Another Stop Along the Tracks of Time

(Originally published in the Rocky Mountain News, October 2007)

At the eastern edge of Colorado’s rugged San Juan Mountains, along the headwaters of the Rio Grande, lie 22 miles of rail — a small section of which I clambered over as a child. Now older, I walk my dog down the dormant tracks, stomping through thick brush and skirting aspens that have sprouted between the rotting ties. I let go of the leash and watch the part-sled dog bound in and out of the wildflowers.

Soon, our modest excursions will come to an end.

Tourists, as many as 600 a day, will ride a train through this river valley, resurrecting a railroad long discarded. Resurrection, however, is pitting one community against another and adding spice to my family’s dinner conversations.

The railroad, part of the original Denver & Rio Grande built in the 1870s, connects the small towns of South Fork and Creede. Two dozen miles separate these rural communities; many more separate their aspirations. South Fork residents view a tourist train as a boost to their flagging economy while the majority of Creede prefers, like my parents, to keep its town small and familiar.

Opponents are trying through litigation to silence the coming whistle, but so far, the train is still on track, with volunteers at work on restoration.

It is an old story: change confronts status quo; quo resists; change comes anyway. It is an old story unfolding anew here, where railroads are remnants of the Old West, visible reminders of the race for ore that pushed settlements farther into the frontier. These aging lines are now hastening forward the New West, where tourism thrives — some say leeches — on nature’s nexus with history. For less than $100, a tourist can discover wildlife, rousing scenery, ramshackle mines and Pony Express hideouts — all from the belly of a train.

As Frederick Jackson Turner once observed, “The appeal of the undiscovered is strong in America.”

Three miles outside of South Fork, on the way to Creede, sits my family’s cabin, separated from the river by the railroad. The two ribbons of steel masquerade as an appendage to our property. We sometimes position our cheap lawn chairs in the middle of the tracks to get a better look at Del Norte Peak. We don’t own them, but somehow the tracks feel like ours.

The real owner, Don Shank, president of the Denver and Rio Grande Historical Foundation, purchased the right of way in 1999, after decades of disuse.

Shank points to the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge, which hauls more than 200,000 tourists a year, as a success worth emulating.

For Mom and Dad, Shank is persona non grata.

It would be easy to dismiss my parents’ sentiments as the cry of the NIMBY. But they came here, to this land of soaring cliffs, majestic aspens and bad Mexican food, to escape the inertness of suburbia. Why should they trade the quietude of morning — now spent gazing at the river and sipping coffee — for the shrill sound of a train? In Creede, people worry that it will alter not just their mornings but their way of life. For them, the lyrics of folk singer Richard Thompson (“All that’s left now of the old days — damned ol’ coyotes and me”) are more cautionary than entertaining.

But it is the old days of the West that charm and entice the tourist. The frontier once satisfied a zeal for independence and a longing for expanse. Now, left without a frontier, tourist trains help recast one.

In our cabin hangs a painting of the Rio Grande and Denver Southern. It is affective, the image of the train moving swiftly through the mountains on a snowy evening, conjuring up romantic notions of what came before, of men and women in search of destiny, however manifest. It is this abiding spirit of the pioneer that tugs.

My parents might scoff at this delicate treatment of the train (as well they should), but come on — trying to stop a train is like, well, like trying to stop a train. As for my dog and me, we will listen for the whistle and then find a different path for our walks.