  Mears hoped to run a railroad from Silverton to Mineral Point and possibly on to Lake City, following practically the same route as the wagon road he had built twelve years previously. C. W. Gibbs, chief engineer, made surveys from Silverton to Eureka in both 1889 and ’90 but nothing was immediately attempted, probably because of all effort and money going toward the construction of the Rio Grande Southern. However, two miles from Silverton to Waldheim were built in 1893 as an extension of the Silverton Railroad. According to San Juan County records the Silverton Northern was incorporated on September 20, 1895. Fred Walsen was the president, Otto Mears the vice-president and Alex Anderson the secretary-treasurer. Construction began at the North Star bridge, the end of the first piece of railroad, in late April of 1896 and the 6½ miles were completed to Eureka in late June. The transfer of the property from the construction company to the railroad company was made on July 1st. Silverton Northern books gave the cost of construction as $272,400. Meanwhile the first two miles had been transferred from the Silverton Railroad to the Silverton Northern. A big celebration took place at Eureka on the completion of the line and Mrs. Edward G. Stoiber drove the golden spike. A picture is extant which shows the crowd there. S. R. Engine 101 was transferred to the S. N. but henceforth was to go by the number of 1. Of course, the company could borrow a locomotive or other equipment from the S. R. or the D. & R. G. as needed. Ever since the panic of 1893 with its demonetization of silver, mining in the San Juan had been seriously crippled but, since the Sunnyside mine near Eureka and the Silver Lake mine near Waldheim produced good values in gold, the S. N. could make a profit. Mining men, Mears among them, had great hopes that mining would revive as of old if William Jennings Bryan could be elected as president. Though Mears stayed in the east until 1907 he exercised a strong supervision over his San Juan railroads and made a number of trips back to the country to oversee them. In 1901 the company owned one locomotive, one passenger coach, ten box cars and one service car. For the year ending June 30, 1901 it had operated 3376 miles of mixed and 1310 miles of passenger service. In 1902 it paid a dividend of 10%. The Gold Prince mine, four miles up the Animas River canon from Eureka, was then flourishing so Mears decided to build a railroad to the place. He hired Thomas Wigglesworth as surveyor and constructor. Construction from Silverton to Eureka had been easy—no hard grading and only two small bridges—but from Eureka to Animas Forks, the little town near the Gold Prince, it was to be very difficult—up a rough canon and over 7% to 7½% grade, the very maximum for a steam railroad. Mr. Vest Day gives an account of its building: “Mr. Thomas Wigglesworth, for whom I had worked several times before, hired me to get stuff together and go up to Animas Forks to establish a camp. Late in May of 1904 I loaded on the train at Durango about a carload of surveyor’s equipment and camp supplies, among which was a 350-lb. cook stove, all to be taken by rail to Eureka. There the two Peck brothers packed it on burros and, since the snow was deep and soft, they often had to spread gunny sacks out for the burros to step on, especially for the one with the stove, to keep them from sinking in too deeply. Everything arrived at Animas Forks in good order. “The snow was six feet deep around the cabins we were to occupy so I “We first did some preliminary surveying, running a line from Animas Forks to the divide in case Mr. Mears should decide on a railroad to Lake City. The snow was so deep we could not drive the stakes so we cut turning points in the hard crust with a hatchet. “Then we started to work in the canon which was a hard problem and had labored a month trying to get a line up the east side when Mr. Wigglesworth remarked to Mr. Mears that he’d like to build the railroad on the other side where the road was. Mears told him to go ahead and take it as it was his road anyway. Even though we used the road grade, still a lot of work had to be done and R. T. F. Simpson, who was to run the commissary, brought with him from New Mexico, 100 Navajo Indians to do the rough labor. About 25 whites were employed but they acted as powder men, clerks or other such things. We were all finished in the fall. “While we were there Mr. Wigglesworth procured for Roy Goodman and me a railroad bicycle that Mears had had made for Mrs. Stoiber. She was not at that time using