The Stanley Steamer Up From Lyons

Imagine arriving in Estes Park before there was any easy road. In the early nineteen hundreds the railroad would carry you only as far as small towns at the foot of the mountains, places like Lyons, Loveland, and Longmont. To finish the journey, guests of the Stanley Hotel climbed aboard one of Freelan Oscar Stanley's own creations, the Stanley Mountain Wagon.

This was among the largest steam cars ever built, a long open bodied machine on a wooden frame that could carry as many as nine to twelve passengers plus their luggage. It was powered by Stanley's biggest engine, rated at around thirty horsepower, and it hissed and steamed its way up the twisting grades where earlier travelers had only had horse teams. The Carriage House at the hotel was built to shelter this fleet.

For a resort guest of that era, the ride itself was part of the adventure, a steam powered climb from the plains into the high country, delivered by the very machine that had made the hotel's owner famous. The Mountain Wagons carried tourists into the mountains for years.