A Tourist's Railroad

The old roadbed and cut below are believed to be part of a railroad constructed in 1887 by the Union Pacific Railroad to connect Fort Steele to Denver, Colorado, following the North Platte to North Park, Colorado, then down the Cache la Poudre River to Fort Collins and through the valley to Denver. Killpatrick Brothers and Collins Contractors made Fort Steele their headquarters, and some fifteen miles of roadbed was built before the project was abandoned after the federal government refused to renew the bonded indebtedness of the main line and its president, Mr. Adams, was removed from office. In 1899, Fenimore Chatterton, a former post trader, tried to organize the Wyoming Southern Railway from Fort Steele to Saratoga and Encampment along the same grade up the Platte, but it also failed because his financial backers from Boston, Massachusetts, were more interested in selling stocks and making large profits than in making the project work. In 1904, Chatterton was also involved in a proposed Denver, Yellowstone and Pacific Railroad, advanced by E.H. Power of London, England, that would have run from Denver and Fort Collins to Walden, Colorado, then to Saratoga, Wyoming, down to Fort Steele, through South Pass and Jackson Hole into Idaho, and along the Salmon River through Washington to Seattle. The Interstate Trust Company of Boston was chosen as its bonding company, but the plan collapsed in 1905 when the trust company decided to back the Oregon Short Line instead. In September 1905, the Saratoga and Encampment Railroad Company was organized by Chatterton, and the railroad was built from Wolcott to Saratoga and Grand Encampment to enhance the value of the hot springs and provide transportation for the Boston Smelter at Grand Encampment and the copper mines. The railroad to Saratoga is still used by Union Pacific Railroad to haul freight from the lumber industry. Chatterton also helped form the Wyoming State Railroad with backing from Governor Pardon of France, whose oil land holdings near Lander, Wyoming, needed access to market. Chatterton drew a line from Lander to Casper and advised a railroad from Orin Junction to Lander, and in the late fall of 1904 the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, recognizing the potential of linking existing lines, brought him to Chicago and bought his right-of-way interests for the new railroad, which it built in 1905 and 1906.

Wyoming · United States