Como: The DSP&P's Mountain Hub
Near Breckenridge, Colorado
Como is a semi-ghost town sitting in the high meadows of South Park, and for a few decades in the eighteen eighties it was the railroad crossroads of a mountain empire. Italian coal miners are believed to have named the settlement after Lake Como in their homeland, and by eighteen eighty-one the Denver, South Park, and Pacific Railroad had made Como its operational hub. The narrow-gauge line branched here in three directions, eventually spanning hundreds of miles.
At its height Como had a roundhouse, machine shops, and a hotel. When trucks began pulling freight off the rails in the nineteen twenties, the town emptied out. The roundhouse handled repairs until nineteen thirty-seven.
The original roundhouse still stands along with a handful of wooden buildings, drawing history travelers off Route Two Eighty-Five.
