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The annual convention of the Colorado Chapter of the International Society of Freeloaders, Hustlers and Scrounge Artists was held in Leadville last Friday.
Formally, the occasion was a press excursion on the new Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railway. Since the ride was free if you could talk your way aboard, and they served food and drink afterward, I shouldn't have been surprised to see a lot of people I knew, many of whom haven't held a steady job since Jimmy Carter was in the White House.
Don't hold that against the Leadville, Colorado & Southern, though. You'll ride with a better class of people when they're all paying customers, and besides, the resurrection of this 13-mile railroad spur is an improbable success story. It's been a while since there was much good news from Leadville.
The full story goes back more than a century, and is perhaps of interest only to fellow railroad buffs. Just hitting the high spots of rivalries, ownerships and abandonments, real and threatened, would take far more space than I have.
Most recently, the spur line to Climax was owned by the Burlington Northern, which wanted to abandon it -- with the Climax Molybdenum Mine shut down, there wasn't any freight to haul. But by some miracle, Ken and Stephanie Olsen of Leadville were able to purchase the entire branch for $10. They got the track, two locomotives, a roundhouse, five cabooses, a flanger and a dozen or so freight cars.
With a $250,000 loan from the Small Business Administration, they converted old flatcars into handsome open excursion cars for passengers. They bought the old Colorado & Southern depot from the City of Leadville, and set a crew of carpenters and painters to refurbishing it.
Now you can walk into the station, buy a ticket, and board the train for a round trip to Climax. The views, of course, are magnificent. Mounts Elbert and Massive, the two highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains, are almost always in sight. The line climbs and twists along the side of the valley, so there's often an expanse below you, and above you loom the crags of the Mosquito Range.
But there's more to a train ride than scenery. So much
of American lore is tied to the rails. We sing of Casey
Jones
and that Life is like a Mountain Railroad.
We speak of whistlestops
and jerkwater towns,
of red-light districts
and highballs.
There
is a lot of America that just can't be comprehended unless
you ride a train from time to time.
Getting closer to home, much of Colorado's history is tied to Leadville, the quintessential mining town. The Leadville silver excitement of 1878 sent prospectors throughout our mountains; Aspen is but one result. The fortunes that came out of Leadville built Denver's first skyscrapers, as well as the mansions of Capitol Hill and extensive financial empires. Just about anywhere you care to look -- the Guggenheim Foundation, Boettcher & Co., May Department Stores -- you'll find a Leadville connection if you look closely.
Even our ski industry has roots in Leadville. Aspen and Vail were, in large part, developed by veterans of the famed Tenth Mountain Division. Those troops trained at Camp Hale, just over Tennessee Pass from Leadville. They learned to ski where Ski Cooper is today. They went to Leadville to indulge in various vices when they got weekend passes. They were so taken by the high country that after the war, they returned to Colorado and built ski resorts.
Boarding a train in Leadville is one of those acts which
carries the aura of authentic Coloradoness.
It's
like eating chili verde in San Luis, getting frostbite in
the Gunnison Country, nursing an old pickup over Engineer
Pass, drinking breakfast at the Gold Pan in Breckenridge,
chewing the water in Sterling, crawling up Mount Elbert,
despairing of the General Assembly, panning for gold,
skiing the back bowls at Vail, marveling at the prices in
the boutiques of Aspen, riding a raft past Radium, playing
cribbage in a cabin during a blizzard in St. Elmo, taking
the No. 15 bus along East Colfax.
Besides that, the ride was so much fun that I plan to take the family up there this summer, and pay full fare. That could get me thrown out of the Freeloaders' Society, but it's a chance I'm willing to take.
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