The Denver and Rio Grande Comes to the Coal
Near Crested Butte, Colorado
The building near the south end of town, with its steep roof and railroad bones, is the old Denver and Rio Grande depot, and it explains why Crested Butte grew at all. In the early eighteen eighties, the Denver and Rio Grande was racing narrow gauge tracks across the mountains of Colorado, three feet between the rails instead of the standard four feet eight and a half inches, so the little trains could bend around tight canyon curves. The line pushed over the Continental Divide at Marshall Pass and reached Gunnison on August sixth, eighteen eighty one.
Just three months later, the railroad extended its tracks north to tap the rich coal of the Crested Butte region, with regular service beginning that November. The railroad did not come for the scenery. It came for the coal, and for the coke that fed smelters across the Rockies.
The narrow gauge ended Crested Butte's isolation and let the coal industry, and the town, explode in size. Coal cars rolled south for decades. When the big mines closed, the trains stopped and the tracks were pulled up, and the depot survived as a reminder of the iron road that once made this remote valley part of the wider world.
