"Bonanza" road limps through life and creation

Economies created in wake of the train tracks

Rio Grande Southern Railroad three-way track and right of way at Dolores (Colo.) Date/circa: 1951
Photographer: Chione, Alfred G. (Morton, Ill.) Center for Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Early on, the Rio Grande Southern Railroad (RGS) was described as a "Bonanza" road — but that didn't last long. As an instant success, it quickly generated more than enough money for the investors to cover costs to build the railroad — unfortunately the money did not last. Within two years, the Silver Panic of 1893 permanently crippled the railroad's finances. 

It limped along for the rest of its 60-year lifespan, yet still creating economies along its tracks that lasted long after it was gone.

The line was completed on Dec, 12, 1891, when two construction teams which began at the ends, met south of Rico. Then the RGS was booming, profitable for the company and investors, and producing higher than the average pay for RGS Employees. This only lasted for a year and a half however, as the Silver Panic of 1893 had resulted in most of the mines the railroad serviced closing overnight, and the railroad lost most of its traffic. 

Rio Grande Southern Railroad depot at Dolores.

 

Dolores was a good example of the economies it created.

 

The main highway in and out is still called “Railroad Avenue.” Various buildings around town were labeled with left-over monikers such as the ‘track warehouse’ or the D&RG Southern Hotel.

Corrugated tin, painted Denver & Rio Grande yellow, covered the outside of dozens of other buildings, and platforms, built to service freight from boxcars, still appeared in front of about a third of the businesses in town.

 

When I was growing up there, the boarded-up section house still stood between the Sixth and Seventh Street out on the highway.

 

Rio Grande Southern Railroad depot and engine house at Dolores, 1951.

 

Legions of cub scouts were still able to gather rail spikes, track hardware and telegraph insulators from the rotting ties and weathered poles in Lost Canyon and pack them over across the rusting Fourth Street Bridge back into Dolores. They would end up in a coffee can in someone’s garage or as tent stakes, or sold for scrap at Curt’s Trading Post.

 

The town of Dolores was born with the railroad in mind.

 

“In 1889 plans were made by Otto Mears for a railroad running through and around the western flanks of the San Juan Mountains from Ridgway in the north to Durango in the south,” according to the Mountain Studies Institute. “The railroad would tap the riches accumulating in the booming mountain mining towns of Telluride and Rico and the smaller mining camps between the two towns. The 162-mile railroad would, as well, link two segments of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad coming into Durango from the east and into Ouray from the north. The new railroad would be known as the Rio Grande Southern.”

 

Rio Grande Southern Railroad tool houses at Dolores, 1951.

But as we all know, it is important to be near where the action is.

 

The fledgling settlement of Big Bend, which had been located nearly two miles downriver from present-day Dolores since 1878, basically pulled up stakes and moved to where the rails from Durango entered the Dolores River Valley.

 

“In 1890 two Big Bend businessmen laid out the town site of Dolores at the mouth of Lost Canyon. The rest of the citizen’s of Big Bend soon followed. By the time the tracks reached Dolores on Thanksgiving Day, 1891, the community of Big Bend was no more,” according to Mountain Studies Institute. 

 

Born as a product of the rails, for 60 years Dolores lived in the shadow of the line, finally waving goodbye from the platform in 1951 when D&RG Southern closed and most of the track was pulled up and sold for scrap.

Section house and storage at Dolores. 

As the railroad attempted to recover from the panic of 1893 slowly, other issues had to be dealt with regarding mother nature. The railroad's route followed the Dolores River, which tended to flood many times during the railroad's lifetime. 

Most of the terrain it went through experienced tons of snow in winter and occasional rock and mudslides in summer. The RGS was able to order two new rotary snowplows specifically for the railroad luckily before the panic of 1893 and later on built three plow flangers. 

