About this site

A reference on Durango, the narrow-gauge railroad and the San Juan country around them.

The material divides five ways. Railroad covers the Denver & Rio Grande’s arrival in 1880, the 45.4 miles of three-foot track to Silverton, the Baldwin locomotives that still work it, and the two fires that interrupted it. High Country covers the San Juan Mountains above the town — the passes, the Weminuche, the Animas River and the toll roads Otto Mears built before the territory would.

Cliff Dwellings covers Mesa Verde and Chimney Rock: what Richard Wetherill and Charlie Mason saw on 18 December 1888, what Gustaf Nordenskiöld took to Europe in 1891, and what the National Park Service records about the structures now. Ute Country covers the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute nations and the treaty record from the Brunot Agreement of 1873 forward, written from published sources. Main Avenue covers the buildings: the Strater Hotel of 1887, the depot the railroad built twice, the cast-iron fronts, the mesa campus and the old power plant on the river.

Elevations, acreages and dates are given as the source gives them — USGS, USFS, the National Park Service, the EPA, or the railroad. Every piece is listed on the archive page.