Note: up to date announcements and more news is available on our Facebook page, "Leadville Stage Road/Midland RR Study" http://www.facebook.com/pages/Leadville-Stage-RoadMidland-RR-Trail/206624022693584.

Over the past several years, GARNA and some of its local volunteer members have been exploring how best to draw attention to the historic significance and facilitate preservation of two of the Upper Arkansas River’s major early transportation corridors: the Canon City to Leadville Stage Road and the Colorado Midland Railroad. In early 2010 this effort became more focused when GARNA was awarded a $40,000 planning grant from the Colorado State Trails Program to conduct a feasibility study.

WHAT’S NEXT

Several general public open house meetings have now been scheduled to explain the study and gather ideas and suggestions and reactions from the public:

• May 3rd  from 6 - 8 p.m. Lake County Courthouse Commissioners’ Room in Leadville
• May 4th  from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.  at Sangre de Cristo Electric in Buena Vista
• May 5th  from 5 - 7 p.m. at Salida Café and Roastery in Salida

The key preliminary questions the open houses would like input on are

• How can these historic railroad routes and roads best be preserved and celebrated in today’s Upper Arkansas Valley?
• How do local citizens and visitors enjoy them today? How could they in the future?
• How can the route contribute to the Upper Arkansas Valley economy, culture and recreation experience?
• What are the common concerns of private land owners in the event that public access is proposed across or near their properties?
• How might access affect the objectives of public land managers like AHRA, the Forest Service, BLM, the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the State Land Board?
• Could a plan be developed that addresses the protection of our natural resources, the concerns of public and private land managers, and create awareness of the cultural, historical and recreational assets?   

Ideas that have already surfaced-but need public exploration-are increased interpretation (signs/maps) at additional points along the route; a short book or brochure; registering portions of the routes on the State or National Registers of Historic Places; hiking, horseback and mountain biking access along appropriate sections; designation of certain public county roads for cycling and vehicle access along approximate historic routes, with markers; incorporating more exhibits and descriptions into local museums and Byway Welcome Centers.

You’ll have an opportunity to leave an e-mail or mailing address so we can periodically keep you abreast of developments.

That’s the big picture, but read on if you’d like more background and detail.

A BIT OF HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

The Leadville Stage Roads (many)

A much abbreviated version of the history of stage transportation to Leadville goes like this. As word of the 1860’s discoveries in California Gulch (eventually Leadville) and Cache Creek (Granite) spread, boom towns rapidly sprang up, populations rose, individual claims and large corporate mining operations and smelters (Leadville, Salida) multiplied. Inevitably there was demand for transportation routes for both freight and passengers, and that demand was met by perhaps a dozen publicly-supported or privately-developed routes and toll roads.  One could get to Leadville from Denver via Tennessee Pass (Climax), Weston and Mosquito Passes from the Fairplay area and via Trout Creek Pass and Buena Vista.

The stage road of interest in the ongoing study is the one which approached Leadville from the south along the Arkansas River, originating in the 1860’s way downriver in Canon City which was then the terminus of the Denver and Rio Grande and other railroads. As that terminus was gradually extended up the Royal Gorge to Salida by about 1879, stages and freight began their journey northward from there. Rapid progress of the narrow gauge D&RG resulted in train service to Buena Vista began in June, 1880 and shortly thereafter-July 17th-passengers were able to go all the way to Leadville. (The standard gauge Midland RR from Colorado Springs across South Park and Trout Creek through Buena Vista didn’t reach Leadville until 1887, although its ultimate destination was Aspen through the Hagerman Tunnel crossing the divide west of Twin Lakes.)

Passenger service along the various routes often became dominated by the stage companies who held the US Mail contracts. In the case of the Canon City to Leadville stage road, that was the legendary Barlow and Sanderson Company.

Predictably, passenger stage traffic dropped precipitously soon after the D&RG reached Leadville, but in its heyday during the 1870s, a phenomenal number of stages passed through Salida and Buena Vista. For example, in 1879 the Barlow and Sanderson line carried some 16,970 passengers through Buena Vista. Most came from Canon City or Salida and the balance by coach over Trout Creek Pass from the Denver South Park and Pacific RR terminus in South Park. A stained but legible image (photo) by William Henry Jackson in Buena Vista in 1879 gives evidence of just how busy the local stage and freight terminus was!

Although it has been hard to find contemporary first person accounts of what it was like to make the ride, later on in 1940, an apparently well-informed Salida character wrote a description that rings true. Here are extracts that describe an 1879 trip from Salida to Leadville.

To Leadville Via the Old Stage Coach
            The year was 1879 and after a dinner, family style, consisting of venison, brown potatoes, beans and good old sauce of stewed, dried apples on clean, tin plates...we started from Bayles stage station near Cleora [just south of Salida] with four fresh horses and the old stage coach loaded to the limit with [eight] passengers inside, four more passengers stowed away on the top, and the boot...piled high with trunks and rolls of bedding.

