Across The Fence: The Long Hard Pull

I know that I'm not the only person who, from childhood, developed a lasting love of all things "railroad." At the top of that list comes the old steam locomotives that make my pulse pound a little harder and a bit faster when I watch the sleek black beauties belch smoke and cinders.

I grew up next to the tracks of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe near the town of Nortonville, Kan. The tracks cut through the southeast corner of one section of our land, a little more than 100 yards from our house. The old Nortonville station, torn down in the late '60s to make room for a tennis court, was the highest point on the A.T.&S.F. From my very early years, I remember the steam locomotives that passed our place, north bound in the mornings, southbound at night.

A winter storm that blocked the cut, just past the county road crossing, put us on a first name basis with the engineer who walked to the house, along with the fireman and the brakeman, to wait for the rotary plow to come up from Topeka. Mr. Mize was the engineer's name. I remember that he wore a blue denim shirt, striped bib-overalls, a tall, pleated engineers cap, and heavy boots. But most of all I remember his friendly blue eyes and a bright smile surrounded by a huge red beard. After that day my sisters and I would run to the tracks to wave at Mr. Mize as the engine steamed past and quite often, Mr. Mize would throw out packs of candy.

When the old steamers gave way to the early diesels, I remember the bullet-shaped yellow and blue engines that replaced them. I don't know if Mr. Mize made the transition or not. Closed cabs and increased speeds ended the gauntlet-gloved waves and packs of candy tossed from an open cab.

In high school, while in training for track, I would often run home after practice. The extra two-mile run helped to improve my stamina and gave me a bit of an edge over some of my competitors. However, sometimes I would walk the tracks instead of running the roads. I would walk the rail, balancing myself like a tightrope walker, until I'd fall off and then walk on the ties the rest of the way.

My goal was to walk the entire way without falling. I doubt if my one time track-walking feat is any kind of record, but I think that I may well be the only person to walk a rail from Nortonville, Kansas to the Nolting place, without losing my balance and falling off.

In the later 1980s, the Atchison to Topeka part of the line was abandoned, the rails pulled and the ties hauled away. The roadbed is still there but the shrill whistle of an old steamer and the harsh blare of the diesel's horn no longer echo across pastures and through the cut by the old Nolting place. And I wonder just how many miles of track have been abandoned as whistle stop towns have disappeared or are no longer viable economic shipping points.

Here in Nebraska most folks are familiar with the "Cowboy Trail" that uses the abandoned rail bed of the Chicago and Northwestern railroad. Abandoned in 1992 the old rail bed and right-of-way were donated to the Nebraska Game and Parks to develop a walking trail from Chadron to Norfolk. In 2009, the trail was completed from Valentine to Norfolk – a distance of 195 miles. The remaining portion, from Valentine, west to Chadron is, I believe, still in the planning and organizing stages.

Recently, I became aware of another abandoned railway with an interesting history. On our recent trip to Steamboat Springs, I noticed portions of an old rail bed as we traveled north from Cowdry, Colo., through the Medicine Bow National Forest on Highway 127.

Alongside valley floors and between mountain swells remained the distinctive route of a onetime railroad. As we wound our way through the rugged terrain I was taken by the extraordinary amount of engineering, planning and backbreaking work it would have taken to build this remote railway. And I wondered what could have possibly prompted the undoubtedly enormous amount of capital to even consider such a feat.

Sometime in the 1890s, a successful Nebraska grocer named Isaac Van Horn pulled up stakes and moved to Boston where he established himself as an investment banker. Around 1905 Van Horn came into possession of illegally held coal lands in the North Park area of Jackson County, Colo.

Van Horn and his partner, one Mr. Miller established the Van Horn and Miller Northern Colorado Coal Company and named the location of the coal deposit, Coalmont. Now, a coal mine without means of transport, to a market where coal is in demand, is of little worth and so Mr. Van Horn proposed to build a railroad from Laramie, Wyoming west to Centennial then south through the Medicine Bow forests to Walden, Colo., and down to the mines in Coalmont. Not only would the railroad serve the coalmines of Coalmont but would also provide merchandise by rail to the folks in the secluded mountain town of Walden.

It was in 1876 that a stage line was built from Laramie through Woods Landing and on to Walden. It was this line that would serve the town of Walden until the railroad reached the town in 1911. Freight was delivered to Walden by two and three wagon freighters pulled by 12 and 14 horse teams. The difficulties of that enterprise was highlighted in the February 7, 1907 edition of the Walden New Era in a tribute to one of those freighters:

"Sid Lawrence, who drives the Laramie end of the Laramie-Walden stage line, making the trip from Laramie to Woods Landing, a distance of 27 miles, and return has been on the route for thirteen years straight.

A record such as his needs no comment. A man who can put in 13 years in one position, and especially that of driving a stage through all kinds of weather across the Laramie plains, where the wind blows 400 days out of the year, sometimes with a speed of force that turns over wagons, miles of barbed wire fence, etc. is deserving of more than a pen is sufficiently eloquent to portray."

To build the Laramie, Hahns Peak and Pacific Railroad Van Horn sold shares of stock to investors and raised $2,750,000. In Laramie Van Horn's Acme Consolidated purchased several city lots and a building to be used as an office for the company. In Centennial, Wyoming, where the rails would turn southward towards Walden and Coalmont, the company purchased another townsite along with one-hundred-million feet of uncut timber. The company built a sawmill, a planning-mill, a lumber yard and bought the local Centennial Post newspaper. It was there, at Centennial, that Mr. Van Horn proposed to build a 320 acre "Rocky Mountain Country Club" featuring exquisite polo grounds. Colonel Van Horn, (so titled due to his service as aide de camp to Governor Henry B. Quinby) was a member of no less than two exclusive Country Clubs in New England.

In the first three years of business the company laid only 7 miles of track but Van Horn insisted that the entire line would be completed in the next 18 months. But, in fact it took another four years before the rails reached Coalmont. The difficulties of constructing the line through the rugged terrain of Medicine Bow created continuous delays which spawned the local joke that the Laramie, Hahns Peak and Pacific (L.H.P.&P.) should be named the "Long Hard Pull and Perhaps." Because of the steep grades encountered others mocked that it should have been called the "Lord Help, Push and Pull."

The H.H.P.&P. was never financially stable. In 1914 the line faced foreclosure and was purchased by the Colorado, Wyoming and Eastern Railway. Van Horn declared personal bankruptcy owing in excess of three-quarters of a million dollars with less than $100.00 id assets. He relocated to Florida and established an oil company in Polk County and founded the town of Polk City on the shores of Lake Agnes and Mud Lake. Van Horn promoted his new town as the "Scenic Highlands of Florida" so called due to the towns elevated altitude of 173 feet above sea level.

After multiple changes in ownership, including the Union Pacific, the line was finally sold to the Shortline Wyoming Colorado Railroad in 1987. Shortly thereafter it was abandoned, rails removed and ties hauled away with a portion being renovated as the Medicine Bow Rails to Trails.

The old L.H.P.&P. line boasted the privilege of being the highest elevation of operating standard gauge railroad in North America, its lofty perch being exceeded only by the highly unattainable expectations of success, by Col. Isaac Van Horn.

M. Timothy Nolting is an award-winning Nebraska columnist and freelance writer. To contact Tim, email: [email protected].