CRYSTAL RIVER & SAN JUAN RAILROAD
Fading Glory on the Colorado Short Line in 1941
by Bruce Collins
Reprinted from the Summer 2005 edition of Marble Chips,
the newsletter of the Marble Historical Society
Born in the boom years of Colorado’s silver camps, relegated by reality to more mundane projects, the Crystal River & San Juan Railroad was in its last days in 1941. Now it hauled high-grade metallurgical coal, coke manufactured from the coal in the picturesque village of Redstone, marble from that stone’s namesake community, and carloads of high country potatoes and livestock.
It was less romantic work for a 28-mile line than hauling bars of gold bullion and carloads of silver concentrates, but at least it was in a gloriously scenic valley.
In 1917, people in the Crystal River valley numbered nearly 1,000. The CR & SJ, built in 1906 from Placita to Marble to serve the Colorado Yule Marble’s finishing mill at Marble was a going concern. Originally just 7.3 miles long, after 1910 it leased the Crystal River Railroad from Placita to its connection with the Denver & Rio Grande at Carbondale. Colorado Yule produced some of the finest marble ever quarried: Yule marble built the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The marble was lowered from the quarry to the mill on the electrified Yule Tram.
Decline set in after 1917 as labor costs made marble too expensive for most buildings. The valley’s population began declining to 240 in 1940 and 50 in 1950.
The Depression was harsh. The coal mines at Placita, which originated up to 500 carloads annually for a number of years essentially closed at the end of 1931. In 1932, only 290 cars of livestock, potatoes and marble were shipped out of the valley, with an occasional car of inbound sand or other supplies for the mill, now owned by Vermont Marble Company. As modestly improved roads were extended up the valley, potato shipments diminished as well.
Marble sales increased somewhat in 1931 in the wake of publicity surrounding the quarrying and shipping of the block that was to become the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. But toward the end of the decade, Vermont marble had to face up to fading demand it could readily satisfy from excess capacity at its eastern quarries, as well as the buildup of war industries and coincident discouragement of “nonessential” businesses. It decided to close the Marble operation at the end of 1941.
That left only livestock. It had remained steady throughout the 1930s, and even grew, with daily trains required during the fall rush and the longest train ever on the CR & SJ, 31 cars rattling down the Crystal River valley, in fall of 1939. But livestock could not sustain the railroad.
The Interstate Commerce Commission grated a petition to abandon on September 21, 1941. Any hope of forestalling the decision [had] evaporated August 8, 1941, when a flash flood and debris flow damaged or destroyed much of the town of Marble.
Ironically, the decision to abandon brought about one of the most significant upgrades of the line since its construction. Thanks to years of deferred maintenance, it was in such bad shape that Vermont Marble had to install almost 4,500 ties before mill machinery could be hauled down the canyon for use elsewhere.
The CR & SJ cleanup train left Marble on an unknown date in 1942. The last rails were pulled at Carbondale in January of 1943.
The Crystal River & San Juan was, on the day of its demise [in 1942], somewhat unusual compared with other Colorado mountain railroads, in that it retained its original 7.3 miles in length, from Placita to end-of-track in Marble. With the exception of tipple racks at Placita and Camp Genter, and the usual occasional changes in industrial trackage around the Marble Mill, no additional track had been abandoned during its 35-year life.
Facilities remained little changed as well, although the original 40-pound iron rail had been replaced with 75-pound steel in 1931. In 1939, the small steam-heating plant at Marble had been cleared out and tracks installed to replace the original engine house that had burned to the ground in 1926.
Oddly, considering the wartime demand for steel scrap, locomotives No. 1 and 2 sat on the wye at the Carbondale interchange with the Denver and Rio Grand Western until 1946 before being hauled away for dismantling.
The CR & SJ had acquired Fairmont gasoline motor-car and trailer A-6 for tri-weekly passenger and mail service in 1932 and a trailer in 1933. A second-hand combine, No. 9, was purchased from the C & P in 1934. Every known photograph of the tri-weekly service in the last years shows Combine No. 9 and either locomotive No. 1 or No. 2, with or without a few freight cars; and use of the moto-car near the end is unknown.
Operations varied little in the last years. The Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday mixed train (or motor-car) departed Marble at 715 a.m. and Redstone at 8:10 a.m. and arrived in Carbondale at 9:15 a.m. After switching the locomotive and No. 9 turned on the wye at the D & RGW interchange, the train left Carbondale at 11:30 a.m. and Redstone at 12:50 p.m. and arrived at Marble at 2:00 p.m. Special marble shipments were handled as extras, and stock extras were frequently required in the fall, resulting in two trains on days when the regular mixer operated.
With the closure of the quarries and abandonment of the CR & SJ, the Crystal River Valley went into hibernation. Few tourists ventured up what was, for all practical purposes, a narrow, winding dead-end dirt road. Redstone and Marble were essentially abandoned, and the valley was left to cattle and sheep, deer and elk, and the beavers whose dams south of Placita had plagued the CR & SJ all the years of its existence.
In 1956, the Mid-Continent Coal and Coke Company opened the Dutch Creek Mine in Coal Basin, not far from the original Coal Basin Mine served by the Crystal River’s narrow-gauge “highline” from Redstone. With the new coal mine, which operated until 1991, came pavement, with the pavement, tourists, and today the Crystal River Valley south of Marble is a popular residential area and tourist destination.
Although obscured by construction in some places, much of the abandoned CR & SJ remains evident and where close to its namesake river, in many locations its embankment remains rip-rapped with scrap marble, dumped to slow erosion by the roaring whitewater mountain stream that will nevertheless someday reclaim the CR & SJ grade.
Although not widely known, the CR & SJ had two brushes with resurrection. In 1956, Leighton S. Wood, a Kentucky coal operator, opened the Dutch Creek Mine. Wood was a conservative businessman of the old school and believed his operations should avoid reliance on others – especially government entities like highway departments!
To this end he began reassembling the right-of-way from Carbondale to Redstone. According to local lore he was very nearly successful, purchasing or leasing all but a couple of small but critical stretches. He considered incorporating as a common carrier and invoking Colorado’s eminent domain law to get them, but dropped the whole idea when it was pointed out that common carrier is just that.
“I’ll be damned if I’ll be forced to haul somebody’s sheep!” he’s been reported as exclaiming.
In the late 1970’s, Wood’s successors (he died in 1966) at Mid-Continent Coal and Coke wondered if there were a better way to ship production, then approaching 1 million tons a year. The company was trucking from its Coal Basin preparation plant down winding Colorado Highway 133 to a flood-loader east of Carbondale for shipment on the D & RGW unit trains. They concluded that while reconstruction of the railroad made economic sense at sustained production over a long period, the up-front investment was too high for the risk. Trucking continued until the Coal Basin Mines were closed in early 1991.
Bruce Collins, author of this piece, spent 25 years as a coal geologist, including at Coal Basin. He has been a consultant on minerals evaluation for conservation easements and open-space acquisitions.