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| Shay #3 at the enginehouse. BLE magazine 1903 |
Keith Pashina - And in the blink of an eye, The Gilpin Railroad was gone!
100 years ago this week, the Colorado & Southern Railroad sent a
dispatch to the Gilpin Railroad on January 12, 1917, and the Register-Call newspaper reported that
it was
“ordering all the tram cars, engines, and the other
equipment, to be in the roundhouse of the company, by Monday, the 15th… That
date ends the control of the line by that company (the C&S), and the
transfer of the line to Denver parties, who have bought the road, will be made
later. Reports have bee in circulation that the new owners intend to operate
the line if then can make it a paying proposition, and if the find to be a
white elephant on their hands, the line will be scrapped, and sold as junk.”
Unfortunately, the tramway could not be run profitably, and
the Register-Call reported the $67,000 of company bonds had been sold to
Radetsky Brothers of the Colorado Iron and Metal Company of Denver.
After various legal proceedings, the final sale was made on
June 2, 1917, to the Radetsky Brothers.
Thereafter, scrapping of the line proceeded. By October of that year,
trackage had been ripped up back to Chase Gulch, and the final removals to the
enginehouse completed a few weeks afterward.
Only a few remnants of the Gilpin Tram survived. The three
shays, numbers 3, 4, and 5, were sent to Radetsky’s Denver scrap yard potential
sale. There they sat for many years, with no buyers, and were scrapped in 1938.
Twenty of the Tram’s unique ore cars were purchased by the
Iron City Mill, and used to transfer ore from a nearby loading point to the
mill. Initially, these cars were hauled by horses, and later an internal
combustion engine.
Everything else – rolling stock, rail, and machinery were
scrapped.
The Gilpin Tram originally had a bright and prosperous
start, when, on December 11, 1887, the first ore shipments were made. The
Gilpin Tram was a technological marvel in its day, efficiently reaching many of
the major producing mines and reducing shipping costs. The tramway allowed
lower-grade ores, formerly not economical to mine, to now be extracted for
their ore.
This prosperous little railroad did not go unnoticed. The
Colorado & Southern Railroad recognized the traffic that the tramway could
feed them outbound ore and concentrates, and inbound coal and other supplies.
Also, new railroad construction to the north (the Denver, Northwestern and
Pacific) was threateningly close, and there was talk of building feeder lines
north from Central City to reach this standard gauge line. This could not be
allowed, and so on June 27, 1906, the Gilpin Tramway Company became wholly
owned by the Colorado and Southern.
But, the mining industry did not stand still. As the mines
grew deeper, removal of subsurface water became more of a problem. Innovations
in drilling appeared, too, and soon, haulage tunnels from Idaho Springs could
be built to reach to bottom levels of many Gilpin County mines, draining the
troublesome water, and hauling out the ore. Although many tunnels were started,
it was the Newhouse Tunnel from Idaho Springs that reached the mines. Ongoing
expansion by the Newhouse Tunnel was now taking over more and more ore haulage
from the producing mines in the district. Already, the tunnel had tapped former
major shippers on the tramway, such as the Frontenac, Aduddell, Saratoga, Old
Town, and others, with more mines being reached each year.
As more mine shafts were linked up, less and less ore was
hauled by the tramway. By 1914, former operating surpluses turned into losses.
1915 was no better, and 1916 even worse!
The prospects for any future increase in traffic were none
too good, either. By 1916, only the Polar Star Mill in Black Hawk was custom
treating ores on a regular basis. What had started out as a European war in
1914 had ominously grown, and now seemingly engulfed the whole world. This
impacted mining operations, too, and precious metal mining had dropped off
precipitously in 1914.
The handwriting was on the wall – the outlook was poor, and
it was time to end operations. So, with very little notice, the Gilpin Tram
faded away into history.
