Welcome to the Wild West - Part #4: Roads and Rails

The Colorado Mountains presented a huge obstacle to transportation throughout Colorado and this was one of the reasons the gold rush didn't start any earlier. But as placer gold deteriorated and more complicated extraction processes were needed, and as Colorado began experiencing its companion silver mining boom, not only were roads necessary, but railroads also became critical to making mining economically viable. They were also necessary to opening up the territory to settlement and development.


Rail and Trail down Ute Pass. Source.

TRAILS:

Trails were first set down by the native Indians but these were nothing more than tracks. As Colorado developed, real roads needed to be constructed to get in and out of the mining camps. Can you imagine how difficult it would've have been to build these roads on the sheer sides of mountains or through deep canyons? But before railroads were built, these were the only means of access and they became very busy indeed despite the tolls lumped on them by private owners. See, since there was a lack of strong communities in the west, or provisions to pressure the government, private road building was a free-for-all.

Mears' Million Dollar Highway. Source.

One of these private road-builders was Russian-born immigrant Otto Mears, who built some 300-450 miles of toll roads in and around the San Juan Mountains in south-western Colorado. With a keen vision, he built his roads in conformations and at grades suitable for railways and subsequently many of his routes were purchased by railway companies moving into the area.

His most enduring legacy is a 25 mile (40km) section of road of what is now US 550 running from Ouray to Silverton. Built in the 1880s, it was cut directly into the side of steep mountains, however, the 12 mile section that spurred the road’s nick-name as The Million Dollar Highway starts just south of Ouray through the Uncompahgre gorge to the summit of Red Mountain Pass.

And not much has changed on that section since, except that it is now paved. Drivers still must negotiate the nail splitting, hair-pulling, narrow twists, turns, and switchbacks running along clear, steep drop-offs. Chase and I travelled this section of road in 2008. Going south we were stuck on the cliff-edge side and even with the snow banks providing a faux guard-rail (since there are none), it was still scary as hell!

There are several legends to why it was called the Million Dollar highway, though nobody knows for sure. One was that it cost a million dollars a mile to build in the 1920s, another that its fill dirt contains a million dollars in gold ore.

1880s                                          (Source)

2000s                                                                          (My photo)

In addition to wagon roads, Mears built railroads and eventually owned four separate lines around the Silverton area.

Ute Pass is another road of historical importance in Colorado, lying west of Colorado Springs in central Colorado. It skirts the north side of Pikes Peak through the Fountain Creek canyon, climbing 3,000 feet to its summit in the settlement of Divide at 9,165 feet, and remains one of only a handful of access points into the Rocky Mountains along Colorado's Front Range.

Having its beginnings as a Native American trail used by the Ute Indians it became the most popular wagon route to the gold-fields by the 1860s. It was also one of the few roads in the mountains that wasn’t a toll road. But it was only a one lane trail and those coming by stagecoach or hauling goods by oxen and cart had to work out a plan so they wouldn't run into each other. It was also steep on the east side, with a 7% gradient. As you can see below, wooden railings were built to keep the animals from falling off the side!

Ute Pass Wagon Train. (Source).

Ute Pass 1890. (Source).

In 1872, to lessen the danger as more traffic headed to the mountains, a new route was built over Ute Pass using Fountain Creek as a guide. It would be widened several times before becoming US highway 24, one of the originals in this new nationwide system.

After the turn of the century, the state started rebuilding and organising roads in response to public pressure and the advent of the automobile, though improvements were scattered and mountain roads were the last to be touched. The city of Denver undertook an aggressive program of building mountain touring roads, including the highest road in the US up Mount Evans (which I hope to go up once the road is reopened after winter) in response to a toll road that was built to the summit of Pike’s Peak in 1917. Convict labour was used extensively to build roads in Colorado beginning in 1905 and the state led the country in its use until abolishing it in 1926.

