The first groups of humans to visit the Crystal River Valley traveled on foot and horseback. Eventually, wagons and stagecoaches offered a new (but still uncomfortable) method of transportation in the valley.

As early as the 1880sCrystal City’s newspaper, The Crystal River Current, said the talk of the day was for better transportation.

In the East, railroads were hauling passengers and freight in relative comfort. But constructing railroads in the mostly mountainous and still “wild” West was difficult and expensive.

In the 1880s and1890s several railroads were created in the valley. Some were only paper companies while others actually raised funds and began construction. A few became legitimate railroads and fulfilled a desperate need.

The history of railroading in the Crystal Valley is complicated. This article touches only briefly on some of the highlights and illustrates how the “iron horse” impacted the valley.

In the early 1880s, Midwestern financier and founder of the CF&I Steel Corporation, J. C. Osgood, purchased large bodies of coal lands and potential marble quarries in the southern part of the valley. At the same time there was considerable coal mining up Thompson Creek, a few miles south of Carbondale. A railroad was urgently needed.

In 1886 the Colorado and Utah Railway Company, authorized one million dollars of capital stock and purchased right-of-way from Carbondale to the head of Coal Creek, west of today’s Redstone. By 1892 J. C. Osgood and CF&I controlled ownership through stock purchases.

The Elk Mountain Railway was formed in 1887 but no records indicate the company ever laid any track. Still, the firm created a grade for the railroad that followed the Crystal River. Much of today’s Highway 133 follows along and on top of this grade.  

The first railroad to actually be constructed in the valley was the Aspen and Western, incorporated in 1886. The 13-mile railroad was built cost  nearly $400,000 and connected Carbondale with the mines on Thompson Creek.

In 1892 the Crystal River Railroad was incorporated. Called the Columbine Route by CF&I owner J. C. Osgood, it combined the properties of the Elk Mountain, the Aspen & Western and the Colorado & Utah railway companies and the Crystal River Toll Road Company. 

In 1898 this railroad was purchased by the Crystal River Railroad Co.It consisted of a standard gauge line from Carbondale to Placita, and also included the Coalbasin Branch – or “High Line” as it was called – which connected Redstone with the mining town of Coalbasin, some eight miles to the west at an altitude of 9,500 feet.

With the advent of this new railroad the company asked the Department of the Interior to change the name of Rock Creek to the Crystal River (there were already at least ten streams named Rock Creek in Colorado). In 1901, although it had long been called the Crystal River, the name was officially changed.

 Other railroads were formed and actually existed for varying lengths of time before the nationwide Panic of 1893. This event affected several areas critical to the state’s economy: railroads, farming and silver. In the 1880s almost unfettered expansion had included the building of railroads. But in 1893 several major railroads failed and a financial panic ensued.