Hope and Joy in Ilium Valley

Goose making a stop at Vance Junction. Rotary #2 and the coal chutes are in the background.

 Vance Juction coal pockets last of its kind

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

One very real benefits from working for Merton Taylor at Taylor Hardware in Dolores as kid, was the chance to hear the hope and joy in his voice when he talked about once-promising locations on Rio Grande Southern Railroad upriver from town. No one else that I ever ran into, had the same optimism and understanding for the long-gone sidetracks, spurs and loops with mostly-forgotten names like Horse Gulch and Rice Spur. One such place, with substantial hope and joy to tone of his stories, was called Vance Junction and is famous even to this day for its coal chutes or 'pockets' as it was known on the road at the time.

2002 photo of the Vance Junction "pocket," History Colorado.

"The circa 1890 chute is associated with the Rio Grande Southern Railway’s narrow-gauge line that operated through the mountainous regions of southwestern Colorado. Once common along coal burning railroads, it is Colorado’s only remaining coaling chute on a narrow-gauge line," says History Colorado.

The two-story section house (section crew stayed in the bottom level and depot manager lived above) at Vance Junction, and several train car out buildings used for storage and ticketing.

"At the start of the 1900s, Ilium Valley was in full swing: Rio Grande Southern trains making the climb towards Ophir and up the railroad’s Keystone Hill to Telluride, coal for their engines clattering out of the chutes at Vance Junction. The Ilium hydroelectric power plant, the old church camp as we know it now, was humming, powered by water flowing through a six-mile wooden flume from Ames. In Keystone Placer Mine, the roar of water cannons as they blasted away Keystone Gorge, day and night, washing away the earth to flush out gold. Ilium was once a busy place," writesTed Wilson, of Telluride History Club, and The View, in an Apr. 18, 2024, article.

 

Inside of power plant about 1900.

 "It’s quieter these days. Nature is reclaiming most of the mining industry endeavors. Their places of work are now our places of recreation. And Ilium was never highly populated, even at its peak: Telluride Power Company employees lived at the Ilium plant, placer miners lived in a boarding house in the gorge, a handful of Rio Grande Southern employees at Vance Junction, and only a small scattering of ranching cabins. Much of the land along the San Miguel River was claimed for placer mining but beyond the placers in Keystone Gorge, most don’t appear to have been mined extensively. It was rare to see a profit, the effort typically too expensive for the gold retrieved. That might have kept the population down, all those existing claims on the land. Case in point, USFS’s Mary E Campground down here was previously a placer claim named Mary E. "

Wilson says, "It’s most likely that Ilium’s first full-time, year-round resident was Colonel James (Jim) Vance. Vance was in Ilium as early as 1880, soon after San Miguel’s first prospectors, working his own placer claims, though only half-heartedly as his small ranch here occupied most of his time."

A Civil War vet, Vance and his ranch were enough of a fixture in Ilium that the Rio Grande Southern named their Vance Junction after him, where the restored coal chutes still stand. Vance Creek, which crosses the Galloping Goose Trail as you begin the climb out of Ilium towards Telluride, carries his name as well.

"Active in his political party, Vance was well-known and respected in Telluride, the newspaper always mentioned his visits to town. But this was a time when you were washing your dirty laundry out in the open and those same newspapers would happily hang it up for everyone to see. Vance appeared to suffer from alcohol abuse and even his visit to the Keeley Institute, famous for curing alcoholism with snake oil, was made public. Some years later, a grisly front-page headline told of Vance’s attempt to take his own life at his little Ilium ranch. But the modern world that had sprung up around Jim was there to save his life, friends at the Ilium power plant coming to his rescue, and the Rio Grande Southern train transporting him to the Telluride hospital, where he survived," Wilson writes.

"Jim Vance lived out his last years in a veterans’ home in Monte Vista, Colorado, passing away in 1914. The old soldier of the 16th Regiment, Illinois Infantry is buried in that home’s cemetery, his grave marked with a simple Civil War vet headstone, with no mention of Vance being a pioneer of Ilium Valley. Only his last name remains here today, on a small stream and an abandoned railroad junction," he says.

"And what of real ghosts? If there is a haunted place in Ilium, it’s Keystone Gorge. Men were killed there in the placer mine. Maybe don’t venture down there after dark… "

Wilson notes that some Ilium stories are returning to their places of origin: the county’s historical commission and staff worked with the Telluride museum on interpretive panels that share the history of the destructive Keystone Placer Mine and L.L. Nunn’s revolutionary Telluride Power Company, along with more on the Rio Grande Southern’s activities in Ilium. These panels will be installed this spring near the picnic tables on the lower Keystone Gorge Loop Trail and on the county-built deck on the Coal Chutes Loop Trail.

"Given our wealth of public lands, we have that unique opportunity to step out the front door and right into these historic sites. That’s a gift for history lovers, that slow walk through the ruins, searching for history’s ghosts. And if you get hooked, and your eyes can’t stop roaming the hillsides as you look for more, welcome to the club," Wilson writes.

 "In the Illium Valley, just over Lizard Head Pass, visitors can hike a segment of the restored Vance Junction coal chute is the only remaining coal storage facility along the historic Rio Grande Southern Railroad," says Jim Mimiaga Cortez Journal staff writer.

"Drive Colorado Highway 145 over Lizard Head Pass. At the Ophir intersection, turn left onto the gravel road (Road 63L) and drop into Illium Valley. Follow the easy dirt road north for 6 miles to the trailhead. From there, it is a 1-mile hike to the Vance Junction coal chute,"writes Mimiaga.

"Built in 1890, the row of eight pocket chutes was designed to dump premeasured amounts of coal quickly into waiting coal cars. Loading the chutes with coal was very labor intensive. Railcars carrying 10-25 tons of coal would be moved behind the chute structure," he says.

"Workers called “coal heavers” loaded the coal into the chutes manually and were paid just 15 cents per ton, according to an information panel. A stairway leads to the back of the structure, where there is still coal on the ground, and visitors can peer into the chutes."

 In 1891, toll road builder Otto Mears launched the Rio Grand Southern Railroad, which operated between Ridgway, Placerville, Telluride, Rico, Dolores and Durango until 1951. The Vance Junction coal chute was part of the Illium Loop section of the RGS line.

Today, the old railroad bed continues as the Galloping Goose Trail system used by cyclists, hikers, equestrians and anglers.

The Galloping Goose was a type of rail bus that carried passengers and mail along the Rio Grand Southern line after it became too expensive to run freight trains. Galloping Goose No. 5 is on display in downtown Dolores.

Beyond the Vance Junction coal chutes, the trail continues along the South Fork San Miguel River, then along the main stem of the San Miguel River.

 

Generator and two power plant employees.