Construction: 1870s to 1883 When the
Denver & Rio Grande Railway (D&RG) was chartered in 1870, it had the goal of connecting
Denver with
El Paso, Texas. But when it reached
Raton Pass in 1878, it found that the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad had beaten it to the best crossing into
New Mexico. After several years of financially draining battle, the two companies came to an agreement in 1880, and the D&RG, under the direction of
William J. Palmer, set its sights on Salt Lake City. In the meantime, the
Utah and Pleasant Valley Railway (U&PV) had built a 3-foot (914mm)
narrow gauge line from the
coal mines in the
Pleasant Valley to
Provo on the
Union Pacific Railroad-controlled
Utah Southern Railroad. The company was incorporated on December 11, 1875, under the general laws of Utah by owners of land in the valley. The company began grading in April 1877 and
track laying on August 29, 1878, driving the last
spike between Pleasant Valley and
Springville on November 5, 1879. The short distance in the
Utah Valley from Springville to the larger city of Provo, which closely paralleled the Utah Southern, opened in October 1880. Investor
Charles W. Scofield of
New York, who was already in control of two other narrow gauge mining roads - the
Bingham Canyon and Camp Floyd Rail Road since 1873 and the
Wasatch and Jordan Valley Railroad since 1875 - acquired the U&PV in October 1878. The U&PV began at a mine in the Pleasant Valley south of
Scofield, heading north along the present
Pleasant Valley Subdivision to the
Scofield Reservoir. The old grade has been flooded until it leaves the lake to the north, rising to an elevation of
above sea level before descending, via a pair of
switchbacks, to
Starvation Creek. The valley of that creek took the railroad to the
Spanish Fork Canyon, and the later D&RGW, at
Tucker. The remainder of the U&PV is now, for the most part, still operated, as it follows Spanish Fork Canyon into the Utah Valley. The Central Pacific Coal & Coke Co. Ltd. of London chartered the San Pete Valley Railroad in 1873 to develop its mining properties in Utah. Opened in 1882, the narrow-gauge line ran 30 miles from Nephi to the parent company's coal deposits at Wales, was extended 35 miles to Moroni in 1884, to Manti (43 miles) in 1893, and to Morrison (51 miles) in 1894. The D&RG purchased the railroad in 1907. Associates of Palmer incorporated the
Sevier Valley Railway in Utah on December 7, 1880, The lines of this company and the Sevier Valley were included in the far-reaching charter for the
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway, incorporated on July 21, 1881 and Palmer confirmed this in September. (The original grading through Castle Valley was never used for a railroad, although in the 1910s it was briefly part of the
Midland Trail, now
US-6.) The D&RGW bought the assets of the Wasatch and Jordan Valley Railroad, which had merged with the Bingham Canon and Camp Floyd Rail Road, at
foreclosure on December 31, 1881, adding to its system two profitable branches from
Midvale to
Bingham and
Little Cottonwood Canyons. allowing the former to operate the latter for a payment of 40% of gross receipts. The difficult double switchback on the original U&PV was bypassed by a new connection to the under-construction D&RGW at
Colton on November 23, 1882, as well as the new line from Colton over
Soldier Summit to
Tucker. D&RG and D&RGW crews met at a point now known as
Desert, west of
Green River, on March 30, 1883, and trains began running between Denver and Salt Lake City several days later. (Although the D&RG built the line from the state line to Desert, it was owned by the D&RGW.) Final completion to Ogden in May was delayed for several days by the Union Pacific's refusal to let the D&RGW cross, but on May 19 the D&RGW was complete.
