Volume 16, Issue 24, 2003 HHII SS TTOORRIICCAA LL LLYY JJEE FF FF CCOO CONTENTS HI S TORR ICC Traceries 2 First Place Winner Writer’s Award Contest E F F C O Prohibition in J Republican County J 8 Moonshiners, Robbers and Frontier Law 14 Preserving Your Family’s Heirlooms 18 Jefferson County Historic Hall of Fame 22 Lois Cunniff Lindstrom Kennedy George Morrison Sr. An Historic Setting on a Stop of the Leyden Rail Route 24 The Leyden Mine 30 Lingering Along the Lariat Loop Scenic and Historic Byway 32 Golden’s Endangered Sites List 36 Lost Places in Jefferson County 40 Historic Sites Designated in Jefferson County 43 JCHC News & Members 44 JCHC Publications Committee Erlene Hulsey-Lutz, Chair, Milly Roeder, Vice Chair, Lee Heideman, Editor, Larry Lotito, Norm Meyer, Mark McGoff Published by The Jefferson County Historical Commission (JCHC) Volume 16, Issue 34, 2003 ISSN 1532-6047 Cover Photo: C&S Train that ran up the South Platte River to Buffalo and beyond. Photo courtesy of Colorado Railroad Museum C & S Train leaving Golden, 1941 Design & Layout Photo by Otto Perry, Courtesy of FinePrint, Golden, CO Colorado Railroad Museum RR ICCA L LYY O -1- Traceries Photos courtesy of Colorado Railroad Museum Colorado Central #585, 1855 The web of railroads that swept around the Table Mountains, up the watercourses, and to the mineral digs in productive Jefferson County over a century ago First Place, Writer’s Award Contest them long gone, their scruffy through Arvada, up South Boulder By Jerry Grunska roadbeds today either drowned or Creek, and through the Moffat looking like natural embankments Tunnel all the way to San Francisco n 1888 U.S. Geological in the creases between and along- Bay. (It doesn’t cross the bay but Survey map of western side the hills. terminates in Emeryville just AJefferson County looks They followed the watercourses outside of Oakland.) This line, like a jewelry display case, with for the most part - Leyden Creek, David Moffat’s burning ambition, necklaces festooned around those Ralston Creek, Bear Creek - where started as the Denver Northwestern twin volcanic mesas, with thorny 2 to 4 percent grades could be & Pacific in 1903 with Pacific in its spurs sticking out toward the managed. Only a trio of them name but with hopes only to reach hogback. These are the railroads, stuck their tendrils into the heart Salt Lake City. It made it to Craig, with flashes of long forgotten of the Rockies beyond the county. Colorado, after negotiating perilous names, each of them representing One is still there, the Burlington Rollins Pass on the Continental a dream of prosperity and most of Northern Amtrak line plowing Divide 25 years before the tunnel -2- was completed to Winter Park. aim up Waterton Canyon on the railroads into the mountains The Denver South Park & South Platte in 1878, and that’s thereafter were narrow gauge. Pacific was the first railroad to where the line went (reaching Incidentally, Governor Evans had try penetrating the interior of the Webster, west of Bailey and Grant an interesting past as a promoter Rockies. In 1874 Territorial Gover- in 1879), eventually going over before he ever came to Colorado. nor John Evans led a consortium three Continental Divide passes to A medical doctor from Indiana, he of investors who were determined Gunnison. The present hiking trail never practiced medicine. Instead, to send rails up Bear Creek. The up Waterton Canyon in Jefferson he gathered a group of investors object was to reach the gold dig- County is the roadbed of this in Chicago and founded North- gings in South Park and beyond. route, the rails and ties of which western University, although none Hope included going over Hoosier were pulled up in the 1930s. of the other original five trustees Pass into Breckenridge. How the The Denver South Park & had a college education. The rails would go over the mountains Pacific utilized an unusual rail town north of Chicago on Lake to South Park was uncertain, spacing, three feet in width, called Michigan where the university is and the line went from Sheridan narrow gauge. The “squeezed” located was named in his honor, Junction only as far as George width (regular gauge is 4 feet, Evanston, just as a Weld County Morrison’s homestead where Bear 8 1/2 inches) permitted sharper town, a Denver street, and a Front Creek slides through the hogback. turns than regular width, and Range mountain bear his name Sheridan Junction was near the the smaller engines and relatively in Colorado. confluence of Bear Creek with the light cars could move up inclines Once Planted, They South Platte River, and the line that were steeper than standard Proliferated Westward west to Morrison followed largely gauge could handle. At the time The “stem” from which almost