PHOTO SOURCE: Under the Angel of Shavano George C. Everett (1963). Bales (Bayles) Station

photo

Brave Men Held the Reins
Old Ike Jordan, the driver, climbs aboard with a guard beside him, grabs up the reins and with a crack of the four-horse whip...we are off at full gallop, Leadville bound. The U.S. mail bag and Wells Fargo gold chest sets beside old Ike’s feet with a rifle standing muzzle up between his legs, while Ike and the guard both carry the usual side arms and woe be the stage robbers that would attempt to hold up that stage.

The Day of Wide Open Spaces
We rolled over the sage brush...where Salida now stands and keeping to the South of the Golden Arkansas river we soon pass [all the ranches] on Adobe Park and at no time we were out of a trot until we reached Squaw Creek [north of Big Bend on the Arkansas River]. Here we found a hunting party of Utes bent on trading some venison and Indian blankets for beads and Old Crow whiskey...[traveling north a few miles] I wonder at the wisdom of those horses as they swung in and around those sharp curves following the ruts with no visible effort of the driver to guide them. The dust that permeated the coach caused no comment and the flavor itself as it settled on the lips, was of good clean dirt, neutralized more or less with a horsey tang...

Trail Blazers That Were
We now arrive and dip down into Brown’s Creek...and at the old Harrington ranch (where he himself met death by the assassin’s bullet). We change horses again, the beasts...are all of a lather, dead tired and docile as kittens...We tarry but a few minutes and this rapid transit again thunders on a full gallop. Over the mesa, down into Chalk Creek, and by the first flour mill in the valley, built by Nathrop himself, and into the town that still carries his name...Here at Nathrop were many tents and cabins of prospectors and miners, surveyors and grade builders, the latter laying out the grade for the Denver, South Park & Pacific railroad that was to follow up Chalk Creek and [through the Alpine Tunnel] over the continental divide to Gunnison, while another crew was working on the Rio Grande toward Leadville.

PHOTO SOURCE: Alan Robinson recent photo looking west from Hwy 285 to Chalk Creek

Horse Power Limited
            We now and then pass into a walk and as we cross Clear Creek and take out over Arkansas river bridge, we are held back by the six and eight-span of horse and mules and oxen with their freight wagons and trailers creeping along. There are but few places to pass on the one-way cannon road, but in due time we do arrive at Granite...where the Barlow and Sanderson lines take off for Aspen.

PHOTO SOURCE: Denver Public Library Western History Collection. A George L. Beam photo ca 1927 shows the bridge at Clear Creek years after the stage road stopped running, with the D&RG northbound on its newly-constructed standard gauge route

Like many transportation routes, the Leadville Stage Road seems to have had various alternative alignments and river crossings over its history of about 1860 through 1890. The Working group has managed to find evidence of some 7 simple bridges between Salida and Leadville, for example at Cleora just south of Salida, at Fisherman’s Bridge (CR 301), another just south of Buena Vista, one north of the CR 371 tunnels, another at the AHRA Railroad Bridge Campground on CR 371, one at Pine Creek and a last, more substantial one just north of Clear Creek (see History section above). Likewise various overnight or horse-changing stations have been documented, from Bales Station south of Salida to one on the Kraft Ranch along CR 191, to Helena north of Fisherman’s Bridge. Others are referenced as being in Buena Vista, Granite and some lesser-known stops where passengers might be connecting to other routes.

Although stage traffic might have been the more documented aspect, freight movement over all or sections of the stage road played a tremendously important role in early development of both counties. Some of that traffic might have been long distance hauling to Leadville from as far away as Salida but much was timber from the forests and agricultural produce and hay (for mining operation livestock) from the developing ranches and farms around Buena Vista. Similar supply lines to Aspen were important either over Cottonwood and Taylor Passes or later, when built, Independence Pass, and those frequent horse- and mule-drawn wagons would have use pieces of the stage road.

If you’re interested in more historic details, especially for the Leadville Stage Road, see www.cozine.com/2008-september/stage-road/

The Colorado Midland Railroad

Too much has been written about the Colorado Midland to summarize here, but the basic facts are that it was the first standard gauge rail line to reach the Arkansas Valley and then cross the Continental Divide, originating in Colorado Springs in 1883 and traversing the south-central section of South Park through Hartsel, eventually crossing Trout Creek Pass to reach Buena Vista in 1886 [check]. Actually it didn’t get right in to town but, in order to save elevation for its ultimate destinations of Leadville and Aspen/Grand Junction, the Midland’s Buena Vista depot was some 200 feet above the town to the east (along modern County Road 304 overlooking Buena Vista) from which passengers and freight had to be transported by “hack road” down into town. (That hack road is the centerpiece of the modern Whipple Trail system of which Buena Vista is so proud.)

