User:Draconrex/Rail transport in Colorado

Rail transport in Colorado is presently being created in this user space and is not an encyclopedia article as yet. Some of the proposed content will include the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and its branch lines, the Atchison and Topeka rail, the explorations of various government and military for proposed routes across the continent, the different gauge rails used, commodities which used rail transport from its raw form to its marketplace, people who made rail transport possible, and other items of interest which pertain to rail transport in Colorado. Excerpts from Wikipedia articles are utilized in the following sections to establish a time frame for rail transport in Colorado.

Rail history in the United States
The year 1830 marks the beginning of rail transport in the United States with Peter Cooper's steam locomotive, the Tom Thumb, operated on 13 mi of Baltimore and Ohio railroad track. The Baltimore and Ohio that opened in 1830 was the first to evolve from a single line to a network in the United States.

Expedition of John Williams Gunnison
Senator Thomas H. Benton (Missouri, 1820-1850), appeals for a railroad between the 38th and 39th parallels and by the close of the 31st Congress in 1852 appropriations for a survey was acquired. John Williams Gunnison was selected to head the expedition. Further details and route explained. .

Colorado Territory and its growth
The Territory of Colorado was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 28, 1861, until August 1, 1876, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Colorado. Rail transport during these years is exhibited in the expansion of United States and the western movement. November 18, 1867, the Union Pacific Railroad arrives at Julesburg, Colorado. Only nine miles (14 km) of the Union Pacific mainline are built through the northeast corner of the Territory of Colorado. The Denver Pacific Railroad was formed in 1867 to connect Denver to the transcontinental railroad to the north, of which construction and operation was authorized by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864 during the American Civil War. The Kansas Pacific Railway connected to Denver a few months later. Although the Kansas Pacific had intended originally to build only as far west as Fort Riley, citizens in Denver, eager to connect to the national network of rails, lobbied furiously to extend the Union Pacific lines to reach their city. In 1868, the U.S. Congress enacted a law that was signed by President Andrew Johnson to build a second-phase extension of the line to the Rocky Mountains, with the intention of continuing past Denver through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, to compete with the Union Pacific main line. In August 1870 the Kansas Pacific laid the last spike connecting to the Denver Pacific line at Strasburg, Colorado and the first true Atlantic to Pacific United States railroad was completed. While the Union Pacific line had been declared finished in 1869 with the Golden spike event in Utah, linking it with the Central Pacific Railroad, passengers were required to disembark the train and cross the Missouri River at Omaha by boat. With the Denver and Kansas lines complete, it was finally possible to embark a train on the east coast and disembark on the west coast. This cemented Colorado's ambition for statehood and Denver's desire to be its capital city.

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
The Santa Fe's tracks reached the Kansas/Colorado state line in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado in 1876. Leadville was the most productive of all of the Colorado mining regions. Mining in the area began in 1859, first for gold and then (two decades later) for silver. Several of the Santa Fe's board of directors (along with President Strong) sought to capitalize on the need to supply the mining towns of Colorado and northern New Mexico with food, equipment and other supplies. To that end, Santa Fe sought to extend its route westward from Pueblo along the Arkansas River, and through the Royal Gorge in 1877. The Royal Gorge was a bottleneck along the Arkansas too narrow for both the Santa Fe and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad to pass through, and there was no other reasonable access to the South Park area; thus, a race ensued to build trackage through the Gorge. Physical confrontations led to two years of armed conflict, essentially low-level guerrilla warfare between the two companies that came to be known as the Royal Gorge Railroad War. Federal intervention prompted an out-of-court settlement on February 2, 1880, in the form of the so-called "Treaty of Boston", wherein the DRGW was allowed to complete its line and lease it for use by the Santa Fe. The DRGW paid an estimated $1.4 million to Santa Fe for its work within the Gorge and agreed not to extend its line to Santa Fe, while the ATSF agreed to forego its planned routes to Denver and Leadville.

Parson's Expedition of 1873
Geologic surveys lead to the discovery of gold and silver ores and the ranchlands of the Gunnison Country. The Gunnison and Tomichi valleys settlement spur the railways across the continental divide.

The Continental Divide
The Denver, South Park and Pacific route tunnels through the mountain under Altman Pass which is later renamed Alpine Pass for the tunnel called Alpine Tunnel, while the Denver & Rio Grande purchases Otto Mear's Marshall Pass Toll Road and becomes the only narrow gauge mainline across the divide.