where Hampden Avenue is today when Evans’s group installed the all Colorado railroads sprang was (as far as Kipling), all remnants rails, this was a novel conception. the Denver Pacific connection to rare and mostly obliterated by Rails themselves could be lighter the Union Pacific cross-country development. too - 30-40 lbs. per foot as railroad at Cheyenne, Wyoming, in The settlement at the terminus opposed to 60-90 lbs. for 1869. A year later the line from was called Jefferson, but a post standard gauge. Virtually all Kansas met this railroad in Denver, office was established in that same year with the name changed to Morrison. It took the first train View of the Colorado Central grade just north of Tucker Lake/Golden, Colorado, April 1977. Some ties are still in place along this stretch of track.View looking southwest. 1 1/2 hours to reach Morrison, with 150 people aboard from Evans’s First Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Denver. In Morrison the outing was festive, with family picnics featuring lemonade and ice cream, some people fishing and others hiking up both Bear Creek and Turkey Creek canyons. When regular service was inaugurated - $1.50 for a round trip from Denver - two trains operated daily and six-horse stagecoaches met the trains in Morrison, for a one-day trip to Fairplay, up Turkey Creek and over Kenosha Pass. Evans’s group then decided to -3- and then the first rails into the mines in Blackhawk and Central Graymont was removed in 1898 mountains up Clear Creek City, however, and it forked off up after the mines were depleted. Canyon out of Golden were South Clear Creek to the Gregory This 65-mile railroad hauled laid in 1872. U.S. Highway 6 Gulch diggings at Idaho Springs, ore for three decades to the half essentially follows this roadbed at on to Georgetown and Silver dozen or so smelters in Golden, present, up the canyon almost to Plume, and as far as Graymont and with crude wagon roads Idaho Springs. Again, great plans (the right of way can still be seen carrying people over the preceded development. This road, above I-70 toward the Eisenhower Continental Divide from the called Colorado Central, was Tunnel). Its ambition in this end of the line, Jefferson County slated to climb over the pass direction was to inch up over clearly became the Gateway to named for businessman Edward Loveland Pass into Summit the West. Berthoud, ending at Hot Sulfur County, but it stopped beyond In addition to hauling freight, Springs in Middle Park. It never the famous Georgetown Loop, and precious metal ores, and other made it. It did reach the gold track up there past Silver Plume to extraction such as coal, limestone, sandstone, soda ash, sulfur, and brick-making clay, these railroads into the canyons carried people, Colorado Central silver ore train travelling up Clear Creek Canyon. C. 1875. church congregations on picnic and flower-collection outings, and fraternal organizations on campouts. A group of Jesuit priests summered in Morrison for several years before 1900. The line became known as “The Sunday School Line” after 1900. Author Bob Griswold’s book, “The Morrison Branch of the South Park Line,” said that a crowd of 774 individuals from the Brotherhood of Railroad Firemen took two excursion trains to a picnic in Morrison in 1881. The Morrison line always had more revenue from passengers than freight, with John Brisben Walker’s 1909 funicular railway to the top of Mount Morrison (above what is now Red Rocks Amphitheater) being a strong attraction. Comical things happened on the railroads from time to time. Early traveler Isabel Bird called Clear Creek “Toughcuss Creek” because rude railroad workers wouldn’t let her sit down on a trip up the canyon until the conductor finally pried a bewhiskered churl off his seat. The railroad specifically asked -4- C & S train passing through Golden. passengers not to shoot Rocky east side of North Table Mountain, trains to reach all the way from Mountain bighorn sheep from angling northeast from there to Cheyenne to the Gulf of Mexico the train windows. connect with the Kansas Pacific (theoretically) without ever entering One time on the Morrison line tracks north of Denver. This route Denver. A roadbed was started, but a rider’s hat flew out the window, lay east of the present Quaker only a few rails were ever laid. and he pulled the emergency Street alignment. Shortly afterward Golden gave up its favored role as cord to stop the train. Panicked it was moved to the west side of Territorial Capitol when Colorado passengers thought a bridge had North Table, allowing it to aim became a state in 1876. washed out - spans did from time directly into Golden, away from On the Spur of the Moment to time in spring and summer Denver (1878).