Bunker Hill Station, established near here in 1876, anchored the last bastion of the Barlow and Sanderson Stage Company. Although railroads had replaced most of the company's San Luis Valley routes by the mid-1880s, the line from Alamosa to Lake City prospered during that decade, carrying passengers, mail, and freight over the crater-pocked Rio Grande road and stopping here before the difficult trip to Wagon Wheel Gap. Riders endured stifling or drafty coaches, storms, bandits, and broken wheels, but until 1891, when the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad reached Creede, this stage line remained the best way to reach the San Juan mining districts. South Fork's wooden water tank also reflects the coming of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, which paused here in the winter of 1882 on its way to the silver mines of the San Juans. Though the area was already loosely settled, South Fork emerged that season at the end of the line, with lumberyards and sawmills supplying railroad ties to the expanding railroad. The timber industry then sustained South Fork by drawing on the forests of the San Juans, and although railroad service later ceased to Creede and became limited to South Fork, the old water tower remained beside the tracks east of town.