Gold Camp Road (April 2008)

Written by ceddammit

Another ThrowBack Thursday is upon us! That’s right, it’s that time of the week when I load all your asses into the Way-The-Hell-Back Machine and we vicariously re-live a trip I took years ago. (Believe it or not, I learned the word “vicarious” from a Guns-n-Roses song.) Today we head back to mid-April 2008, when I loaded my mountain bike onto my car and drove to Colorado Springs, Colorado to bike a stretch of Gold Camp Road. I did this partly for the scenery, but also for the history. Y’see, Gold Camp Road was built on an abandoned railroad grade. This route was originally traversed by the Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railway. This railroad was commonly called The Short Line, as there were two other railroads that ran from Colorado Springs to the Cripple Creek Mining District, and they were both much longer routes than this one. One of them (the Midland Terminal Railway) more or less followed the same route the highways follow today. The other (Florence & Cripple Creek) went through Phantom Canyon. So, hey! Let’s look at some pics…

Several tunnels had to be blasted out of the rock to complete the railroad; this is one of them.
The ceiling of the tunnel from the previous pic. No wooden beams, no concrete. They just carved a hole in the rock and trusted it not to cave in.
Another of the old railroad tunnels
I call this type of rock “Pike’s Peak granite”. The railroad did their best to avoid this stuff when building the line.
Looking slightly uphill at another stretch of the same road, on the opposite side of the canyon.
One of the old railroad cuts (this *might* have been a tunnel at one time)
This is the only tunnel on The Short Line that has suffered a cave-in.
Looking through the closed tunnel
View to the west from the trail that passes over the collapsed tunnel

Having reached the closed tunnel, I decided this was a good time to finish for the day, so I headed home. I returned at least once and biked / drove the rest of Gold Camp Road. I hope I can find pics from that drive, as the scenery along the upper stretches of Gold Camp Roal is incredible.

That’s it for now, though. See ya!

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