it. This contraption had a framework to which was fastened four light-weight flanged wheels with rubber on them, that ran on the track. Above was a platform on which were two stationary bicycles side by side. The riders treadled the bicycles and the two chains that pulled the two rear wheels and were connected with two small wheels on the axle of the car, drove the car, so it ran nicely on the track. We had a grand time going back and forth to Silverton on it.” Marion A. Speer, a lad from Texas, went to work in the spring of 1904 as a nipper on the railroad which was building from Eureka to Animas Forks. His job was to carry heavy tools such as drills and picks from the blacksmith shop to the drilling and blasting crews, and the dull ones back. The work was very hard but he had to have the money if he expected to go to the Colorado School of Mines, which was his intention. One day Wigglesworth, his boss, came to him and told him he’d have to let him go as the work was The construction outfit used Engine 3 which was brand new that year, was very powerful and a beauty and was called “Gold Prince” after the mine at Animas Forks. That piece of railroad was completed in the fall except for sidings which were laid the next year. Young Speer worked at the Silver Lake mill for several summers and often got to ride in Engine 100; he also went to Gladstone in the 34 and was on the S. N. coach, the Animas Forks, when it turned over the first time. The track still lay to Albany in 1907 for a train took a bunch of picnickers, of which he was one, down that way and let them off. The railroad workers, among whom was Speer, ate at the Silver Wing (Condit) boarding house, and they were lolling around outside one evening in June of 1904 when a terrific explosion took place at the Toltec blacksmith shop, directly across the river, about 200 feet away. Debris of all descriptions peppered the boarding house. The Silverton Standard reported the event thus: An Awful Explosion—“Three men, Percy Kemper, Edward Crane and L. W. Lofgren, were killed last Sunday night about ten o’clock by a powder explosion at the Toltec Tunnel of the Sioux Mining Company, located above Eureka near the mouth of Picayune Gulch. “Kemper and Crane were literally blown to pieces, parts of their bodies being found in different places, 300 and 400 yards from the scene of the explosion. The blacksmith shop was, of course, demolished. When the sound of the explosion brought others to the scene, Lofgren was still alive, but he died on the way to Silverton. The remains of the other two unfortunate men were brought to this city Monday afternoon. “Lofgren, it seems, had been working behind a metal mine car which absorbed much of the force of the explosion. This accounts for the fact that Lofgren was not killed outright. “At the coroner’s inquest held Monday a verdict was returned that the “The largely attended triple funeral was held Wednesday afternoon under the auspices of the Miner’s Union of which all three of the deceased were members in good standing, the local Odd Fellows, however, turning out in honor of their deceased brother, Lofgren. Reverend Shindler preached the funeral sermon.” Vest Day reports that his survey crew helped pick up the pieces of the bodies the next morning and put them into nail kegs. Mr. Meyer, the locomotive engineer on the construction crew, claimed the Indians would stop work on almost any pretext but especially to chase ground hogs. Mears decided to put a stop to such foolishness and hired 25 white kids and supplied them with rifles to kill the animals. It didn’t help much because when they were out of the way the Indians could find plenty of other excuses to dawdle. Mr. Arthur Ridgway stated that when he came to the S. N. in October of 1904 work was still going on under the supervision of Marshall B. Smith, Mears’s son-in-law, with Navajo labor. Operation of the line began the next Spring after the snow went off. In 1905 Mr. Ridgway surveyed and built a branch from Howardsville up Cunningham Gulch to the Green Mountain and Old Hundred mines, which added 1.3 miles of railroad to the system. The S. N. must have been in financial straits at this time for Mears had to raise money in New York to pay interest on the bonds. This railroad went north from Silverton as did the other two. The termini of the S. R. and S. N. were not much more than six air miles apart with the S. G. & N. in between. Animas Forks is at the foot of Mineral Point. One may ride out on the top of Mineral Point, as this writer has done and see the waters divide, the Uncompahgre going