From Buena Vista’s depot the Midland ran northward along the east side of the Arkansas across some pretty spectacular trestles (e.g. Hop Gulch) through the once-bustling service and watering station of Wildhorse and through the locally famous triple tunnels along modern County Road 371.

The route stayed true to the east bank until Clear Creek, where on still-standing handsome sandstone supports it crossed just north of Clear Creek. Still on the west bank it passed through Granite and stayed on the west until the northern end of the Hayden Valley where it had a spur into Leadville (arriving in 1887) but ultimately left the valley westward south of Twin Lakes to rise to the spectacular and challenging Hagerman Tunnel to cross under the Continental Divide and descend into Aspen and later Grand Junction.

The Colorado Midland, though “beaten” to Leadville by the D&RG by about 7 years, nonetheless successfully ran freight and popular tourist passenger service along this route into the early 1900’s. But following a series of acquisitions by other lines and pressures on transportation systems during the First World War the Midland was eventually abandoned in large part in 1918. Perhaps more than any other early Colorado line, the Midland has attracted a dedicated following of scholarly and amateur researchers and celebrants, and a great deal of material is now available in libraries and the Internet. One place to start is with the Colorado Midland Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society http://www.nrhs.com/chapters/colorado_midland.htm

HOW WE GOT TO A FEASIBILITY STUDY

Like being successful in getting any grant, there was a long process GARNA went through to get here. It began with a volunteer’s interest just in learning more about the history of the 1865-1900 stage and Midland RR’s routes through Chaffee and Lake Counties, researching old photos and maps and locating physical evidence on the ground. Several informal slide presentations were made, and generally met with considerable enthusiasm and encouragement to keep moving on. That initial phase led to considering how the significance of these early routes might be better communicated to the public so that appropriate preservation-and possibly public use-could be implemented. The first logical step seemed to be doing a feasibility study.

Grantors require there be solid public support for starting a project, so during the course of a year or more GARNA and its LSR/MRR Working Group sought to explain the concepts and gain support from a variety of county and town officials, Federal and State agencies, special interest groups and private landowners who could be affected by any proposals that might come from a feasibility study’s recommendations. To be clear, these groups were not asked to support any particular proposal but rather that they simply endorse doing the study and consider its results. The following entities wrote letters of support; some, particularly the Chaffee County Commissioners, Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area and the Town of Buena Vista, made substantial commitments of cash and in-kind match for the grant; all thought doing a study was a good first step.

• Lake County Board of Commissioners
• Chaffee County Board of Commissioners
• Chaffee County Heritage Area Advisory Board
• Collegiate Peaks Scenic and Historic Byway
• Towns/Mayors of Salida, Buena Vista and Leadville
• Buena Vista Trail Committee
• Arkansas Headwater Recreation Area
• Bureau of Land Management
• US Forest Service Leadville District
• Lake County Open Space Initiative
• Land Trust of the Upper Arkansas
• Salida Parks Open Space and Trails
• Trout Unlimited Collegiate Peaks Anglers Chapter
• Ark Valley Velo bicycle club

There has been close coordination with the Chaffee County Heritage Board http://chaffeecountyheritage.org/ because their mission involves historic preservation not just of structures but of historical events and themes.  Indeed, one of those themes identified in the Heritage Area and Scenic Byway Management Plan, “Mining, Transportation and Industry,” draws specific attention to the significance and heritage value of stage routes and railroads. And the routes being studied, especially the Stage Road, closely parallel the Collegiate Peaks Scenic and Historic Byway, which the Heritage Board is responsible for overseeing. The Top of the Rockies National Scenic Byway in Lake County is similarly parallel to the historic routes. The Boards of Commissioners in both Chaffee and Lake Counties have been particularly supportive of the study, and are responsible for ensuring that the scope extends all the way from Leadville to Salida.

FINALLY...

To contact one of our working group members directly, see the e-mail list below

Leadville Stage Road/Midland RR Trail Working Group:
Alan Robinson (Buena Vista) robinson@chaffee.net
Casey Swanson (Salida) casey.swanson@me.com
Bob Gray (Buena Vista) bobgray2fish@gmail.com
Kathy McCoy (Buena Vista) katherinemccoy@earthlink.net
Frosty Roe (Buena Vista) frosty@rockymountains.net
Paul Rauschke (Buena Vista/Leadville) sparkynbear@msn.com
Thomas & Thomas (planners), Jim Houk (Colorado Springs) jhouk@ttplan.net

Webpage prepared April 21, 2011 by Alan Robinson, Leader
Leadville Stage Road/Midland RR Working Group (a GARNA project)
tel 719 395 3396 robinson@chaffee.net