Please note revision/ correction above. For Chili line fans, some more history, this time with Otto Mears:
May 7, 1891
At Cumbres hill the snow stands up beside the D&RG section house, six feet deep, and thence it extends for miles, covering the whole range as far as Toltec gorge, and ranging in depth from four to twenty-five feet. All the streams are running bank full: the Chama, Rio Brazos, and Wolf creek, an ordinary rill, are rushing torrents. In places, they say the whole mountain side is covered with water, trikling out under the snow banks on top of spreading over the face of decline in every direction. Thus far the weather has continued cool in that region, hence the floods that have passed do not begin to indicate what may follow.
Railway notes:
“A special containing the following gentlemen pulled into the depot [Santa Fe] Thursday: Hon. T. B. Catron and Otto Mears, Supt. Lydon, Engineer Rogers and Attorney J. W. Sleepe. They took conveyance and went to Tierra Amarilla. It is said that a railroad will soon be built to Tierra Amarilla.” Thus say the Chama Northwest. Yes; and down the Chama to Espanola, eh? There’s a hed on! [meaning head-up?]
Chama flood notes : The old wagon bridge at this place went out the first of the week and Lee’s foot bridge followed two days later. The wagon bridge over the Chama opposite Law’s mill is a thing of the past.
May 15, 1891
A Chama dispatch to the Denver News it is rumored, that the result of Otto Mears’ recent visit will be a branch road from Chama to Tierra Amarilla, the county seat, eighteen miles south, and through to Espanola, making a winter southern outlet from Durango.
