Re: Gunnison, CO

Having "dabbled" in research oriented activities (wrote a doctoral dissertation, managed a few doctoral candidates), these couple of indicting posts got me curious about what might be available in the category of "research-quality" literature. For my not-so-extensive investigation, I went to History Colorado, the former Colorado Historical Society, to see what they might have collected/curated.

What I found was that their effort focuses on asset collection and management, centered on a document with the following overview:

Railroads in Colorado, 1858-1948
Railroads played a significant role in the overall development of Colorado. The document was created as a result of a Colorado State Historical Fund grant awarded to Colorado State Parks for the purpose of preparing a historic context that would assist in evaluation and planning efforts related to railroad abandonments and potential rails-to-trails conversions.
Railroads in Colorado, 1858-1948

The document contains uncited prose overviewing the early history of railroads in Colorado, described in context of the overall history of the state. It also contains asset descriptions, but a lot of them reference generic structure designs, not drawings of the actual artifacts. And, it has a large bibliography of reference sources, some with more contextual than direct documentary value; still a useful list for further research.

I would put this particular product in the same category of Wikipedia: a useful source of tutorial and contextual information, but sparse in the inclusion of direct descriptions. Useful for determining directions for further digging, but not a viable bibliographical reference.

All that said, I think the body of literature available to us to understand narrow gauge railroading history is quite useful, but it's up to the individual researcher to critically assess each works' provenance regarding specifically what was on the ground at the time...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2024 09:24AM by Glenn Butcher.