Railroad Depots of the Colorado Narrow Gauge, Volume 3

Between 1886 and 1914 the Sanborn Map Company mapped the depot towns of Colorado's upper Arkansas valley and Gunnison country, drawing every building at fifty feet to the inch for fire insurance underwriters. This volume reproduces 44 selected sheets from nine of those surveys in full color from the Library of Congress originals — the sheets that show each town's railroad ground: depots, engine houses, water tanks, yards, and the smelters drawn on their webs of sidings. The complete surveys ran to more sheets than are reproduced here; this volume presents the railroad core of each.

The towns are Cañon City, Silver Cliff, Salida, Buena Vista, Leadville, Red Cliff, Kokomo, Gunnison, and Crested Butte. The centerpiece is Leadville's great survey of 1895 — twenty plates here, opening with the survey's own decorative title page and graphic index — with three railroads' grounds: a depot-grounds sheet of freight house and waiting rooms, a freight house lettered for the Denver, Leadville & Gunnison, and the Colorado Midland's engine house, turntable, and two-story passenger station, plus outlying panels reaching Granite, Minturn, Kokomo, and Robinson. Salida's first sheet carries a dedicated large-scale panel of its depot grounds, the Gunnison branch labeled "(Narrow Gauge)" by the surveyors themselves. Kokomo's single 1886 sheet holds a combination depot, circular water tank, and three smelters marked "closed & mach'y removed," and Cañon City's depot faces the Royal Gorge Hotel across a multi-track corridor. Every sheet is reproduced without enhancement from the Library of Congress scans, with the original color key — yellow for frame, pink for brick, blue for stone — intact.

Volume 3 of the Railroad Depots of the Colorado Narrow Gauge series: an essential reference for model railroaders, railroad historians, and collectors of Colorado history.

68 pages. 8.5" x 11". Full color. Paperback.

Satisfaction guaranteed or you can send it back!