RIVERS OF SILVER, RIBBONS OF STEEL

[Music] from as far east as the great plains to as far west as the deserts of utah from the grasslands of wyoming to the badlands of new mexico few places in this land have known as much fame and infamy a pioneering generation whose god was silver the society that more than one newspaper called the world's only underground lunatic asylum but not all that once was has passed into dust and memories in and around the peaks and canyons the old west lingers still [Music] in durango the frontier lives on in what the indians called platy wagon no horse she's an old narrow gauger and up in the colorado high country she's as much a part of the frontier folklore as the cousin jacks and monty throwers who sought their fortunes with picks or short barrel cults at the end of track oh people come hundreds even thousands of miles to ride behind the city elegance of an american heirloom in the varnished luxury of cars that date back to custer's last stand each morning in season a bit of the 19th century shatters the calm of the 20th [Laughter] [Applause] [Applause] up ahead lies some of the finest scenery west of the mississippi the train climbs to the profile of animus canyon with the churning waters of the river of lost souls some 700 feet below onward as well as upward the presence of man recedes to little else but the narrow path of steel but for those who know what lies beyond is not nearly as impressive as what has gone on before or the journey ahead is not as much a ride north as it is a trip back reaching up from the edge of a thousand miles of prairie the rockies were called everything from the devil's backbone to the last great bedrock of riches yet untouched by man but depending upon which newspaper you happen to be real it was of the mountain highlands that horace greeley editorialized go west and on a generation scarred by civil war the advice was well taken pikes peaker bust someone said and the name stuck many of farm and family were left behind as adventurers made the pilgrimage of the hopeful and most of them busted for those that didn't and who survived the plane jumping of those that did each ton of rock dug up was a ton of rock that had to be moved and in a land where the distance between mine and market was as much vertical as it was horizontal the orb had to suffer passage on the jackass express where man and beast seldom agreed on the urgency of the journey newspaper editorials claimed the railroads are the only hope we have of making silver pay off handsomely and most everyone agreed in 1871 a group headed by general william jackson palmer completed the denver and rio grande railroad from denver south to colorado springs built to a gauge of three feet rather than the usual four feet eight and a half inches the narrow road beds meant cheaper construction costs and the smaller trains were ideally suited to the steep grades and sharp turns once skeptics were convinced that palmer's ponies could stay on the track in the face of a stiff breeze the dye was cast that would leave an impression on the land that has lingered ever since the track crews of a score of companies began pushing the rails in all directions through the wilderness and as the lines expanded the horse-drawn pilgrimage of the hopeful became the steam-drawn adventure of the ruthless the rails were thrown up over around and through a thousand unnamed canyons the wilderness had been breached king silver crowned and his loyal subjects arrived on the next train [Music] they came by the thousands miners to work the earth and parasites to work the miners tense cities and false front towns with egos to match built in honor of the fast buck as well as the pursuit of it leadville central city georgetown uray gunnison creed the names became legends the living scandalous out of the frenzy of a society born of greed and fueled by wealth arose a new class of frontier aristocrat the silver baron one of the greatest silver barons was johnny brown of leadville whose accidental burning of a 300 000 fortune in a wood stove was topped only by his discovery of the little johnny mine both events happening as some sources have claimed on the same day in time brown's wife would become as celebrated as any of her husband's excesses her heroism in the tragic titanic sinking immortalized her as the unsinkable molly brown along with the browns were the walshes the rags to riches climb of tom walsh from bartender to multi-millionaire was largely due to the famous camp bird mine at euray colorado the wealth of the walch family would reach out as far as king leopold of belgium where it returned the fabulous hope diamond for tom's daughter [Music] evelyn colorado achieved statehood in the year of the nation's centennial and the silver barons became the elite of a society as noted for its indulgence as for its finance the tin roof shrines of the recent past were replaced by more fitting tabernacles raised in honor of personal success each boomtown felted a civic duty to raise a citadel for the comfort and amusement of silver baron and robert baron alike not a form of extravagance was left untried private rail sidings imported palm trees the face on the bar room floor but just as the elegance of central city's teller house was only steps away from a sidewalk of wood planks so likewise where the frontier halves and have-nots only acclaim registration apart for the have-nots life on the colorado frontier lacked the graciousness but none of the excitement an evening's entertainment might include a turn or two with lady luck or time spent with ladies in a more predictable arrangement refreshments to soothe the spirit and paralyze the body musical interludes provided by a mixed chorus of colts and winchesters out of this panorama of bar room legislation and gun barrel justice arose the ten gods whose names became dime novel legends stories about poker alice gloried in her virtue about as truthfully as they praised the beauty of calamity jane in a like fashion the campaigns of one wyatt earp were changed from that of personal gain to the more popular ideal of law and order reports of the activities of doc holliday and his somewhat less psychotic partner bat masterson prove that the power of the bottle can indeed be mightier than the sword or the pen the petrified man of creed discreetly buried and conveniently discovered by the dean of frontier con men sophie smith testified to the truth of p.t barnum's comment on mankind there is a sucker born every minute colorado could easily have claimed a corner on the market simple pioneer life of the early years disappeared as quickly as the glory years blossomed mining combines and weekly paychecks were the rule not the exception and the lone prospector with his dream of the big strike moved on to lonelier if not greener pastures but just as the pioneer years passed so did the glory years the westward march of homesteaders economic recession and the silver panic of 1893 were the conspirators the old west was the victim altar rails replaced bar rails and the school bells that rang in a new life rang out the old the generation that had gloried in its own unfolding legend now bore witness to its own epitaph the narrow rails that had connected the sodoms and