The Swan Songs of Central City - Part 1

The Swan Songs of Central City

-Part 1

by Kurt Maechner

Locomotive 71
Gondola 4319
Combine 20

Arrival and Departure

MONDAY, MAY 20, 1878
CENTRAL CITY, COLORADO

The excited chitter of conversation fills the air amongst the crowd around the new Central City depot of the Colorado Central Railroad.  A band, their instruments hanging at their sides, check that they are ready.  Firemen from the town and crisply uniformed members of the military are also on hand for the festivities.  Occasionally, members of the crowd strain their heads to look around other bystanders to peer down the track.

The anticipated train, the first of five this day, will traverse a great engineering feat.  Central City, 28 miles west of Denver, is one and a quarter miles up Gregory Gulch from nearby Black Hawk; Yet, to reach this ascendant point the railroad has to rise 500 feet in elevation.  The railroad has just completed a series of switchbacks where, like a moving see-saw, while always traveling upgrade, the train goes to a dead end, backs up to another dead end, and finally goes forward once more to its destination. 

Suddenly, the crowd hears it: the increasing sound of hard-working bursts from a locomotive’s smoke stack.  The pitch of murmuring voices goes quickly up.  The band scurries into formation.  Children are shuffled off the tracks.  Almost without warning, the chuffs of a narrow gauge engine become immediately louder as the diminutive iron beast slides into sight.  Like a victorious bugle call, its whistle pierces the air.  Shouts from the crowd explode like a cannon.  The band erupts into an exuberant marching melody and handkerchiefs are furiously waved as the train pulls between the crowd like the Israelites through a parted Red Sea.

Central City Opera House

The train of cars squeals to a stop.  The passengers, celebrants from all over, rush to join the celebratory crowd on the ground, eventually forming into a procession led by the band, firemen, and uniformed members of the military.  The scattered groups funnel into a parade and march downtown, eager to drink in triumphant speeches at the new opera house.

What other rough and tumble mining town can boast of an elegant opera house besides Central City?  The city known as “The Richest Square Mile on Earth” has hauled so much precious material out of its dirt that it has attracted more than just miners and their families.  Dignitaries, their wealth, and their fine tastes have come as well and “The Little Kingdom of Gilpin,” as Central is also known, banded together to construct, among its stately homes and sturdy businesses, a grand opera house, completed just two months ago.  

Today, the city and its visitors raucously celebrate not only this artistic performing arts gem, but the long-awaited arrival of a train, linking the “Little Kingdom” to the grand city of Denver with its cultured residents and, of course, the outside world.

Central City celebrated in style that day, but the spirit of triumph and glory did not last.

In the tradition of some fairy tales, a charming prince, through many trials, pursues a maiden and marries her, and the two go on to live happily ever after.  In other not so idyllic tales, a suitor chases his love, wins her, and then leaves her for perceived greener pastures.  This latter storyline sadly came to life for Central City.

Within just a few short years of the grand celebration of opera house and train above, a great exodus occurred from Central City as mines played out and Leadville, 56 miles southwest, boomed with silver.  The opera house, once the crown jewel of Central City, was slated for demolition.  While saved by an association, it was ignominiously demoted to a movie theater.  In 1917, the Gilpin Tramway, a small railroad that hauled ore from the many mines to the Colorado & Southern Railway, successor to the Colorado Central, closed down.  It was not long before the C&S ceased running trains over the switchback west of Black Hawk in 1925.  The former “Richest Square Miles on Earth” was now described this way: “Abandoned houses, made more desolate by forgotten furniture, stood under sagging roofs on every street.”  Two years after the death of train service to the town, the opera house was shuttered, and by July of 1931, the C&S finally tore up the famous switchback between Black Hawk and Central.

A death certificate seemed to have been signed for the once elegant mountain town.  One tiny seed of the glorious past remained in its broken-down theater, however, that would germinate a second life for both the city and a railroad.

Opera House Resuscitation

The decrepit, empty theater, known as the Central City Opera House, caught the attention of several individuals, including Anne Evans, the “round vivid blue eye[d]” daughter of the second territorial governor of Colorado and creator of the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad.  Evans joined forces with others who saw the theater as a diamond in the rough, to found the Central City Opera House Association.  The new organization renovated the stately performance hall while a cast and crew rehearsed the play Camille that was set to be presented for several grand opening performances.  The first passenger train on the Clear Creek Line since the cessation of regular passenger service in 1927 brought excited viewers to see the productions on July 19th and 20th, 1932.  Oil-burner C&S engine 70 had the honor to pull what would be the last passenger runs ever between Denver and Black Hawk.  As the track to Central had been torn up the year before, the trains reached Black Hawk where passengers were then ferried up the mountain to the opera house by a menagerie of vehicles from horse-and-carriages to Chevy, Hudson, and Durant automobiles.  

Opening Night

The smashing success of the Central City Opera House’s resuscitation brought a rediscovery of the preserved old-time mining hamlet of Central City and inspired annual summer gatherings first named the Pioneer Revival Festival.  These festivals sought to not only bring crowds from around the country to what Anne Evans envisioned as an American Salzburg, but also to bolster interest in the history of Central City as the “Oldest Living Gold Camp in the United States.”  

Where history is concerned, mining, gold camps, and railroads go together.  The first two, though greatly diminished in historic Central City, were still very much in evidence there in some active mines and remaining structures.  The latter of the three, in contrast, was long gone and Anne Evans sought to change this.  In 1940, surely seeing that the remaining C&S narrow gauge was soon to be a page in history, Anne spearheaded a campaign to get an old train donated for display in Central City.  Since narrow gauge railroads were an anachronism by this point, the odds of acquiring a few old pieces of equipment must have seemed less than formidable.  How hard could it be to convince a railroad to donate an engine and a few cars that they would likely send to the scrap heap in the near future?  

Anne found a friend in her hopes to get a train for Central City in Robert Rice, Vice President and general manager of the Colorado & Southern Railway based in Denver, to whom she queried about the possibility of receiving a donated display train.  By this time, the C&S had come under the umbrella of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad and thereby needed approval from its parent company for the proposed donation.  Rice sent a note to Chicago, the CB&Q headquarters, to get permission that likely seemed just a formality.  Rice had C&S locomotive No. 9 in mind for Evans’ display.  The 2-6-0 had not long ago been taken out of service, spiffed up, and sent as a curiosity for the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.  Rice’s August 21st, 1940 note to his superiors read, “We would like to have [No. 9] returned, as the people of Central City are asking for such an engine to be placed there permanently as a relic.”