Retrenchment and turmoil: 1883 to 1901 With the line into Utah complete, the D&RG system consisted of a
narrow gauge main line from Denver to Ogden, passing through or over
Colorado Springs,
Pueblo, the
Royal Gorge,
Salida,
Marshall Pass,
Gunnison, the
Black Canyon of the Gunnison,
Montrose,
Grand Junction,
Green River, and Salt Lake City. It included numerous branches, but only three west of Grand Junction - to Pleasant Valley, Bingham Canyon, and Little Cottonwood Canyon. The expansion resulted in a large
debt that the D&RG was unable to pay the
interest on. D&RGW president Palmer and D&RG president
Frederick Lovejoy got into an argument over the management and payment of rental for the leased D&RGW. Unable to break the lease, Lovejoy ordered the tracks torn up at the state line in retaliation, costing both railroads the
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad's through traffic. The D&RG entered
receivership on July 12, 1884 and the D&RGW on August 12, with D&RGW superintendent
W. H. Bancroft being appointed to the Utah company. The two companies resumed friendly relations, and after the D&RG
reorganized on July 14, 1886, Palmer returned to his position as D&RGW president, the company having been released from receivership. Now independent, the D&RGW looked to the east, where the
standard gauge Colorado Midland Railway was building west from
Colorado Springs with the intent of entering Utah. Palmer realized that if he did not widen his gauge and cooperate with the Midland, he might soon have new competition. To raise the money to convert the line, which would require about of new railroad where the existing grade was too steep or curvy, he incorporated a new
Rio Grande Western Railway. (Palmer had initially proposed the name "Utah and Colorado Railway" for the new company.) The
State Line and Denver Railway was incorporated May 16, 1889 Construction began immediately, the line being converted from Ogden to Salt Lake City by mid-November 1889, to
Provo on March 7, 1890, and the rest of the way to Grand Junction on June 10. The line was completely relocated out of the canyon of the
Price River from
Grassy Trail to
Woodside, and into the
Ruby Canyon of the
Grand (Colorado) River from
Whitehouse to
Crevasse, Colorado. Beyond Crevasse, the RGW leased the D&RG track to Grand Junction in December 1889 and subsequently widened its gauge. The
Rio Grande Junction Railway, owned jointly by the D&RG and Midland, was completed to Grand Junction on November 15, 1890, and through service began the next day over the RGW and both eastern roads, the D&RG having completed its standard gauge line over
Tennessee Pass. All branches were also converted, except for short gauge sections at the ends of the lines into Bingham and Little Cottonwood Canyons. (red), showing its connections to the Rio Grande Western Railway (black, left) and
Colorado and Southern Railway (black, lower right) For the next ten years, the RGW operated as an independent standard gauge
bridge line connecting Grand Junction to Salt Lake City and Ogden, with branches to sources of valuable minerals. Through its new subsidiary, the Utah Central Railroad, the RGW acquired several Salt Lake City-area lines in 1898, finally adding to its system the branch to
Park City through
Parley's Canyon that had been chartered in 1881. The RGW teamed up with the
Colorado and Southern Railway, which had recently been split from the bankrupt
Union Pacific Railroad, and stretched north–south from
Wyoming through eastern Colorado into
Texas, to jointly buy control of the connecting
Colorado Midland Railway. RGW's publicly listed share prices rose, delaying a takeover by the D&RG until
George Gould arrived. Gould, owner of the
Missouri Pacific Railroad (MP), wished to create
a transcontinental railroad system, and identified the D&RG/RGW as the best route west into Utah. The MP began buying D&RG stock in 1900, and the D&RG did the same with the RGW. Palmer still owned a
controlling interest in the RGW, but he came to an agreement to sell the company to Gould, and Gould management, including new president
Edward Turner Jeffery, took over on July 1, 1901.