RAILS:

Denver & Rio Grande Railway. Source

At the time of the Colorado gold explosion, railroads were being built everywhere in America from the east to the west coast. Competition was strong to build the first transcontinental railroad (TC) and while the Union Pacific got the rights, Denver and Colorado were left out of the plans with the line cutting north of the state through the gentler hills of Wyoming, avoiding the Rockies altogether. It was completed on May 10 1869.

Colorado Central narrow gauge train in Clear Creek Canyon
Source

Still, there were a number of Denver businessmen that competed with plans to build their own branch lines north to tie in with the TC line, for without such a vital life-line, the young city of Denver would quickly fall off the map. It didn't take long, and the Denver Pacific Railroad, backed by many prominent local investors, had linked Denver with the TC line at Cheyenne, WY in 1870. It had beaten the Colorado Central Railroad out of nearby Golden to be the first, and with the completion of the Kansas Pacific line to Denver (completed at Strasburg on the Colorado Eastern Plains), the Denver Pacific became integral to the first transcontinental rail link between the east and west coasts of America, and Denver’s future as the State’s Capital was sealed.

Railroad fever took off in Colorado after that, and companies began to spring up in abundance.

The set-back of the Colorado Central (CC)Railroad to build its line north to the TC didn't deter the company's ambitions. First it built a line to link up to Denver before building the first rail lines up to the valuable mining communities west of Golden: Black Hawk, Central City and Idaho Springs. With the help of engineeer Edward Berthoud, they founded a route through Clear Creek Canyon reaching about 50 miles from Denver at its farthest extent. It was short compared to other lines and traversed no spectacular mountain passes, yet it was the prototype for rail lines into Colorado's mountains and of tapping the wealth that lay within them. 

Union Station in Denver Circa 1880. Source

Early railroads all ran on standard gauge track, but Colorado's steep terrain required a narrower gauge railroad. Enter the single-gauge, narrower dimension railroad. The new Denver & Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG), founded by a former director of the Denver Pacific, was the first to introduce these into operation in Colorado which allowed its steam trains and their cars to better negotiate the narrow curving canyons and steep grades in these mountains. With this the D&RG succeeded in connecting central and southern Colorado's high altitude mining towns with Denver, and hence markets back east.

The D&RG was the epitome of mountain
railroading, with a motto of "Through
the Rockies, not around them" and
later "Main line through the Rockies".

At its height, around 1890, the D&RG (now D&RG Western) had the largest operating narrow gauge railroad network in North America and was operating the highest main-line rail line in the US, traversing the Continental Divide at 10,240 ft (3,120m) north of Leadville over Tennessee Pass.

Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Durango, Salida and Gunnison were all towns that began because of the line. Two of its major legacies are the Durango to Silverton line, which was blasted out of sheer cliffs above the Animas River, and the Royal Gorge route, which cut a line through the bottom of one of the deepest canyons in Colorado with the Arkansas River just a few feet from the tracks on one side, and 1,250 foot sheer granite canyon walls on the other. Needless to say, the scenery was spectacular.

One more line of note was the Colorado Midland Railroad, the first standard gauge railroad built over the Continental Divide, running from Colorado Springs to Leadville over Ute Pass, and through the divide to Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction. It was meant to be a serious competitor to the Rio Grande in conquering the Great Divide and constructing the first transcontinental standard gauge railroad through Colorado but due to several problems it only succeeded in becoming a close second and eventually failed.

The Colorado Midland, who's motto was "Throught the mountains, not around"
Source.

Most of Colorado's mountain railroads didn't have a hope to succeed, and the plethora of Colorado Front-Range railroads was as much a competition among cities as among train lines. Too many trains travelled to too many places with no chance of recovering their costs. In fact, as new "hot" mining camps replaced old, dead ones, tracks wandered around the mountains unfinished, searching for a destination. Inevitably, smaller lines fell off the radar or were bought out by the bigger companies after the silver crash and the depression. In fact, none of these Colorado rail companies exist today.

