Re: The Switzerland Trail of America

That's really the only book exclusively about the Colorado & Northwestern / Denver, Boulder & Western and Greeley Salt Lake & Pacific narrow gauge.

There are a number of books about the area that touch on the railroads, like John Schooland's "Boulder, Then and Now" and "Boulder in Perspective." "A Look at Boulder: From Settlement to City" by Phyllis Smith may have some information - I have only glanced through it.

There are also a number of books about some of the towns in the area that include some information on the railroads. I have one called "Nederland - A Trip to Cloudland" by Isabel M. Becker.

There probably won't be much about the railroads in these books that isn't in Crosson's book. There was an article by Mac Poor in the NRHS Bulletin no. 65 (published in 1944) called "History of the Denver, Boulder & Western Railroad Co." Forest Crossen used this as a resource for his books (I know because I have his copy, complete with printers notes for figures that he copied from it, plus I've seen some acknowledgement from him thanking Mac Poor for helping with Crossons' book). Because this article came first, just about everything in it is repeated in Crosson's book. There are a few additional tidbits, such as a reference to the disposition of Shay #25. Mac only knew that it went somewhere near Salt Lake City with "Little Cottonwood" in its name (turned out to be the Little Cottonwood Transportation Company). Crosson didn't mention this. One or two of the photos weren't used in Crosson's book.

Otherwise, information is scattered through magazine articles, this forum, and a few metions on web pages. I've collected some information over the years, and a lot of photos, and I try to share information here when related topics come up. Here is one unpublished photo, showing #32 pulling a freight train across the first bridge across Boulder Creek (just past where the Justice Center is today).



The locomotive sitting in the background to the right is Climax no. 2. Here is a close-up:


The other narrow gauge in Boulder County was the Denver Longmont & Northwestern / Denver, Utah and Pacific (sorry - I originally listed this as the Utah and Northern, which was a very different railroad, which unlike the DU&P that never got out of central Colorado, was largely in Utah). There isn't much written about that, except for a little booklet published by the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club, called "Denver, Logmont and Northwestern" by B.L. Boyles, originally published in 1952. This is usually found in a later printing from 1982 where it was combined with "Steam Tramways of Denver," and "The Colorado & Eastern Railroad" for a total of 84 small-format pages.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2009 08:02PM by Todd Hackett.