COBWEB CORNERS: Colorado Springs' second railroad
By Mel McFarland New Orleans was the goal of a group of Denver businessmen. In January 1881, the group planned and incorporated a new Denver railroad. The Denver and New Orleans was bound for the gulf shipping port. The company had set an optimistic route - running east of the prosperous Front Range to Trinidad. The D&NO construction crews followed Jimmy Camp Creek south to near Fountain by 1883. A branch was built to the coal mines near Franceville Junction. The railroad built down Jimmy Camp Creek generally well away from the D&RG. The two came close together near Fountain. They ran parallel for several miles to Little Buttes, where the D&RG crossed back to the west bank of the Fountain. The D&NO stayed on higher ground, hoping to avoid the flooding problems that plagued the D&RG. The railroad built a station called Manitou Junction east of Colorado Springs. Nowhere near Manitou, the station was located 10 miles east of Colorado Springs (now just north of Peterson AFB). ![]() Former Governor John Evans was afraid that General Palmer's interests in Colorado Springs would block the D&NO's construction into town. Property was quietly purchased or leased, and in the dark of the night a crew quietly built a rough track in the street south from the projected depot site, near downtown. At Moreno Street the crew worked eastward to the edge of town. In the morning a protest was raised, but the construction was in place, and legal. The little trick was not the last for Moreno Street. The crude track would not support a train, and it sat for a month before a finishing crew from Manitou Junction made it usable. The track was ready in early December. The first passenger train, a special excursion from Denver, arrived on December 5. The depot was a short walk from downtown. One of their main freight customers was a coal yard in Colorado City which got coal from the Franceville mine. Their little depot sat in what would be Sahwatch Street, a block south of Colorado Avenue. It was used until the big Antlers Fire in 1899 engulfed this area. There were railroad tracks in Sahwatch until just recently. The D&NO became part of the Colorado and Southern, and the line south of Denver was in use up until 1901 to Pueblo, and abandoned south of Manitou Junction in 1913. A short piece of it in Denver is now used by light rail, but most of it was taken up in 1935. |