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Duane Smith 236 The Silverton, Gladstone and Northerly Railroad was constructed in 1899 to thesmallcampofGladstoneandtheminesnearit.Thepurposeofthislittleline,just 7 miles (11km)long,wastobringoresand concentratestoSilverton, therebyreducing shipping costs and making it possible to mine low-grade ore economically. While this line initially made money, 1907 brought hard times. The mining boom had passed, and smelters closed, reducing its freight to nearly nothing until only three trains ran each week. The original owners lost their troubled railroad in 1915, and Mears purchased it, although he could not make it operate profitably. In 1922, with the closing of the Gold King Mine, the line’s career ended. It fell under the jurisdiction of the Silverton Northern during the last years of its existence. Thethreelittlelineshadlastedforoverfiftyyearsofflamboyantandspectacular Rocky Mountain railroading. Their primary goal of turning many marginal mines into big producers did not pan out as expected, despite great hopes. The decline in the price of silver was no help. There was nothing the railroads or the miners could do about that. The silver issue died with William Jennings Bryan’s defeat in 1896 by the Republicans and their gold platform. With the coming of improved highways, the automobile and truck finally did in Silverton’s railroads as surely as they had finished off other railroads. Otto Mears was not finished, however. Frustrated by not being able to go down the Uncompahgre Canyon and its 8-mile (13-km) gap between Ironton Park and Ouray, he decided to go around it—although this was not the only reason he built the 172-mile (277-km) Rio Grande Southern Railway (RGS) from Durango to Ridgway. There were rich mines to be tapped, especially at booming, prosperous Telluride and, to a lesser extent, at Rico and places in between. Incorporated in 1895, the RGS was built from both ends. As with his other routes, Mears was short of money and received financial backing from easterners and others, eventually including the D&RG. The Durango extension, as it was called, tapped the coal camps of Porter and Hesperus in 1890 and sped on. That same year, work started from Ridgway and, in July 1891, reached one of the rail line’s primary goals, Telluride. That branch opened the richest mines along the route. The RGS’s biggest problem (climbing from the valley up and over Lizard Head Pass) was overcome by construction of the Ophir Loop. This proved to be one of the most famous engineering accomplishments in Colorado, as well as a tourist attraction. Construction delays on this segment, though, slowed the entire project. Finally, on October 15, 1891, the line was completed—a year later than Mears had planned. That did not matter at Rico, where a silver spike was driven and a grand “silver ball” was held. A more riotous celebration of workers and uninvited locals was held in local saloons and in the red-light district. For the RGS, the good years ended all too soon, with the 1893 crash. Mears, though, enjoyed the brief prosperity and issued some of his famous passes to ride S a n J u a n r a i l r o a d i n g 237 the railroad. The beautiful buckskin and solid-silver passes and silver watch fobs became famous. He outdid himself in 1892 with his silver-filigree pass. The RGS went into receivership in August 1893, one of the victims of the depression that lasted throughout Colorado for another five to six years. Silver mining never regained its former excitement or position in Colorado mining. Mears lost control of his “great dream” and, along with it, a large portion of his personal fortune. Meanwhile, the D&RG had purchased large blocks of RGS bonds prior to the “silver panic,” when profits looked good. After all, the RGS ran from one D&RG track to another, from Durango to Ridgway. While it kept the original name, it became only a DR&G feeder line, serving a silver-mining area that was no longer mining silver. Fortunately for the railroad, Telluride’s mines took up some of the slack until World War I. Also, tourism began to play a more important role because of the interest in what in 1906 became Mesa Verde National Park. The “swing around the circuit,” or the “rainbow route,” from Denver to Durango, to Silverton, to Ironton, via stage to Ouray, and back to Denver became a tourist must. Traveling through beautiful mountain scenery with the chance to visit the rapidly disappearing mining West—and perhaps to take a side...

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