INDUSTRIALIZING THE CRYSTAL RIVER VALLEY:
Building the Railroads
by
Darrell Munsell
In a letter dated Sept. 20, 1886, Julian A Kebler described to CM Schenck, vice president of Whitebreast Coal and Mining Company, the conditions and activities of Camp Prospect, a base camp headquarters established on John C Osgood’s ranch to explore and develop the coal resources in the Crystal River area. Camp Prospect was isolated, Kebler explained. Supplies were hauled in by mule teams over the wagon road from Crested Butte, some 29 miles away. Burros packed supplies from Prospect to other camps, including the camp at Coalbasin, where 70 to 80 men were opening to rich coal veins.
Coalbasin branch construction began before 1899 – Camp and Plant photo
To overcome the problems of transportation in this remote and rugged country, Kebler noted that railroad crews were surveying from Coalbasin down Coal Creek and down the Crystal River along the rocky trail to Satank (Carbondale), where the proposed rail line would connect with the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad once both lines were completed.
Plans for the construction of the rails lines from Coalbasin and along the Crystal River languished for the next few years while Osgood consolidated his coal empire and, with his associates, found Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) Railroad Company as a subsidiary of CF&I. In 1893, the Crystal River company entered the race with the Elk Mountain company to lay track up the Crystal River Valley. Osgood’s company won out, as, according to The Crystal Silver Lance, “the CF&I brute” played “hog a little more than necessary.”
The Panic of 1893 [mostly caused by demonetization of silver] and the recession that followed delayed Osgood’s plans for the expansion of CF&I’s steel mill in Pueblo and the opening of new coal mines, coking plants, and camps as part of that plan. By 1899, better economic times enabled Osgood to resume his expansion plans, which included opening the Coalbasin mines to full production and building 250 coke ovens at the confluence of Coal Creek and the Crystal River. On the other side of the river, Osgood began to build his model industrial village of Redstone, and, a little over a mile south of the village, Cleveholm Manor, his magnificent country home.
The establishment of Redstone as a coking plant and model village, as well as the building of Osgood’s Cleveholm estate, necessitated the completion of the Crystal River Railroad, which reached Redstone in 1899 and was extended to Placita by the end of 1900. The narrow gauge line (High Line) from Coalbasin reached Redstone in December 1900. The moment was captured by The Marble Times & Crystal Silver Lance: “Yesterday, the 20th day of December, 1900, was one of Redstone’s red letter days. At ten o’clock a.m. a trainload of coal arrived … It consisted of five of the new coal dumping cars, capacity 50,000 lbs. each, a total of 125 tons, and immediately passed through Redstone’s new and immense tipple on its way to the coke ovens.”
Osgood and his associates lost control of the Crystal River Railroad in the summer of 1903 when John D. Rockefeller and George Gould took over CF&I. After CF&I closed the Coalbasin mines and shut down the Redstone coke ovens in 1909, the Crystal River Railroad was taken over by the Crystal River & San Juan Railroad (CR&SJ), which under the direction of Colonel Channing Meek had extended the line from Placita to Marble in 1906. Carrying more marble and livestock than coal, the CR&SJ Railroad continued both passenger and freight service between Carbondale and Marble until 1942. The industrialization of the Crystal River Valley would have been impossible without the CR and CR&SJ railroads.
Darrell Munsell, professor emeritus, West Texas A&M University, is the author of “From Redstone to Ludlow: John Osgood’s Struggle Against the United Mine Workers of America” published by University Press of Colorado. He is a past president of the Redstone Historical Society, and former Redstone resident.