to the north and the Animas to the south. Mears never got the courage to build a railroad up there as first projected nor on to Lake City. During the year ending June 30, 1905 the railroad carried 31,433 passengers and 43,349 tons of freight. The Manual or Guide lists for 1905, The S. N. used or acquired S. R. Engines 100 and 1. Then it bought an old one from the D. & R. G, which it numbered 2, but it was of such little good it was soon scrapped. Mears bought the 3 new in 1904 and the 4 new in 1906, both Baldwins of the 76 class. In 1910 the S. N. leased and in 1915 bought the S. G. & N. and got its engines, the 32, 33 and 34. Numbers 100, 32 and 33 were scrapped between 1909 and 1912 but 1 was still in use in 1916 for it is shown in the picture of the zinc train that was running at that time. All four of those just noted sat for a number of years in the boneyard at Silverton. Numbers 3 and 4 were used on the snow bucking because 34 was too large for the plow. Mears could always think up something novel and smart. He had already put out the silver and gold passes and had devised the railroad bicycle but now he wanted to do something special in the way of a passenger coach for this run. He bought an old narrow gauge sleeper from the D. & R. G., that had been used on the run from Pueblo via Salida to Alamosa after 1890 and is thought to have been one of those that came to Durango and Silverton From ’81 to ’83. He had it painted a bright green, put the words in gold, “Silverton Northern Railroad” over the windows and named it the “Animas Forks”. It had four upper and four lower berths on each side, half as many as a modern sleeper has. It was different also in that the berths had wooden slat bottoms instead of solid metal as we know them. Ten feet or less at one end was walled off for a kitchen while 20 feet or more was equipped with seats and tables. There was a menu card, lengthy and beautifully printed, and a liquor list to delight a connoisseur. Of course a porter was present to administer the drinks. The engine pushed the cars from Eureka to Animas Forks. It would not have done to have had them behind for, if a coupling had broken, the brakes would not have been able to hold them on such a steep grade and a runaway and wreck would have resulted. As, at first, there was no way of turning at Animas Forks the engine had to back down pulling the cars, a decidedly risky business. A turntable was desperately needed and so, in 1906 or ’07, Mears used certain parts of the one at Corkscrew Gulch to complete the one he was building at Animas Forks. Then the engine could turn and, by setting the cars on a spur, could get ahead and keep them from running away. Before starting they tested the brakes most thoroughly; then the brakeman stayed on top of the cars clubbing them all the way down. Everybody breathed a sigh of relief when they got stopped at Eureka. They generally hauled a car of coal and an empty or a coach up and three cars of ore down. The biggest load ever taken up was a car of coal and a car of cement. Speed from Silverton to Eureka was ten miles per hour but from Eureka to Animas Forks, four miles, and the same on the return trips. The Stoiber brothers had developed the Silver Lake mine in Arastra Gulch and built the mill at the mouth of the gulch; later Ed took over the mine and Gus the mill. Mr. and Mrs. Ed built a home they called Waldheim which, because of its size—ball room, game rooms, etc.—and its fine construction and expensive furnishings, became known as the “Mansion”. There they entertained most lavishly, often passing out expensive party or dinner favors. (The author acquired one of them—a beautifully engraved solid silver dinner spoon.) The madam undertook a good part of the management of the mine herself, sometimes all of it, and was capable of subduing the most obstreperous miner who ever landed there. She was the lady who, to spite her neighbors, built the tall fence around her place in Silverton. They left Silverton about 1904 and, after Stoiber died, the madam erected a fine home in Denver, surrounding it with a fence. She had one husband before Stoiber and two others afterwards but no one knows for sure what Mears signed a contract with the Gold Prince mine at Animas Forks, to haul its ore to Silverton over the winter of 1906-07. Therefore, it was necessary to prepare against the vicious snow slides between Eureka and Animas Forks. He decided to build several heavily timbered snow sheds and anchor them in rock in the hillsides. The first, 500 feet long, at a bad place near the Silver Wing boarding