What became of these Railroads?

·       The CC, through a series of reorganizations and acquisitions, eventually became part of the Colorado and Southern (CS) Railway. Its historic mountain lines were dismantled by the mid 20th century but its connecting lines on the Colorado Eastern Plains survive as active lines of BNSF (Burlington Northern & Sante Fe) Railway, a major freight company (of which the CS Railway Company also ended up);

·       The D&RG railroad company is now defunct. Today, most former D&RG main lines are owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad;

·       By the 1880s, the Denver Pacific Railroad also merged with the Kansas Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads, with the resulting company retaining the Union Pacific name.

·       The Colorado Midland Railway ceased operations in 1918. Segments of the railroad were then sold to the Midland Terminal Railway; the rest of the line, mostly west of the Midland Terminal connection at Divide, was abandoned. The line was scrapped in the early 1920s.

·       The Union Pacific Railroad remains the largest rail network in the US.

Since the 1990s, 13 railroads, and many scenic historic byways, through some of the most dramatic and beautiful scenery in Colorado, have been revived throughout the Rockies to take modern day tourists on a ride back in time, and reviving some ghost towns in the process.



Above photos from The Colorado Directory

Training Day - Part #2: A Lesson in Colorado Towns

House-Keeping:

Straight after breakfast it's time to start on house-keeping; although check-out isn't till 11am, many people leave early to head to the slopes one last time, or get a move on the road, which is good for us because the sooner we start cleaning the sooner we're done. After house-keeping we get the rest of the day off until prepping starts for happy hour at about 4:30pm.

Click pictures for larger view

There are eight guest rooms in total (plus the owner's room and our room), so it's a pretty big place, bigger than your usual B&B, although it doesn't feel that big. The stairs are a little troublesome - there are three levels in this house. The first room we started on was Breckenridge, on the top floor at the end. All the rooms are named after towns in Colorado. At first I thought they were named after ski towns in Colorado, but a little more research into these place names and I found it wasn't quite so.

A little trivia for you - and us, so we remember, because we need to know which room is which:

• ASPEN: This room is the most luxurious, it's actually a suite on the first floor at the front of the house. That is why they named it Aspen - after the up-scale ski town. It's also the first letter of the alphabet and the first room in the house.  It has a king four poster bed in a big room with a bay window and a big bathroom with a huge spa tub as well as walk-in shower - making it handicap accessible. There's also a closet and another little room connecting the bathroom to the bedroom in which there is a desk. I love the chaise lounge (right) in the bedroom (which is not in the professional photo below).

• BLACKHAWK: is the next room, located at the top of the stairs on the first floor (second floor if you're American - so confusing! I just call it the middle floor instead), and this town is not a ski resort. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, this is one of the early places where gold was discovered back in the day. Being the second room, it also starts with the second letter of the alphabet. It has a fire place, a double bed, and a single bed too. Most of the rooms have the basin separated from the bathroom, and in this room the basin is located in the alcove containing the closet area. The town Black Hawk is located near Central City - and so are the rooms of the same name.

The professional photo above, and mine, right.

• CENTRAL CITY: was so named for three reasons: it starts with C, it is close to Black Hawk, and it is the middle room on this floor. Remember it was the city with the nickname "the golden mile" for all the gold being extracted there (no ski resort either). It has a fireplace like Blackhawk, and while it's not very roomy I think it's really cute. The closet space is located by the door, and so is the bathroom as you can see in the professional photos below.

• DURANGO: is located at the end of the hall and quite spacious but doesn't have a fireplace. It's not one of my favourite rooms but it's pretty popular with guests (Chase thinks it's because it is the least Victorian-looking of the rooms!). Durango itself is not a ski town either but there are a few ski resorts in its vicinity. One in particular, is quite popular, but when you know the name of the resort you'll understand why they didn't name this room after it:

          Purgatory.