Still, depending on how deep the snow got, it often caused closures, and operating costs to operate trains with the necessary plow equipment was too much for the railroad at times because they required two to four locomotives to push them. Many Bridges and Trestles washed out when rivers flooded over, adding more costs to railroad maintenance and closures.

The Depression of the 1930s was devastating for RGS and forced the road into position in which they could not afford to operate a single steam locomotive (Paying for Fuel, Paying the Engineer and Fireman to operate the locomotive, etc.). 

No. 5 Motorcar in Dolores.

But still they had the responsibility to ship US Mail. 

Chief Mechanic Jack Odenbaugh devised a way to construct seven homemade "railcars" in 1931, that would be cheap to build and operate, capable of transporting US mail and a few passengers. The official names given from the RGS were "Motors", but these railcars would later be unofficially named "Galloping Geese" by Railfans because of how they looked, operated, and sounded.

"Waddling down the poorly maintained, unlevel RGS tracks with a silver-painted body and hood covers that looked like goose wings when opened up to prevent the motor from over-heating, and the horn sounding somewhat like a honking goose."

The first Goose (RGS Motor #1) was built from a recycled Buick body, frame, and engine, and #2 and would be as well, but with a larger and enclosed freight compartment, a requirement to haul US mail. Motors #3 through #5 and #7 were built from Pierce Arrow bodies, but with freight compartments the size of a boxcar. Motor #6 was made from a Buick as well, but it was designated for Maintenance of Way (MOW) service, and only had a flatbed attached behind the cab. Later on, Motors #3 through #5 would receive replacement Wayne Buss bodies. 

These motor cars indeed were successful and handled daily services until 1940 when the RGS could afford to run regular freight trains. Even after that, the Geese completely replaced revenue-generating passenger trains until abandonment; almost all passenger coaches the RGS owned at the time had been put into MOW service since.

Rio Grande Southern Railroad train, schoolhouse, and wooden buildings on a main street.
 

 

Swinging lanterns, headless baggage, other wrecks

On the Rio Grand Southern between Rico and Dolores,  several similar yarns appear

