above the sea, while at Ibex the station platform is at an altitude of 11,522 feet. ”

“ They are only twenty-five miles from the station,” said one of the Union Pacific officials with whom I became acquainted at Denver. This was just at dark the next night after leaving Portland. I had forgotten what little I knew of those falls, excepting their name, and had no idea of going so near them on this trip, but I left the train at 3.30 the next morning, and about sunrise started out due south. “I suppose there are ranches along the road,” said I to the stage-driver at this end of the route. “No, not one; and you can’t get any water till you get there,” said he. ”

“ Sometimes it appears as if American railway practices, in granting commodity and flat long-distance rates so freely, operated in some ways to retard this tendency. But the influence is not all in that direction. Many staple industries, utilizing the raw material at their doors, might supply the needs of their several local constituencies, were it not that their rise is prevented by long-distance rates from remote but larger centres of production. Denver, in striving to establish paper mills to utilize its own Colorado wood pulp, is threatened by the low rates from Wisconsin centres. ”

“ For who could doubt the future growth and prosperity of a prairie town rejoicing in the unique advantage of a watercourse?
There is, however, in the modern scheme of things, one agent more potent than running water, and that is the arbitrary, omnipotent, indispensable railroad; and the railroad in its erratic course saw fit to give the cold shoulder to the ambitious little county-seat, left it ten miles to the eastward, and then went zigzagging up to Denver with a conscience as dead as that of the corporation whose creature it was. ”

“ The sun set without the turn of a wheel. The victory of the first day was certainly with the strikers.
Next day it looked pretty blue around the depot. Not a car was moved; the engineers and firemen were a unit. But the wires sung hard all that day and all that night. Just before midnight Chicago wired that No. 1—our big passenger-train, the Denver Flyer—had started out on time, with the superintendent of motive power as engineer and a wiper for fireman. The message came from the second vice-president. ”

“ Getting up this morning at six o’clock, I find we are entering Denver. We have engine 570, Engineer Wm. Jenness, Fireman W. C. Lawhead, Conductor I. Larsen, Brakemen Cunningforth and McGinn. Soon as the train stops, Mrs. Terry and Mrs. Shaw strike off in search of the post office, for they are expecting letters from home. Our train is sidetracked in the yard and Brother Terry and I walk over to the station, a short distance away, and look around. It is pretty quiet; the great city has not wakened up to the business of the day and the railroads haven’t commenced their bustle and confusion. ”

“ We are denied commercial equality, which forbids the development of our resources. Our freight rates are anywhere from 100 to 300 percent higher per ton per mile than those of our Eastern and Western competitors.” [132]
Such conditions tend to force dealers to points on the Missouri River or east of it. The shipper at St. Joseph on the Missouri River, for example, can get goods from Chicago at 80 cents and reship to San Francisco for $1.50, while the Denver shipper must pay $2 from Chicago to Denver and $3 from Denver to San Francisco,—$5 for the Denver shipper against $2.30 for the St. ”