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The narrow gauge
railroad puts Golden on the map
July 11, 1972
By Jane
Tarbox
Page Editor
It was just 100 years ago that the Clear
Creek narrow gauge railroad made its first run from
Golden, "the veritable railroad center for the west"
to Black Hawk.
"The Transcript could hardly find words
adequate to describe the wonders of the trip through
the 'Grand Canyon of Clear Creek ... the Yosemite of
the Rocky Mountains' and hailed the road as a
'stupendous railroad enterprise ... a triumph of
engineering skill'."
The colorful story of how the historic
railroad became the first narrow gauge line to
penetrate directly into the Colorado Rockies is
retold in the tenth issue of the Colorado Rail
Annual by Cornelius Hanck. The publication, a
venture of the Colorado Railroad Museum, is
generously illustrated with old photographs of
Golden, Black Hawk, Central City, Idaho Springs,
Georgetown, and Silver Plume.
The story begins with the dream of
William Loveland and Captain Edward Berthoud that
Golden would become an important link in the
transcontinental railroad envisioned in the 1860's.
The great gold rush had subsided and
many of the towns along Clear Creek had begun to
take on the look of hard times. The surface gold had
been worked out. Gold was there but it required a
more sophisticated method of mining than a pan, pick
or shovel. Ore, silver, lead and copper as well as
gold were being processed by the new smelting
process.
New Transportation
A new mode of transportation was needed
to carry the minerals from the mountain towns to a
market - a more efficient method than the dangerous
rough wagon roads of the time.
"Denver - Golden rivalry was red hot,
and Loveland was not about to let the upstart plains
town have any advantage," the book recalls. "The
important branch (of the proposed transcontinental
railroad) to Central City, Idaho Springs and
Georgetown would bring the mountain traffic through
Golden to the Union Pacific." "Denver would be
neatly bypassed."
Then that fall (1867) Golden received
two heavy blows: first, Denver interests, led by
John Evans.and David Moffat, incorporated the Denver
Pacific to build their own line from Denver directly
to Cheyenne, and promptly were voted $500,000 in
Arapahoe County bonds. And second, the capital of
the Territory was moved from Golden to Denver! It
was a bleak Christmas for the little Clear Creek
town.
Loveland was not about to give up. By
the end of 1868 his Colorado Central Railroad
Company had graded 11 miles east of Golden along
Clear Creek. The bridges were finished and the ties
put down.
Hassles
Under the sponsorship of the Union
Pacific, work was begun in 1871 to extend the
railroad through the canyon to Black Hawk. The work
went slowly. Insecure financing and corporate
politics were to blame. Spats between Union Pacific
officials in the east and Colorado Central officials
in the west continually flared up.
Finally all grading was completed to
Black Hawk by December 7, 1871, and the track
completed to that point on December 11. "Trains
began running into Black Hawk the same day, much to
the jubilation of townspeople and railroaders
alike," the book retells.
Local enthusiasm ran wild. "Festivities
were climaxed by a giant 'Grand Railroad Ball' held
at Black Hawk on December 27. Dancing began
'precisely' at 8:30 pm at the Young Men's Club and
supper was served at Collier's Hall 'nearby, with
seating for 200', at twelve o'clock. Tickets to the
affair cost $5, and there were 'toasts, speeches,
music, and etc'."
"A morning train was promised to Denver,
leaving at 7 am and arriving in the city at 10 am.
Returning, travelers would be able to leave Denver
at 3 pm and be returned to Black Hawk by 7 pm," the
Central City Daily Register reported.
Central City
The Colorado Central now turned its
attention towards Central City and Georgetown.
Efforts to locate a line to Central City were begun
in 1871. Central city was situated about a mile and
a quarter up Gregory Gulch, but in the distance
there was over a 500 foot rise in elevation. The
railroad's engineers decided to loop some four miles
of track back and forth along Clear Creek and the
side of the gulch reaching Central City on a
continuous series of grades.
The line into Central City was opened
May 21, 1878, and the occasion called for a
celebration. As the train made its way into the
city, 'cannons roared, whistles shrieked, bands
tooted, men and women cheered and waved their
handkerchiefs, small boys cried themselves hoarse'
and the depot grounds and sheets were 'perfectly
jammed with a seething mass of humanity'.
The last construction on the little
narrow gauge railroad turned out to be the most
spectacular: the Geogetown Loop extension, the book
reports. The line from Georgetown to Bakerville, a
half dozen miles up the valley, had been laid out in
1880. The first two miles between Georgetown and
Silver Plume rose in elevation 638 feet. The average
grade was six percent - an impossible feat for
railroad engineer, Robert Blickensderfer, who
designed a series of loops and a spiral in the
narrow valley to stretch the trackage out to 4.47
miles between the two towns. The maximum grade would
be reduced to 3 1/2 percent.
Known Far And Wide
"The Loop attracted immediate attention
because, in addition to offering a very scenic trip
for tourists, it was then a unique example of a
different method of gaining altitude on a mountain
railway," the author notes.
In contrast to an estimated $90,000 a
mile for a standard gauge line, the builder of the
Clear Creek narrow gauge line was able to construct
a line through Clear Creek Canyon at a cost of
$20,000 a mile. The success of their venture
provided incentive for the construction of other
narrow gauge railroads throughout the country.
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