I wonder if any of you South Park historians have any photos or records of the Railroad telegraph pole line that went along the line from Denver to Como.
Reason for asking is that I'm on the track of three big No. 8 copper Western Union wires No's 207 208 and 209 that first show up on the D&RG line at Buena Vista, and can be tracked on pole line and telegraph office switchboard lists from that point westward all the way through to Ogden Utah.
These appear to have been added after 1890 sometime and show on records of the 1920's.
Their appearance on the D&RG line is somewhat of a mystery, because these wires were not shown on the D&RG Pueblo-Salida-Nathrop line, and I don't believe they were on the Colorado Midland line from Colorado Springs either.
How did they get to Buena Vista?
I suspect they may have been carried on the only other RR route from Denver and that would have been the C&S line from Denver to Como and westward from there to where the railroads crossed. I would like to be able to prove this out.
The wires were obviously W.U. through wires because they were copper and shown to be "in switchboard only" in all the intermediate offices along the way where they appeared .
These three wires were still on the line when I worked for D&RGW in the 1970's and in fact I supervised the salvage crew that took them down in the early 1970's across the Utah desert.
Anyone have photos of the lines along the C&S west of Denver that might show what was there?
I expect there would have been about 7 wires (if these three WU wires
were included) on the C&S line: A RR Dispatcher's wire, A RR message wire, a W.U. way wire, perhaps a W.U. through wire to Leadville, and the three W.U."transcontinental" wires.
Can anybody help me with this?