Letter from Roger Henn
Railroad history – October 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Ed Quillen:
Thank you for the article on the isolated C&S track [in the September edition]. Just what happened in railroading in that country, I have always wondered.
Sometime in the early Depression Years, when I was about 15 (that would make it 1932), having no work, my big brother and I headed out from Denver to visit old George Pugh; George was then in his 90s and lived about two miles out of Maysville on a small ranch that straddled the old trail that went up Foose’s Creek. He planted a few potatoes, traded horses, kept a small herd of burros, and was considered by those that knew him to be eccentric; and I suppose he was, but he was kind to a couple of lost depression boys.
Along about the end of the summer, we headed back toward Denver in Brother Frank’s shiny 1927 Chevy. Frank drove, I wasn’t old enough to get a license. We went via Leadville and the Climax Mine and there we stopped while Frank tried for a mining job. Darned if he didn’t get it!
That left me to camp out until the weekend when Frank would drive home to Denver, get his clothing and necessities and then return to Climax. Frank stayed in the multi-floored bunkhouse while I (who had never driven) turned back toward Leadville, looking for a place to pitch our old tent and camp until the weekend. I located a cove with a small stream and pitched camp.
All night long there was a slamming and pounding going on not far from where I camped. In the morning I went looking, climbed onto an old R.R. grade and not too far along was a station house.
It was the door of that station swinging back and forth in the wind that had made my sleep unsuccessful. (Obviously I was nervous camping all alone).
Strangely, the old station building was not in very bad condition, and it had glass in the windows and an old leather sofa. So I moved my camp up to the station and slept the rest of that week on that old sofa along with a pack rat or two.
But I have never been able to figure out that old railroad bed that seemed to go nowhere for it did not appear in Climax. I believed it to be narrow gauge, but I’d hesitate to put money on a boy’s recollection. Now you have explained it! It had to be the abandoned old D&RG line that went to Kokomo by that 1911 agreement. Remarkable that 20 some years later the old station still stood.
I tried to locate the station when I finally got back to Colorado after WWII, but the rebuilt highway dumbfounded me.
Roger Henn
Ouray
