Portal:Trains/Selected picture/Week 39, 2007

The Royal Gorge in Colorado (United States) a canyon of the Arkansas River. Visible in the photo is the "hanging bridge" with its unusual cross-canyon girders.

The discovery of silver and lead near Leadville in 1877 prompted a race to build rail access to the area. The Royal Gorge was a bottleneck too narrow for both the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad to pass through, and there was no other reasonable access to the South Park area. Both railroad crews thus took to fighting the Royal Gorge Railroad War, two years of essentially low-level guerrilla warfare between the two companies. Federal intervention prompted the so-called "Treaty of Boston" to end the fighting. The D&RGW completed its line and leased it for use by the Santa Fe.