ANTONITO — With the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad season now in full swing, a little of the narrow gauge railroad’s history might be of particular interest. 

About 130 years ago, in February of 1880, the railroad’s first tracks of the San Juan Extension were laid down, running from Alamosa south to Antonito. The parent company – Denver and Rio Grande Railroad – chose narrow gauge tracks that were three feet instead of the standard four feet eight and a half inches. The reasons for the choice were simple and common sense; narrow gauge was less expensive to build and the tracks could accommodate tighter radius curves, allowing them to be placed where standard gauge tracks wouldn’t fit.  

The first segment of the line – from Alamosa to Antonito – was completed within a month. The next stretch – from Antonito to Chama, New Mexico – took a little longer, finally being completed on December 31, the last day of 1880. 

Quite a lot was accomplished during those months as the tracks had ultimately been laid over 64 miles of terrain, gone through two tunnels, over a 10,015-foot pass and skirted a 600-foot gorge.  As the crow flies, the distance is only about 35 miles, which is great news if you’re a crow but kind of irrelevant if you travel on two legs – or in this case, three feet – by land. 

At that time, the land then continued on toward Durango for the purpose of connecting with the mineral resources industry in the Silverton area. 

The arrival of the railroad in Chama prompted the first boom of its existence as extensive logging began in the rich forests that were found in the area. Logging, of course, leads to lumber mills which were in no short supply to the areas south and west of Chama. Lumber mills, in turn, lead to freight transportation, which was of great revenue benefit for the railroad, prosperity that continued for the next 80 years. 

A second boom impacted the railroad when oil was discovered near Farmington, New Mexico. That discovery – always more lucrative than lumber – resulted in 60-car pipe trains headed west out of Antonito. 

But, as the saying goes, “you can’t fool Mother Nature” and nature certainly played a part in causing complications for the line, namely the amount of snow that fell on Cumbres Pass, which sits more than 10,000 feet above sea level. At that time, it could be expected that a couple times every decade as much as 500 inches of snow would fall on Cumbres Pass in a single season, requiring the railroad to purchase rotary sweepers just to keep the line open. was not uncommon for as much as 500 inches of snow to fall in a single season, requiring the railroad to purchase rotary snowplows, a piece of railroad equipment with a large circular set of blades on its front end that rotate to cut through the snow on the track ahead of it. 

Costs had been increasing since the railroad first came into operation but it was a single snowstorm in the winter of 1951 to 1952 – called the “Granddaddy of All Snowstorms”  and part of the same storm systems that dropped more than 87 feet in parts of the Sierra mountains of California – that first raised the prospect of abandoning the line. 

It would be another 16 years but, eventually, in September of 1968, the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad filed for abandonment of its narrow gauge lines. A year later, legislation was signed in New Mexico that provided a way for the state of New Mexico to buy the track between Chama and Antonito. In 1970, Colorado passed similar legislation. The two states then took joint ownership of the line and, by 1971, 91 years after the first track was laid, the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad was formed. 

It should be noted that, starting in that same period of time, the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad began its career in film with its inaugural appearance in “The Good Guys and the Bad Guys” (1969), starring Robert Mitchum and George Kennedy. Other films where the railroad made an appearance included “Bite the Bullet” (1975), “The Missouri Breaks” (1976), “Butch and Sundance: the Early Days” (1979), “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989) and “The Harder They Fall” (2021). 

The Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad is now in full swing from May 31 to October 25. Anyone wishing to see extraordinary scenery unlike anywhere else while taking a step back in time and experiencing travel from a century ago should book a spot by going to Excursions | Cumbres and Toltec Railroad.  Those interested in reading a first-hand account of the trip should go to www.alamosanews.com/stories/cumbres-and-toltec-train-season-begins-memorial-day-weekend,49633/.