Professional shot above, and mine with the new bedspread looking to the bathroom

All of these rooms on the middle floor are located on the back side of the house and have back entrances like our room (which is located on the other side of Blackhawk) with a little patio, which is a nice touch and also allows the guests in these rooms a private entrance. Besides our room on this floor, the owners, Greg and Laura's room is located above Aspen. Though it's not for guests it also has a name: Vail, and has the same layout as Aspen.

• TELLURIDE: Now we go up to the next floor, the top floor, and this is the first room on this level. Now the alphabet theory deviates to no specific order, but Telluride is a ski town, and though upscale this room is not a King room, or particularly more special than any other rooms. It does have a cute little alcove with a single bed though, and the bathroom is one of the biggest.

Both my photos, the professional ones don't do it justice

• KEYSTONE: this is another ski town, and in fact, all the room-names on this floor are taken from ski towns. I hadn't heard of this place before, and that's probably because it was founded solely as a ski-resort in the 1970s near Breckenridge. It has two queen beds and is priced as a King room. It is located in the far back corner of the house and is a very big room. It also has a bathroom like Telluride and also has a connecting door with Telluride. (Photos taken by me).

• BRECKENRIDGE: is a cute end-room with a gabled roof with a big window centred between it. It has a large closet with sliding doors, and a cute love-seat that folds out into a single bed with matching ottoman. It is just the right size, with a generous 2-room suite bathroom area. This is another of my favourite rooms, but I don't know whether this has anything to do with the fact that it was the first room we cleaned (My photo, left, professional photo, right).

• STEAMBOAT: is the last room and is another king room. It is named after Steamboat Springs, the town and ski resort, which is nicknamed "Ski Town USA" for producing more Winter Olympians than any other town in North America. Steamboat is also where the first ski-jump was demonstrated. It is located above Aspen and Vail at the front of the house, though its layout is very different and while a King room, its namesake is not particularly luxe. The bedroom is large and really nice, with recessed window facing out over the Divide, but the bathroom is a little cramped, laid out long and narrow into the roof. Nevertheless, it's another of my favourite rooms.

All rooms have huge flatscreen TVs and their own bathrooms. We also supply robes, lotion & shampoos, and bottles of water with glasses on a tray. There's a lot to remember when cleaning the rooms but it's not really hard work. Though who knew I'd be cleaning for a living (I'm not really much of a housewife!) but then give me money and a nice location and see what you can get!

We also provide a daily made service, in which we "fluff" the rooms of guests. This one we still have trouble remembering to do, but I get satisfaction in tidying up the room for guests and picturing what they'll see when they first walk back in the room after they've twisted up all the covers and trashed the room and seeing it all neat and tidy and the bed looking inviting with the covers turned down. What's more, an unforeseen benefit I hadn't realised - tips! They don't always tip, but when they do its very exciting, and the usual amount is $20!

Training Day - Part #1: The Big American Breakfast

Our first day on the job at the B&B began the very day after our arrival. It was a training day. Laura, Greg's wife and partner in the B&B, still hadn't returned from working with their boat in the Caribbean but Karen, the intermittent Innkeeper, was there to show us the ropes.

BREAKFAST:

Breakfast prep started at 7am. That wasn't too bad, I had been expecting worse. We did set our alarms for 6am just to make sure we were on time - though it's not like we had to factor in commute time!

The Inn styles itself as a Luxury B&B and in keeping with that they serve a full gourmet breakfast. For them, that usually means four areas need to be covered: there must be an egg, there must be a meat, there must be a bread and there must be a potato. Phew! But before all that, first they serve a fruit plate which we plate up and have ready on the table as a kind of place marker. I really like this idea, and the fruit plates look very smart and delicious.