house, not far from Eureka, was completed in October. A slide that winter smashed it and dumped it into the Animas River Canon. Mears gave up on snow sheds. On March 24, 1906 concussion, which is the rush of air at the edges of a slide, did great damage to the Green Mountain mill in Cunningham Gulch and killed the mine foreman. It also destroyed several S. N. cars. At the same time a slide demolished the boarding house at the Shenandoah mine and killed twelve men. Near Animas Forks two men were asleep in the same bed. One was thrown toward the center of the room and carried away while the other was thrown toward the wall and was saved. In the same season two men were killed at the Robert Bonner mine near Burro Bridge on the S. R. These are only samples of slides that happened nearly every winter. Often bodies, frozen stiff, were recovered from slides and stood against the handiest wall. One summer a request came to Silverton for a great quantity of columbines for some national convention that was to be held in Denver. A “Columbine Special” train was run from Silverton to Animas Forks for the purpose of procuring them. Mears donated the use of the train, railroad men donated their services and townspeople donated their time. They gathered what they estimated to be 25,000. A hardware man supplied washtubs in which the flowers were packed and shipped. They went out of Silverton on flat cars but were transferred to box cars at Alamosa. The columbines reached Denver and were displayed in front of the Denver Post building. The Pullman was in a couple of wrecks, the first in the summer of 1908. Another time, about 1911, a train was going north when, near Waldheim, the Pullman, which had too long a wheelbase for curves, gave a swing and the top part left the trucks, flopping over and taking a coach with it. Booker was the engineer this time, Hudson, the conductor and Ruble, the fireman. When they arrived they found the dust so thick they could scarcely see or breathe. Ruble and Hudson walked along on the sides of the coaches pulling people out of the windows. They came to Mrs. William Terry securely fastened and soon found the trouble—her skirt was caught between a rock and the side of the coach. Ruble used his pocket knife to cut a piece out of the back. The poor fellow, easily embarrassed anyway, never heard the end of cutting off the lady’s skirt. How Mrs. Terry remembers it: “It was a Saturday afternoon in the summer time and the train was full of people going home from Silverton. In the Pullman everybody was talking and joking and having a good time. Suddenly the car gave a flop over on one side and everything was confusion. I was thrown against the slats of the berth and got several bumps on the head. I grabbed a handful of willows out the window which pulled through my hand leaving green streaks that lasted for days. My skirt was caught at the back and someone cut a chunk out of it. It had been jerked loose from the waist anyway so it came off. But those were the days when women wore petticoats and I had a nice one of iridescent taffeta, that rustled and had reams of ruffles. “Broken glass had flown in every direction and many people had cuts. One woman who had on a white dress came up to me and asked me if her hat was on straight. I told her it was but that she had better look at her dress. The whole front of it was covered with other people’s blood. Passengers sat on the hill waiting for a train to come for them. Everybody was very excited and upset. The porter went around offering drinks to help settle our nerves but I didn’t take any. Cuts and bruises were the worst damages. The injured were loaded in a box car and taken to the hospital. “My garb was a towel around my head, the coat of my just-past beautiful new plaid suit and the rustling ruffled petticoat. The suit, of course, was ruined as a skirt to match could not be obtained. I never got any damages, either, because I was riding on a pass. I lost two combs, too, that had real gold trimming.” The Pullman had made its last trip. It was pulled into the D. & R. G. yards at Silverton where it sat for a while, was gradually dismantled and finally burned. W. L. Bruce of Durango, about 1920, took some parts of the doors and door casings and some of the slats of the berths—all beautiful cherry wood—and made a porch swing. A picture of the front part of the zinc or “Zinc Special” train of World War I years is shown herein. A newspaper called the first shipment of ten cars “the largest ever made in Colorado.” Zinc with copper made the brass that was used in shells. A train of ten