gomorrahs of the colorado high country now were merely links in the chain from hard times to bankruptcy king silver had joined king cotton in the ranks of the missing as the mines collapsed into desolation many left to seek after greener fields leaving behind the glory holes and boom towns of song and story saint elmo gladstone howardsville and many another shrine to the pursuit of the fast buck were left to be reclaimed by the wilderness they had so recently been carved from other more fortunate mining towns such as durango and gunnison would survive to greet new generations building on the ashes of the old but for a small handful of boom towns the future would hold a strange sword of twilight existence where the ruins and legends of a thousand yesterdays live on in the shadows the clouds that race across the great divide cast their patterns over a valley that spans two centuries in the valley the false fronts and shuttered doors reflect a tradition that still lingers on beneath faded paint and along unpaid streets monuments to a history not yet complete rusted wheels having turned their last but amongst the clutter of glory's past there exists a boom of more recent vintage flash bulbs and box lunches souvenirs and postcards for the folks back home here in san juan county the footprint of the tourist lies heavily upon the land the grand imperial hotel victorian elegance in a sawdust setting but here is elsewhere in town the past and present have come to an accommodating truce 90 years ago the bottle scarred silverton stage would await the train bearing the solid necessities and liquid luxuries of life today it waits to meet a new generation who journey to where the myths ended and the yahoo began [Music] so [Laughter] [Music] so so the people who come to this outpost have done so out of an affection for what is commonly referred to as national heritage not long after the old west had passed from rip roaring reality to frontier fiction books magazines and the new entertainment marvel of motion pictures began to focus the attention of the american public back upon its pioneering generations many people began to develop a special sort of nostalgia a reverence for the wide open life that used to begin at the 98th meridian and march ever westward to the pacific ocean of special interest was the narrow gauge empire of colorado [Music] built to serve a frontier that had ceased to exist and cut off from the mainstream of 20th century progress the 19th century survived almost untouched as the little trains continued to run in defiance of the calendar as well as posted schedules around their ribbons of steel had grown the mines and towns of old and around the narrow rails had also grown some of the west's most celebrated stories [Music] silverton's resident legend was an immigrant by the name of otto mears who made his mark as an architect of railroads that defied logic as well as geography [Music] his trains ran on loops across gorges and up mountains in a fashion that left many an eastern greenhorn with a new fondness for walking meers's flare for the unusual was as widely known to his contemporaries as was the effectiveness of the local anesthetic served up by each of silverton's 34 saloons his silverton railroad was a two-hour trip from silverton to no place in particular yet it possessed one of the most luxurious sleeping cars in the entire state an even more celebrated flight of fancy was the famous turntable he built in the wilds of corkscrew gulch completely sheltered from the elements as unique in its design as it was bizarre in its setting when nature finally stopped mirrors at the vertical fortress of box canyon he built the rio grande southern a 162 mile detour around the six miles he couldn't cross it was a masterpiece of evasion almost without equal in a land known for its excesses of imagination and very much in character with the man whom history would regard as the pathfinder of the san juan as recorded by pioneer photographers such as william henry jackson the awesome beauty and lurking danger of railroads perched forever on the brink of eternity thrilled audiences as much as did the tales of cattle drives and indian attacks the trestles of opher and lake city the railroad war for possession of royal gorge the vertical cliffs of animas canyon toltec gorge with its monument to a slain president the tunnel known as alpine the fame of the frontier trains was carried to the far corners of the nation in the years following the turn of the century as the lure of the west spread itself out on posters and magazine pages a new pilgrimage began and they were called tourists [Music] the grand circle tour and the black canyon tour ride the train and see the sights the tourists had come to colorado but the little trains whose livelihood had been king silver found the tourist dollar too little and too late the lines that had channeled the mineral wealth of a wilderness into the economic bloodstream of a nation fell victim not simply to the progress of paved roads and the henry ford but to the same characteristics that had been in such demand generations before the rails had been thrown up over and around the rockies with every thought of permanence but the trains that could scale grades and turn corners on a dime now spent a great deal of their time nose down in a ditch picking their way across trestles verging on collapse or digging out from under winter's merciless onslaught the mines that had made every mile of track profitable were but a memory all that remained was the rust and red ink with each last run the frontier became more remote what decay had started depression world war and highways would finish from as far east as the great plains to as far west as the deserts of utah from the grasslands of wyoming to the badlands of new mexico from the first halting experiment of general palmer to the last trace of glory in the animus canyon the flanged wheel had come full circle in the colorado rockies back down from silverton and the san juan range the train begins the familiar journey south beneath the majestic san juan range she's the last surviving remnant of an empire whose debris lies scattered throughout the high reaches of the land that proclaimed silver king the town of sergeants used to straddle the narrow gauge main line that ran from denver clear through to salt lake city not far distant the west portal of alpine tunnel lies in ruin far to the west in the deepening foliage of corkscrew gulch the legacy of ottomere's holds its vigil against the inroads of time and nature memories of an era as glamorous as it was primitive back down from the mountain meadows and churning waters back from elk park in tacoma rockwood and needleton once again the pulse of civilization is felt holding out against the pressures of 20th century progress confronted by the uncertainties of nature as well as by the burden of age backed down from another place another time the silverton heads for home for a frontier society whose lifestyle became a living legend the old train on a ribbon of steel is a fitting tribute as she continues to roll along in stately grandeur the frontier lives on as one pioneer journalist once remarked we may be out of the world but we are well connected [Music] oh