Buena Vista: Two Railroads on the Arkansas
Near Buena Vista, Colorado
Buena Vista sits on the Arkansas River at roughly eight thousand feet, and in the winter of eighteen eighty it became a railroad battleground. The Denver and Rio Grande and the Denver, South Park, and Pacific were both racing up the Arkansas Valley to reach the booming silver camp of Leadville, thirty-five miles north. Both lines reached Buena Vista within months of each other: both lines arrived in the early months of eighteen eighty.
The competition was sometimes literally violent, with armed crews occupying canyon passes to block rival construction. Buena Vista survived as a smelting and supply center, processing ore coming down from the mountains. When mining declined, the town pivoted to agriculture and then to recreation.
Today it is one of Colorado's premier whitewater towns, with the Arkansas providing some of the most accessible class-three and class-four rapids in the state.