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

The Maco Light is a relatively famous story about an 1867 Wilmington-Manchester train wreck in North Carolina and of one Charles “Joe” Baldwin, whose Ghost, it is said, haunted that stretch of track until it was pulled up in 1977.
According to the story, Joe, on shift as conductor for the railroad in the caboose, noticed a slowing of his car, only to discover that the caboose had become uncoupled with the rest of the train. Realizing that the slow moving car posed a grave danger to the fast-moving train following directly behind, Joe grabbed his signal light, headed to the back rail of the platform and frantically tried to warn the engineer in the following locomotive.
Witnesses to the accident reported that Joe stayed where he was, waving the lantern, to the bitter end. According to some versions of the story, just before the engine collided with the car, Joe’s lantern was hurled away and rolled over and over again, finally coming to rest in a perfectly upright position.
Some versions of the tale say the coach was completely demolished and Joe was killed, his head severed from his body, however, newspaper accounts have him dying days later in the hospital.
Shortly after this horrible accident, the Maco light began to appear along the train tracks and continued to appear for hundreds of viewers over the years until the tracks were pulled up in 1977 (although accounts say the light can still be seen on the abandoned rail bed with the most recently recorded sightings in 2009).
Here in Colorado, on the Rio Grand Southern between Rico and Dolores, I have encountered several similar yarns.
Mary Joy Martin, in her book “Something in the Wind: Spirits, Spooks & Sprites of the San Juan,” offers the following account.
“The freighter, hauling a heavy load of timber and ore was flying down the track below Rico, heading to Durango. A brief stop was scheduled for Rio Lado, where a few section men were to disembark for their bunks at the section house. The train had just passed Milepost 70 and the Montelores passing track. Staring into the engulfing gloom of night, made all the blacker by the deep narrow valleys and canyons of the Dolores River, engineer Tom Quine concentrated on the track where the headlight beam reached. The sky was moonless, and the black-robed seemed to close in tighter, their summits higher.”
It was then, according to Martin’s account, that Quine first saw the light.
“Far ahead a signal light appeared, like a pinpoint hovering from side to side above the track. Quine strained to see it. It was gone. He shrugged, gave it over to ‘tricks of the night.’ The sound of the train throbbed against the silent forests, the only sound beneath the moonless sky, a rhythmic, soothing tune to the engineer. He took a long draw on his pipe and relaxed, although keeping a vigilant eye on the track ahead.”
The light appeared again and Quine, to assure himself that he wasn’t seeing things, asked fireman Ed Slick to take a look. The fireman saw nothing, Martin wrote.
The signal light appeared and Quine whistled to get the brakeman to slow the train.
“… And suddenly the swinging lantern seemed to be only a short distance away. Yelling for Slick to come and see for himself, Quine and the crew brought the train to a steaming, squealing stop within yards of the signaler. The crew jumped out, running ahead of the engine to see who was signaling and why.”
Nobody, with signal or otherwise, was discovered anywhere near, but a dangerous mound of rock, gravel and earth that had washed down from the steep canyons, covered the tracks just in front of them. The phantom signaler, it is said, probably saved the crew’s lives.
“At the original, higher speed of the train, Tom Quine would have been unable see the muck in time, causing a wreck,” says Martin.
Another RGS railroad story bearing some of the marks of the Maco Light incident was related by Dan Asfar in “Ghost Stories of Colorado.”
Asfar describes a mysterious, heavily tattooed man who put his neck on the tracks in the Telluride Depot.
“Nothing is known about the man’s motivation, but he had long been considered one of the town’s more idiosyncratic citizens. After the incident, his apparition was encountered several times by clerks watching over baggage cars out of Telluride. Low miserable moans coming from one of the baggage compartments alerted these clerks that something was amiss. It was just a matter of swinging open a single door, and a baggage clerk would be traumatized for life. For there, standing on the other side of the door, was the headless man, his arms and torso bedecked in tattoos of women and religious icons from myriad faiths, holding his own bleeding head aloft with an outstretched arm.”
And one fairly recent account of a documented accident sounds eerily similar to the Maco Light yarn, without of course, the disastrous effects and resultant hauntings.
In the Dolores Star dated September 29, 1950, Hartley Lee writes about it in his Hart’s Stuff from Rico column.
“Friday sure was a bad day for old Puffen Jennie when 445 and caboose was rocking along a half mile this side of the high bridge, when the tender jumped the track and went over the hill, was a darn good thing that the coupling unhooked from the outfit or the caboose would have gone with it. Talk about a mess, they really had one, but the most disastrous part of the whole event was when conductor Phillips who was cooking his supper lost his spuds, says they were scattered all over the floor and under the bunks, while the coffee pot went rolling out the door. Due to the fact that the tender was so far over the hill, it was decided to push it on over and let it land on the highway below. Then they had Roy with the county cat to pull it back to the crossing where it was put on the rails again. Now if that wasn’t honey of a deal seeing that tender down on the road behind a cat. You know if a guy was smart, he could write a book about the old RGS and it would be the best seller in the country.”
Maybe so, I reckon. And it might be as famous, well known, and imitated as the Maco Light yarn.
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Forerunner to the “Geese” being rebuilt in Woodland Park

Despite difficult terrain, extreme weather conditions, and a trainload of financial difficulties, the Rio Grande Southern (RGS) Railroad operated 162 miles of track between Ridgway and Durango from legendary Otto Mear’s construction efforts, beginning in 1890, until they went into receivership again and started pulling up track in 1953.

RGS built seven motors and one additional short-lived vehicle for the San Christobal Railroad on the Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW) Lake City branch. The term “Motor” was officially used by the RGS, although by 1944, the term “Galloping Goose” was used locally.

