Well really not totally absolutely forgotten--most folks hiking down the Cascade Trail from Purgatory Ski Area (Durango Mountain Resort today) pass by the boiler on their way to the river and railroad. We used to make that hike every summer back in the 70s when the flag stop for the train was at the bridge. The car bodies were falling apart in the 70s and 80s, and I have not been down the trail in maybe 15 years. It is pretty well known among locals around here, maybe forgotten like Corkscrew Gulch turntable was to the railfans, but not to the locals.
The spur is drawn incorrectly on the 1919 ICC valuation map. It shows the spur alongside the main, crossing the river, but no bridge drawn to take the rails across the river. And, of course, the Tefft Spur did not cross the river at all, but went off at an angle from the mainline to reach the tie camp. Perhaps that was to keep it within the right-of-way designation rather than showing it entering public lands. I questioned Paul Beaber, land surveyor for the San Juan National Forest, several years ago how the FS showed the railroad on its land maps. He replied that they had used a magic marker and drew a nice thick line down the canyon as they had no specifics on a designated right-of-way since the railroad was in place prior to the formation of the National Forest. That does not mean that the Department of Interior was that slack when permission was granted to enter upon public lands in the first place, but that information apparently was not passed onto the USFS.
It is also possible that no formal designation of a right-of-way had been made prior to the 1919 valuation maps, through public lands, and the D&RG applied its standard easements to the railroad--some research into this would be interesting if the records still exist in Washington. Locally, the town, county, and Colorado Department of Transportation couldn't agree on the US 550 right-of-way as nobody could furnish any maps. Well, they were there in the courthouse alright, still wrapped up in the packaging from being mailed to the county in the mid-50s, and it took a water heater failure and flooding of the basement vault where the maps were stored to bring them to light. I got them out of the water just before they would have been damaged, took a good look at them, and discovered the maps everyone said didn't exist.
In Silverton, the paperwork for the 20 acre parcel for the "Depot Grounds" granted by the Department of Interior in about 1882 to the D&RG was not filed until the 1970s when Jack Rentfrow came up one day to file the map with the county. The county had been billing the railroad for taxes and no one knew where the parcel was located. Jackson Thode furnised a map to Dell McCoy for use in the Rainbow Route that shows this parcel and the D&RGW saw that map, with my prompting, and rather belatedly figured out maybe they should get it recorded.
