Sidebar by Clint Driscoll
Transportation – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
1. The old Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad depot, shown during prepartions for its move last spring, is not the only piece of railroading history hidden away in Buena Vista. Other structures related to the Midland, D&RG, and the DSP&P still exist today, although their uses, and in soem cases their forms, have changed.
2. The “Keyhole House” now located at 129 South Gunnison was originally built on Railroad Street alongside the D&RG tracks in 1889. According to Suzy Kelly in her Historic Walking Tour of Buena Vista, the structure was a telegraph office. From his box window seat the telegrapher took and sent messages. When an express train came through, message flimsies were attached to a pole which had a loop at one end. As the locomotive passed, the telegrapher held out the pole which the engineer snagged by placing his arm through the loop. Once the messages were retrieved the pole was dropped alongside the rails.
3. Like all good residents of mountain towns, Buena Vistans never let anything go to waste. When the second D&RG depot was razed in the 1960s the brick, block and timbers were used to build the town’s police and fire headquarters at 123 Linderman Avenue.
4. In the April, 2003 edition of The Bogies and the Loop, the newsletter of the DSP&P Historical Society, Ray Perschbacher writes that his grandfather, Joe, a railroader with the Colorado & Southern which bought out the DSP&P was assigned to Buena Vista in 1911. Joe made a home for his wife Maude and their children out of two section houses shipped in from Schwanders, a stop in the DSP&P line near Trout Creek where it exits the Trout Creek Pass gulch south and east of Johnson Village. The house still stands at 132 James Street.
5. According to Kelly’s guide, the Groy home at 215 South Gunnison was originally the section crew house (maybe the bunkhouse) located near the Midland Railroad depot on the grade east of town. The stop was on the west face of Free Gold Hill, across the Arkansas River and 450 feet above town. Passengers and freight destined for Buena Vista were transported to town on the switch backing “Hack Road” which is now part of the Barbara Whipple scenic trail. The Hack Road bridge across the river burned in an arson fire in 1957. Probably the building was disassembled and taken down the road after the Midland ceased operations after World War I.
6. Although the claim for the Penguin Construction Company building at 319 East Cedar is apocryphal, various sources have said it was originally built as the D&RG Stationmaster’s residence. According to old maps, a house existed at the site in 1882 and the building is one of only two brick structures in an area of rough-sawn clapboard and board-and-batten false-fronts in early photos. For its time it was fairly luxurious but because its location is so close to the rail line (one block) there is a good possibility the rumors are true. Research is eing done to verify the theory.