Gould control and aftermath: 1901 to present In 1901, the
Union Pacific Railroad gained control of the
Southern Pacific Railroad, which owned the
Central Pacific Railway, the portion of the
First transcontinental railroad west of Ogden. Searching for another route to the Pacific, Gould incorporated the
Castle Valley Railway as a cutoff from the RGW's main line near
Farnham to the
Marysvale Branch at
Salina and beyond to the under-construction
San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (Salt Lake Route) at
Milford. However, the Union Pacific gained control of the Salt Lake Route in mid-1903, forcing Gould to construct an entirely new line to California. The financing of the
Western Pacific Railway (WP) would take almost all the revenues of the MP, D&RG, and RGW, leaving very little for maintenance, let alone improvements. The D&RG and RGW, operated as a single system since 1901, were merged as the
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad on July 31, 1908,
California Zephyr departs
Green River. Improvement of the standard gauge main line through Utah to relieve congestion had begun in 1898, when the RGW added a second track to the steep 4% grade to
Tucker on the west side of
Soldier Summit. The shallower east-side grade was similarly doubled to
Colton in 1906, and further to
Kyune and from
Castle Gate to
Helper in 1909. Construction began on a new low-grade line west of the summit in 1912, when the D&RG added a track between
Detour (the west end of the realignment) and
Thistle. The new line, with a double
hairpin curve, was completed the next year, as was a second track between Kyune and Castle Gate, completing a double-track line between Thistle and Helper, with a maximum grade of 2.4% on the east slope and 2.0% on the west. Local competition arrived in 1912, when the
United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company, which owned
coal mines southwest of
Price, organized the
Utah Railway (originally the Utah Coal Railway). U.S. Smelting objected to the D&RG's charging of higher freight rates due to the mines' location on a
branch line, and began to build its own line over Soldier Summit into the
Utah Valley. The two companies reached an agreement in November 1913, where the D&RG would operate the Utah Railway between a junction near Castle Gate and the mines, and the unfinished line between Thistle and
Provo would be completed as a second track. This arrangement began with the completion of the road in 1914, and the D&RG now had a double-track line between Provo and Helper. Three years later, the Utah Railway began independent operations between the mines and Provo under a
reciprocal trackage rights arrangement that has persisted to the present, where each company allows the other to use its half of the double-track line. The WP was completed in 1910, but its construction had given the D&RG enormous debts. After periods of ownership by
Eastern U.S. bankers, the courts appointed two local
trustees in 1935. The system was slowly rebuilt into a profitable enterprise, and in 1947 it was reorganized as the
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. After buying the
Southern Pacific Transportation Company in 1988 and adopting the latter's name, the D&RGW became part of the
Union Pacific Railroad in 1996. With the level of the
Great Salt Lake rising in the mid-1980s, the D&RGW and UP came to a
trackage rights agreement, where the D&RGW would use the UP's higher line between Salt Lake City and Ogden, and in exchange the UP could use the D&RGW between Salt Lake City and Provo, a better-designed route than the UP's. A long branch was begun in 1890 as gauge and widened in 1891, extending south from
Thistle up
Thistle Creek and down the
San Pitch River to
Manti. It was extended south to
Sevier in 1891, via the
Sevier River, by the
Sevier Railway, and that same year the
Tintic Range Railway built from
Springville southwest and west to
Eureka in the
Tintic Mountains. The RGW organized both of these companies to be owned by RGW stockholders, but out of the control of RGW bondholders. The
Panic of 1893 stopped new construction until 1896, when the Sevier Railway was extended farther south to
Belknap. The
Ballard & Thompson Railroad between Thompson Springs and Sego was purchased in 1913 by the D&RGW and became the Sego Branch. The Rio Grande obtained control of the narrow gauge Wasatch & Jordan Valley Railway in 1881 which had been built up
Little Cottonwood Canyon. Portions of the line would be standard gauged as far as Wasatch station by 1913. From Wasatch to the line's terminus at
Alta, Utah would remain narrow gauge, the Rio Grande's last narrow gauge in the state of Utah. Rather than operating the line themselves the Rio Grande would lease it to various operators such as the horse-drawn Alta Tramway and later the
Shay locomotive powered Little Cottonwood Transportation Company until 1922. Postal service and passenger service on the narrow gauge was provided from 1922 to 1928 by a "jitney" service operated by Elbert Despain on an automobile converted for rail service. Following the end of jitney service, the Rio Grande abandoned access to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon in 1933 along with the narrow gauge route up the canyon. Segments of
Utah State Route 210 follow the former railroad grade up the canyon. Full abandonment of the surviving segments of the remaining
Sandy branch would occur in 1965. In the future, a
new rail line into the
Uintah Basin, currently under study by the state of Utah, may be constructed, branching off the existing line near
Soldier Summit. ==Presidents==