Letter from Charlie Green
History – April 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
Responding to the Spikebuck question [in the March edition]: Spikebuck is one of dozens of sidings on rails around Colorado. They served two purposes: They allowed trains to pass each other and had water tanks for refilling the engines in the steam days. (Going up took a lot more water than going down so the upgrade train could fill without impeding the downhill train.) It was also a place for work trains to park while the crews worked along the main track.
Those of us who recall watching the trains go up and down the Arkansas River Canyon, can remember (not too many years ago) seeing a train sit at Spikebuck as another glided by. (Not because of a need for water, just because of traffic.)
Some of these sidings did have towns around them. Fountain, Kelker, Bragdon, and Eden were all little railroad communities with farming by Fountain Creek, and there were also farming communities along the tracks between Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Bragdon was special in that it was a point where two different railroads parted to get to Pueblo by different routes and there was a crossover siding connecting them.
Portland was special because it was a siding, town, and manufacturing center. Usually a siding is named the same as the town it is in, like Florence, La Veta, and Parkdale. On the other hand, Cañon City, Salida, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo have actual railroad yards so there are lots of switches, but they don’t have colorful names; they usually just have numbers.
Other sidings were only that, with no town or station. Spikebuck is one of those. Usually these are unnoticed but this one is memorable since, for miles in each direction, there are no structures to be seen.
Hobson is also a siding along the Arkansas River which few people have seen since you don’t drive by it, you drive to it (between Portland and Pueblo). Others are Occidental (up La Veta pass from La Veta), Mindeman (Trinidad to La Junta), and Falcon (east of Colorado Springs; this rail is now abandoned).
There are also a lot of named places along the tracks with no siding: Echo (upriver from Spikebuck) which was actually a tourist destination for day trips, Cedarwood (Pueblo to Walsenburg), Morning Glory and Calumet (Walsenburg up the Huerfano River valley), Forbes and Suffield (Walsenburg to Trinidad), and Wooton (up Raton Pass).
In a few cases, towns grew up to provide services for tourists while the train filled and reheated. Texas Creek is especially notable since it spontaneously grew up after the track to Westcliffe opened. (I am ignoring towns built by the railroad companies like Salida and Colorado Springs.)
Others provided local services and a train stop: Piñon, Cotopaxi (which would have barely existed without the trains), Branson (which was also a stage stop in its day), and Parkdale are examples.
These are just some of the railroad influences on placenames in Colorado; I’ve taken the liberty of using examples outside of the Central Colorado venue since I am familiar with many of these. One of the best sources of finding these little places is on Colorado topo maps. In some cases, you can still see the remains of the old water canals and towers (South of Texas Creek Junction along Texas Creek, the canal is still visible along the side of the railroad bed across the creek from CO 69.)
Charlie Green
Texas Creek