carloads of rich concentrates was shipped about once a week from the Sunnyside mill at Eureka, was picked up by the D. & R. G. at Silverton and transported to a smelter at Pueblo in 48 hours. The Terry family, owners of the famous Sunnyside mine, the biggest shipper on the D. & R. G., was dickering with the U. S. Smelting and Refining Company regarding the sale of the mine and chartered a train for the use of those coming to investigate. A group of eastern capitalists—seven of them millionaires—accompanied by mining engineers, clerks, servants etc., made the trip in January or 1917. The train was the D. & R. G. president’s narrow gauge special, thought to be the only one of its kind in existence. The cars Snow was pretty deep. Much good stuff was on the train and the crew got slightly befuddled. Just at the north end of Silverton the coupling back of the engine came loose and the engineer went several miles before he noticed he had lost the train. He did some quick thinking and plowed the track on to Eureka. When he came back he told everybody that the snow was so deep he thought it better to go ahead and clear the line and then come back and get the train. The outfit parked at Eureka for about a week while officials and engineers made a thorough investigation of the Sunnyside which, a few months later, resulted in the sale of the mine. On the way back to Durango the train, called the “Million Dollar Special”, was wrecked about a mile south of Rockwood. The engine and the three coaches turned over. Nobody was seriously hurt but two of the cars caught fire from the cookstove and completely burned. In February 1906, three passenger trains on week days and two on Sundays ran between Silverton and Eureka. In 1913 a train, running six days per week, left Silverton at 8:30 A.M. and arrived at Eureka at 9:15, left Eureka at 10:15 and arrived in Silverton at 11:00. In 1919 and ’20 a schedule as follows was in operation: leave Silverton at 8:00 A.M. for Eureka, back at 10:00, leave for Joker Tunnel on the S. R. at 10:00, back at 2:00; leave for Eureka at 3:00, back at 5:00;—two trips to Eureka and one to Joker Tunnel seven days per week. Though there seems to have been no scheduled service in 1923, at least the track was still lying and trains must have been run as needed. This period, it should be remembered, was one of hard times following World War I.
The branch to Green Mountain operated only a short time because the mines up that way turned out to be poor producers. The part from Eureka to Animas Forks is claimed never to have paid expenses and soon quit regular operation though occasional trains ran up there until sometime in the twenties. Mears offered the right-of-way to the county if it would take up the track, which it did, and Mr. Meyer hauled the junk down in 1936. The section from Silverton to Eureka revived and lasted the longest of any of the three little railroads. Ore was shipped over it from the Sunnyside mine and mill until 1939 when the mine closed down because of a miner’s strike. In the summer of 1942 the property was advertised for sale for $17,000 The United States had, after it became involved in war with Japan, established military bases in Alaska. The railroad there, the White Pass and Yukon, needed more motive power and the government requisitioned the three locomotives, the 3, 4, and 34. There, so R. E. Cooper states, they were re-numbered to 22, 23 and 24, respectively. In 1947 word was received from the War Surplus Board and the W. P. & Y. Ry. that twelve engines—7 D. & R. G., 2 C. & S. and 3 S. N.—had been received by the Alaska Railroad but when Diesel power was obtained there, all except No. 34 (24) were returned to Seattle to M. Block & Co., a junking outfit. The last known of the 34, it was sitting in the railroad yards at Skagway, Alaska, in a state of dismantlement. In 55 years, 1887 to 1942, the three little Silverton railroads started, prospered, declined and perished and nothing, unless one considers still discernible roadbeds and rotting ties, remains to attest their existence. No equipment except one coach, which is scarcely recognizable as such, has survived. A few little relics such as small amounts of paper material, a goodly number of pictures and S. R. buckskin, silver and gold passes have survived and they are scattered from one end of the United States to the other. Pathetic mementos they are, for agents that played such a large part in the life and prosperity of their community. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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