Brief by Central Staff
Transportation History – January 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
Cañon City contributed much, in both labor and materials, to early highway construction in Colorado. The labor came from convicts at the state penitentiary, who were put to work on roads from 1905 until 1926, when the practice was abolished.
The materials — lime, gravel, stone — came from a hillside quarry, still quite visible behind Old Max on the west side of Cañon City.
Article by Alvin Edlund, Jr.
Transportation History – January 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
ONE OF THE LONGEST HIGHWAYS in the United States is Highway 50, which stretches from Ocean City, Maryland, to Sacramento, California, and passes through Washington D.C., Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Carson City, Lake Tahoe, and Central Colorado. A sign at Ocean City declares this coast-to-coast highway is 3,073 miles long.
Brief by Central Staff
Transportation History – October 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine
On Sept. 12, the Union Pacific began its takeover of the Southern Pacific, and so the trains that rattle through here (until they manage to abandon the Tennessee Pass line) will be UP trains.
The UP has been here before, though. The story starts in 1873 with the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad.
Sidebar by Kym O’Connell-Todd
Transportation History – July 1994 – Colorado Central Magazines.
Anyone who is interested in the restoration of the Alpine Tunnel and can offer the following help should call Ray Rossman at the Gunnison Forest Service office at 303-641-0471:
Sidebar by Kym O’Connell-Todd
Transportation History – July 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine
Enthusiasm was high — the tension even greater — during the rail race of 1879.
Two narrow-gauge railroad companies, the Denver and Rio Grande (D&RG) Railroad and the Denver South Park and Pacific Railroad (DSP&P), fought neck to neck to reach the prosperous mining town of Gunnison first. Even though both companies faced the formidable Continental Divide, each chose to approach the engineering problem in radically different ways.
Article by Kym O’Connell-Todd
Transportation History – July 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine
At a little more than 11,500 feet above the tides, a small wooden building leans into whistling tundra wind. Abandoned for many years and left as a makeshift home to marmots and other mountaintop squatters, the little depot still shares the snow-patched landscape with the remains of the colossal Alpine Tunnel project that began 115 years ago.