Limon: Where the Trains Split

Out on the eastern Colorado plains, Limon began as a construction camp in eighteen eighty-eight, named for John Limon, a foreman on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad laying new track west toward the mountains.

The town's importance came from geography. The Rock Island chose this flat spot on the high plains as the division point where its main line forked: one branch heading northwest to Denver, the other southwest to Colorado Springs. Two railroads crossed here, the Union Pacific had already passed through, and for decades Limon was the busiest junction on the eastern plains.

The elegant depot built in nineteen ten sat at the triangular point where the two rail lines met. Passenger trains like the Rocky Mountain Rocket would arrive as one train and leave as two. The depot stayed in use until nineteen eighty, and it now houses the Limon Heritage Museum. Today Interstate Seventy and U.S. Highway Two Eighty-Seven cross here instead of rail lines, but Limon remains what it has always been: a place where roads divide and people choose which way to go.