Immediately I felt a little out of my league. I would have to learn and perfect the Great American Breakfast. For starters, potatoes for breakfast are a VERY new concept for me. I couldn't imagine eating potatoes for breakfast. Then again, Americans would NEVER imagine eating baked beans for breakfast as us Aussie's do. Also for me, breakfast is about grains - and nowhere on that list do they mention a grain. There were also no particularly healthy options, except the fruit plate. But on my outings to Cracker Barrel, a old-style southern eatery, it all seemed pretty customary.


I don't know about how other people in Australia go about their breakfast but in our family, big breakfasts like this were only made on the weekends. What do Australians usually eat? As far as I know, cereal (including the traditional Weetbix) and toast (yes, with vegemite!) generally. The big Australian breakfast consists of eggs and bacon (for Americans, that's more like a Canadian bacon with more meat than fat) or grilled sausages, as well as grilled mushrooms and tomatoes and, of course, baked beans. In Australia it is becoming more common to go out for breakfast, though in America with the multitude of breakfast institutions, such as IHOP, Denny's and the aforementioned Cracker Barrel it's habitual. But it's not just for eating out, the Big American Breakfast, it seems this is pretty much the norm EVERY DAY in most households. I know Chase's dad cooks scrambled eggs and sausages and sometimes even biscuits (scones) for breakfast every day. I'm amazed.


So anyway, while Chase and Greg were organising the fruit plates, Karen and I got started on the potatoes and the eggs. Today we were scrambling the eggs, and "hashing" the potatoes - not quite the patties you see at McDonalds, but instead we diced the potatoes irregularly, skin on after pre-cooking them in the microwave, and added some diced onion before frying it all up in a pan. They'll most likely become mushy but that's part of the "hash". As you may have guessed, Hash is a very vague concept, it's whatever you prefer really. It's traditionally a "leftovers" dish, not unlike Australia's Bubble and Squeak, Sweden's Pytti Panna or, as I understand, Austria's Bauernfrühstück. It seems every country has one. Quite delicious of course - but not for breakfast! Especially accompanied by tomato sauce.

Back in the kitchen, the sausages were taking care of themselves in the pan. Here's another variant in American breakfast: sweet sausages, and in this case, maple flavoured sausages. Americans love their "salty sweet" combination of flavours. Me, I'm not into it at all; I don't mix my sweet and savoury. I have read that that this combination is an important component to cooking; that's what makes Asian cooking so phenomenal, but it's subtle.

I think we did English muffins that day. Ok, I forget as I'm writing this behind schedule (what's new?) but who really cares? Any bread is pretty fine by me, I love it! Especially when it's pre-buttered and toasted in the grill (American's say "broil", I don't like it, that word makes me think of poaching and sounds gross!)! Real bread in America is lacking, like Australia, but the variants on bread, like English muffins, biscuits, cinnamon rolls and bagels, make up for it.

Coffee: Americans love it - but by "coffee", I mean purely filtered coffee. It's probably a better way than the way we do our instant dried coffee in Australia, but unless it's made strong, for me it's not very good. The B&B's coffee is not too bad, and first thing in the morning, it's even better! A key morning objective for us is to keep that coffee jug filled and keep the coffee flowing! That term "bottomless cup" is not just a catchy tagline.

Guests are offered breakfast between 8-8:30am. A pretty short window really but with so many guest rooms it's kind of imperative otherwise you'd be rushed off your feet for hours. As it is, we didn't get finished with breakfast until 9:30 (well, we did stop to eat; a great perk of the job - eating the leftovers! And by then, don't you know I was ravished! Those maple sausages didn't even taste that bad!).

The breakfast room is in the vestibule before you come in the main door. I really like this area for breakfast with all the morning light and the view of the mountains coming through all the big windows. This part of the house is quite new, it was only completed about a year ago. Before that it was just a small portico. Of course, in winter it's a little harder to keep warm but so far it's manageable with a few space heaters.

While I was comparing breakfasts I found a great page on breakfast around the world, with matching photos. If, you're interested, click on this link below (I'm liking the look of the Morrocan breakfast...):

50 of the World's Best Breakfasts