This Map of the Month appeared in the December 2008 issue of Trains magazine.
Colorado’s snowsheds were grouped on a few passes above the timberline or in avalanche-prone areas. The exact dimensions and locations of most snowsheds are not well documented. Over time they were built, extended, shortened, burned, and removed. Most were less than 1,000 feet long. The sheds varied from short structures at the tunnel portals of Alpine and Hagerman passes, to extensive ones atop Rollins and Marshall passes. The latter had a post office and survived until 1955, when Rio Grande abandoned the line.
The Moffat Road shed at Rollins Pass (the station was named Corona) was almost a mile long, including the wye, and housed a restaurant and small hotel, which provided a refuge for stranded travelers and crews in winter. In the brief summers above 11,000 feet, the Moffat Road ran daily excursions out of Denver, “from summer’s glow to winter’s snow.”
Among Colorado Midland’s 15 sheds in Hagerman Pass, the longest was 2,100 feet. Most unusual was the covered turntable at Corkscrew Gulch on Otto Mears’ Silverton Railway. Mears also built a substantial shed of about 500 feet near Eureka on the Silverton Northern in fall 1906, but the first avalanche of the season demolished it in January 1907.
The only surviving Colorado snowshed is the one covering the tail track of the wye at Cumbres Pass. Its purpose was to turn the rotary snowplow, so there is no coverage of the main line. In 1994, the Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic, a nonprofit organization, restored the shed, and the group continues stabilization work. The volunteers with the friends group have learned a lesson from the old railroaders: Snowsheds were a continuing maintenance problem, as well as subject to fire from locomotive sparks.
Railroads included in this map:
Colorado & Southern; Colorado Midland; Cumbres & Toltec Scenic; Denver & Rio Grande Western; Denver & Salt Lake; Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge; Rio Grande Southern; San Luis & Rio Grande; Silverton; Silverton, Gladstone & Northerly; Silverton Northern; Union Pacific
