Mysteries
of Alpine-part 2
By Kurt
Maechner
Mystery #2: The line from Hancock to Quartz was scrapped
between 1923 and 1924, so why was the track inside Alpine Tunnel and a mile
down the west slope left after dismantling?
When the rails were finally pulled up between Hancock and
Quartz, the C&S engineering department claimed that it was “impossible” to get the rails inside the tunnel because of cave ins and “considerable” ice buildup. This reasoning is partially an
alibi. The C&S strangely evades
reference to leaving an additional one mile of track extending from the west
portal. Clearly there were other
villains hampering the scrapper.
The most logical approach would have been to tear up the
track from Quartz all the way to the railhead at Hancock, but since the tunnel
was impassible, it had to be done in two segments. The west side was torn up first in 1923 and
then the east side of the route in 1924.
The cave ins and ice that caused this issue, though, were largely confined
to the east portal, not the west.
A Colorado resident named Bill Turner recalls entering the
tunnel in 1923. Dow Helmers recorded
Bill in Historic Alpine Tunnel stating
that the east “tunnel entrance was pretty well iced up. [However, he] climbed over the ice and found,
after the first fifty feet or so, that the tunnel was in excellent
condition.” So, why could the tunnel
rails not be pulled from the western approach?
To add to the mystery, Mr. Turner, who is quoted above, is in fact the very
man contracted to dismantle the line.
Turner had numerous difficulties to surmount notwithstanding
the blockage at east portal. One was
motive power. As photos show us,
locomotives are often used to haul dismantled rails away, but Turner did not
have this option. I suspect it is due to
the fact that 13 years of idleness had made the tracks too unstable for an
engine. His only option, then, was to
use horses to haul a flat car up the grade and then ease the loaded car down by
hand.
Despite his motive power, Bill Turner’s track record was one
of dogged persistence. He stated that he
pulled the Hancock-Atlantic rails “from under the snow and [brought] them down
on sleds.” He also scrapped the line
through Trout Creek Canyon. Since the
line had been rebuilt several times due to floods, there were rails still under
the mud. Helmers comments that Turner
“would dig a hole to locate the rails and then run a plow along the rail edges,
opening a furrow so many of these rails could be salvaged.”
So, what stopped a man like this on the west slope from
getting the rails in the tunnel? Well,
this mystery is unsolved. In Dow
Helmer’s interview with Turner, he makes no reference to it. But there are some clues elsewhere. Mac Poor in DSP&P quotes a Gilbert A. Lathrop who visited the pass in 1936
as writing, “Although the pike closed down about 30 years ago, a locomotive
could still run on the track to a point where a rubble of massive granite
chunks came down the mountain just east of the Palisades, blocked the line and
kept some scrap iron salesmen from completing their job of total demolishment.”
While Lathrop’s discovery is 13 unlucky years after
Turner last trod the roadbed, the reference to a pile of rubble is our best
clue to the truth. Simply put, Turner
must have run into this rock slide and determined that it was impossible to
haul any of this rail up and over the rocks to his flat car.
To add color to our mystery, a curious story came to
light on the DSP&P forum a few years ago.
A poster said that he came across the following in a source he can no
longer recall, but possibly a CRRM Annual.
He read that the scrapper, having run into the large pile of rubble,
attempted to slide the rails straight down Tunnel Gulch to the lower grade and
pick them up there. However, “The rails
got away from them down the steep Gulch and almost killed the men and the
horse. They decided that it was too
dangerous and that the value of the rails not worth the extreme risk, so they
abandoned the idea.”
So, who finally got the rails leading to the tunnel? And where did all those ties go on the
western approach? That calls for a
little more snooping...
