Re: First plane to Durango came by train

It was a landing strip at best. Part of it is buried under Tailings Pond #4 today and the remainder is now Mears Avenue by the brick substation about 1 mile out of Silverton on the Howardsville/Eureka road. It was built after WWII on top of the abandoned Silverton Northern and was in unofficial service until the mid-1970s. Any rational pilot would not fly in here and I saw maybe 2 or 3 even attempt it in the 70s, always early morning flights when the air was still cold and dense. This area is not friendly to aircraft because of the air density and terrain. I've seen several fatal accidents and I was the second EMT on the scene of a helicopter crash that killed 3 people just above Eureka. Four people died at the crest of Coal Bank Pass on Highway 550 because their plane lost altitude and they didn't clear the summit. And 4 people died a couple of years ago just outside of town when their plane got disorientated in dense fog and hit the mountainside--we heard the impact here in the office. A plane crashed on top of Cinnamon Pass a couple of years ago and I forget the number of dead on that one--under powered aircraft, thin air, clouds below the peaks, all make train travel seem the way to go--like the Southern Pacific used to have billboards along side the highways that said "Next Time take the Train."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2014 11:06AM by Fritz Klinke.