A forerunner to the “Geese,” an open inspection car, built from a 1911 Model T Ford is being recreated locally.

Local model builder, blacksmith, and architect Lowell Ross is restoring a precisely detailed, comprehensive duplicate of the original RGS Inspection #1, in his shop locally in Woodland Park. The car is being rebuilt from a converted Model T Ford, and the original served as an inspection vehicle for Superintendent W.D. Lee on the Rio Grande Southern.

“I am just about ready. Finally locating the wheels for the car, in the desert of Nevada,” Ross said.

Although not technically a Goose, the RGS Inspection Car #1, led to development of the storied line.

In early use, an out-of-control RGS Inspection Car #1 rolled into the Dolores River, and according to the lore in 1913, Lee and his wife jumped before it hit the water. Road Master J. C. Gilland didn’t, and was seriously hurt. Mrs. Lee reportedly refused to ride in it after that mishap, saying it bounced too much. In 1925, it was wrecked again, this time, beyond repair, and was scrapped.

Something larger and more powerful, anyway, was needed to provide passenger, mail, and LCL (less than carload) freight services to these remote mountain communities.

RGS hired auto mechanic Jack Odenbaugh for the Ridgway shop crew, and he built Motor No. 1 from a 1925 Buick Model 45 touring car in early 1931. It uses an extended frame, the front of the car body, and a stake bed.

Odenbough and his crew built two more motors in 1931. Motor No. 2 was built from a Buick four-door sedan with an enclosed freight body behind and Motor No. 3 from a Pierce-Arrow limousine. Motors 4, 5, and 7 were built similarly to No. 3, and Motor No. 6 was a work motor built similar to No. 1.

The RGS motors economically operated during World War II, repairing the “Geese” with war surplus bus bodies from the Wayne Company of Richmond, Indiana. The bodies allowed more passengers and had doors on both sides for entry, as some of the buses were built for use in right-hand-drive England.

Larger passenger trains were used to attract additional tourists to the scenic route, and the RGS finally began using the term “Galloping Goose” in advertising for scenic tours in 1950-1951. Books and articles about them as early as 1947 had referred to these vehicles as “Galloping Geese.” The Rocky Mountain Railroad Club began scheduling fan trips on the Galloping Geese in 1946, and a number of fan trips were run with the “geese.”

Unfortunately, too late to save the RGS, which again went into receivership under J. Pierpont Fuller. In late 1951, he decided the RGS was in too rough shape to continue operation. Abandonment was approved by the ICC in April 1952. The route was sold for scrap, and the line was ripped up by June 1953, with Motor No. 6 pulling the last rails up at Hesperus.

The ‘Galloping Geese,’ as well as some other locomotives and rolling stock, survived the death of the RGS. The Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden acquired and restored No. 2, 6, and 7. Knott’s Berry Farm of Buena Park, California, bought Motor No. 3 and operates it in the amusement park, along with D&RGW 2-8-0 #340 and RGS 2-8-0 #41. Motor No. 4 is on display in Telluride. Motor No. 5, restored to operational condition in 1998, is showcased at the depot-museum in Dolores.

