JULY 2022

 

PHANTOM CANYON TUNNEL

I told you last month that I would tell you some stories this month - and so I will!

The Phantom Canyon road was originally the Florence & Cripple Creek railroad and connected Victor, CO with Florence, CO. Cripple Creek is a town about 6 miles from Victor, and in the 1890's gold was discovered there.  Soon gold was being mined all over the area, and the population of Cripple Creek was some 30,000; Victor somewhat less. (Compare that to the  1950's when the populations were around 600 and 300, respectively!) Thousands of prospectors arrived between 1890-1910 and the area became the "World's Greatest Gold Camp". Over 22,400,000 oz of gold was extracted from over 500 mines in the Cripple Creek and Victor region. The Florence & Cripple Creek rail road was built in 1894 to haul the gold ore from Cripple Creek  down to the main east/west railroad at Florence. There are two tunnels such as the one above on the line. The Phantom Canyon railroad only ran until 1915, but thereafter became one of the main roads to connect Cripple Creek and Canon City, which is only a few miles from Florence.

My grandfather, Walt, whose 137th birthday was last month, was the son of a blacksmith who followed the gold and silver boom towns in Colorado with his family. Grandpa was a teenager when he lived in Cripple Creek, and as I was growing up, he regaled me with stories of the wild boom town goings-on. Cripple Creek/Victor was important to me because in the early 1950's, when I was 9 or so, my father acquired summer grazing for our cattle in the high country. Thus, every summer we would trail our cattle up to Cripple Creek for the summer.  The cattle were driven up, and came back down, a different road. But we usually went back and forth on the Phantom Canyon road during the summer. It's about 30 miles of washboardy gravel road from our winter grazing land near Canon City to Cripple Creek, a 5,000 ft elevation gain, and it took around 1 1/2 hours. We traveled that road two or three times a month each summer, from the time I was 9 or so until I was 18. We'd trail the cattle up the end of May, and they were trailed back down to the winter grazing pastures in October. I can remember looking up as we went through the tunnel, and thinking about the trains that had gone before, whose smoke had blackened the rough hewn rock of the tunnel.  We would be in the pickup, the four of us, so I had to sit forward. Not so comfortable, but great viewing in the tunnels! They were the highlight of the journey. Both on the road, and on horseback checking the cattle and fences, I had lots of time to look at the ghost towns, ramshackle buildings, and all the holes in the ground throughout the mountain pastures. I'd be riding through the aspen trees, and there would be a giant pile of rusted tin cans beside a pile of rocks, and a hole in the ground. I'd think about all the stories Grandpa told of fortunes found, but mostly fortunes hoped for, but never found. 

Grandpa had three brothers, and when he was still a teenager, his father decided boom towns weren't great places to raise boys! So he bought a farm in the Arkansas Valley near Rocky Ford, and put the boys to work! Thus, my grandfather became a farmer, but in his heart he was always thinking about finding gold, or later, finding uranium or thorium.  He had a porch full of rocks from a thorium claim he had, which was a long ways from the farm. He had a geiger counter, and us kids were fascinated by its beepings, which were always accompanied by a story about where that rock was found, and it's possibility of making him rich! He was a great story teller.

Next month's photo is from the Cripple Creek area, so I'll include a few more stories and photos then!

Have a great 4th of July!