Memories of Riding on The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad
I had a great Sunday with my three daughters, Saundra, Sharon, and Susan, and my granddaughter Michelle arriving with my new great grandson Jace, now four months old. The Sunday event was to celebrate Mother’s Day a week late. They all brought food, and we had a great morning brunch. I got to hold the baby, and I whistled to him. I whistled a lot growing up in the country and my favorite is to sound like a meadow lark. He really liked the sounds and gave me a big smile.
All my daughters are newspaper professionals and have spent many years in the business from having paper routes as youngsters to being top – notch newspaper executives.
My wife Gerri has saved many of their school papers and artwork. She was the room mother for all my children, including my son Patrick who lives in Idaho Springs and is our IT director. We all laughed and cajoled together over the various letters, drawings, paintings and writings during early elementary school days. All three of my daughters won IOOF(Odd Fellows Lodge) trips to the United Nations during their high school years while we lived in Craig. Two went to CSU and one to CU so go Rams and Buffs.
While looking at the documents, a letter from my oldest daughter Saundra was written as an elementary student in 1969 about David Moffat, the historic Colorado railroad Icon. He built the rail line to Steamboat and Craig and engineered the famed Moffat Tunnel, bearing his name, allowing trains to run through Rollinsville, in famed Gilpin County, and into the Western Slope towns. The tunnel contract has just been renewed, and Gov. Polis is working on restoring passenger service to those towns. The rail line was supposed to continue to Salt Lake City, but Moffat ran out of financing to extend the rail line further.
Growing up in Craig we had passenger service, and I can remember the gigantic steam locomotives at the depot on the south side of town, steam bellowing from the coal-fired boilers running the locomotives. They transported sheep, and cattle to the Denver stockyards and wool to Eastern mills. We would ship our livestock on the cattle train and my dad would ride in the caboose to arrive at the stockyards and see that his steers and heifers were watered and fed. The story goes that cattle buyers liked to see livestock from Western Colorado with black “soot” from the smoke of the locomotives coming through the Moffat Tunnel. While my dad rode the cattle train with his beloved cattle, my mother would ride the passenger train at night with my older brother Gilbert, age 12, and me, age 7, in sleeper bunks in the Pullman cars. On one very memorable train ride my brother and I were asleep on the upper bunk and during the night I had to pee; not wanting to wet the bed I climbed and out of the upper bunk and fell on the sleeping man below who was quite angry to have me landing on him in the middle of the night. The passenger was none other than Jim Pughe, a Moffat Tunnel Commissioner from Craig traveling to a meeting of the Tunnel Board. His dad, George Pughe, was an early day lawyer in Craig and his son Jim became a lawyer joining his dad in the law office. In later years I owned the Craig newspaper and ran his legal notices. I never reminded him of how we first met. His wife Barbara was the County Extension Agent and ran 4H and many activities. They were a leading couple in the community and Jim served on the Tunnel board for decades.
Back to the letter my daughter penned in 1969. It described the life of David Moffat with his private passenger railroad car resting in the Craig city park. We used the train car as the headquarters for the Chamber of Commerce ran by Alice Robinson. Saundra writes: “David Moffat was born in 1840 and died when he was 76 years old in 1916. She describes the rail car as follows: “If you walk back to the far end, you will see a shoe thing and a lot of weapons and there was a room right next to them where they kept their luggage and stuff. She concludes, “The kitchen was very small but would feed 12. They had everything they needed.” Saundra was eight years old, and her penmanship was excellent.
It appears that it won’t be long until a passenger service begins once again taking skiers to Eldora and stopping in Rollinsville, Winter Park, Steamboat Springs, and my hometown of Craig. A fine project, but don’t fall out of bed on the way.