Up and over the pass with an extra passenger

A young man, looking as real and alive as anyone else

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Dangerous, isolated, difficult to build and even to keep open, the Rio Grande Southern had its share of strange occurrences, especially in the stretches along the Dolores River and up over Lizard Head Pass from Rico to Telluride.
Frequently beset by blinding blizzards and threatened at any time of year by rock slides, snow slides, and mud slides or any combination of the three, the steep grades and high lonesome stretches also had the ability to inspire spirits, it seems.
Or at least to encourage them to appear.
One such spirit was Isidor Henschel, or ‘Jimmy the Jew’ as he was known in the camp of Rico.
In route to Ophir, Henschel died in a train wreck in 1901 when, hopping a freighter from Rico to save time, he turned out to be in the wrong place at exactly the wrong moment.
“At Rice’s Spur, just over the Sunny Side of Lizard Head Pass, the freighter had stopped to pick up a lumber load,” writes Mary Joy Martin in her 2001 book “Something in the Wind: Spirits, Spooks & Sprites of the San Juan.” “ In the process, the freighter escaped back down the hill toward Rico, piling up at Snow Spur, the flat cars helter-skelter, the caboose wrecked, the body of Jimmy crushed by the timbers.”
For years afterward, as long as the RGS ran, folks claimed Jimmy periodically appeared in trains, including the Galloping Geese, traveling on that same lonesome stretch of tracks.
But according to Dan Asfar, in his book “Ghost Stories of Colorado,” Henschel never did anything to call attention to himself.
“He simply appeared on the train from Rico to Ophir just when the locomotive began chugging up the ascent to Lizard Head Pass. His manifestation was always the same; a young man, looking as real and alive as anyone else, sitting at the window seat, wearing the crisp Navy uniform he had been buried in. Most times, he appeared so gradually that people did not even notice he was there. Then, just as quietly, he would fade out of sight when the train approached Rice Spur.”
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Robbing that train at Stoner Creek

Sometimes, you are blamed for things you had nothing to do with, and perhaps no knowledge of

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

One of the enduring facts of being an outlaw is that you sometimes are blamed for things you had nothing to do with, and perhaps no knowledge of.
From the folklore, rumors and fairy tales of southwestern Colorado, comes the idea that Butch Cassidy (Robert Leroy Parker) and perhaps other members of the notorious “Wild Bunch,” robbed the train at Stoner Creek. The idea probably originated because of Butch's and Matt Warner’s legendary status resulting from a previous successful bank robbery in Telluride a few years prior. And the Wilcox train robbery and dynamiting in June of the year following the Stoner holdup, adds to the romance.
Chances are, it was someone else who held up the Rio Grande Southern that summer day in 1898 — but it makes a livelier story to blame it on Butch and boys.
Following is how the Telluride Daily Journal reported it on its front page “Four Masked Men Capture the Durango Flyer This Morning Below Rico,” relates a “Special to the Daily Journal.”
We all know newspapers never get the facts wrong.
“Rico, July 5. — Train No. ? on the Rio Grande Southern, the San Juan Special, north bound, was held up by four masked men at Stoner Creek, twenty four miles below here, at 11 o’clock today. The bandits secured about $80 in money, a gold watch and chain and a Winchester rifle. No further particulars are obtainable.”
Not the kind of loot Cassidy and friends were used to, if correctly reported, and you consider that their haul from San Miguel Valley Bank was nearly $20,000.
“Later — several persons who were on the train arrived in Telluride at 3 o’clock, among them two ladies from New Jersey who had not yet fully recovered from their fright. One of them said she had a thousand dollars on her person which she promptly stuck down in her stocking.”
The paper went on to speculate, “The fellows appeared to be amateurs at the business, and were evidently Mexicans.”
What evidence pointed to that was not revealed in the story.
“One man stood at the car door while another went through. The fellow at the door told his partner not to disturb the women and they were not bothered. They took $4 from a Catholic priest and gave him half of it back.”
But the desperados were not above the use of violence.
“There is only a water tank at Stoner Creek and the fireman, who was taking water, did not hear the order to hold up his hands which was repeated, when they took a shot at him and his neck is badly powder burned as a result.”
The story of the train robbery at Stoner, like a small seed cast into the wind long ago, perhaps found fertile ground and imagination in the bottom land of the river valley, sprouted, and grew into something completely different than the "genuine article." Not that the genuine article was correct either.
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Photo info: Rio Grande Southern narrow gauge locomotive, engine number 20, engine type 4-6-0, Robert W. Richardson, photographer. Right rear view of engine, close view, at water tank, brush at rear of tender. Photographed: Stoner, Colorado, May 23, 1951. Western History Department, Denver Public Library.