Cumbres & Toltec

The Last Crusade

As ridiculous fans of the Indiana Jones franchise, we purposely detoured out of northern New Mexico to Antonito, Colorado to catch the terminus of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad.  Knowing we held tickets for the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad the next day, we opted against riding the rails between Colorado and New Mexico, but we couldn’t miss the sight of this old-fashioned locomotive carrying its passengers through the southern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.  Roughly twenty years after the start of the American Civil War, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad laid tracks in support of the mining industry, but in our day, we arrived here strictly as tourists catching a glimpse of a scene we recall from a different period in history.

The primary focus of seeing the train evoked cinematic memories from the third (and as my sons’ believe, the final) adventure of the archeologist named for the family dog.  The Cumbres-Toltec pulled a less-typical cargo of a circus train through the Southwestern United States where a young Indiana Jones sought to elude treasure hunters by hopping aboard the mountain train as it passes through a grassy flatland.  For us, seeing the locomotive would be another movie moment on our vacation adventures (see “Field of Dreams,” February 2013).

A Race Downhill

We inevitably find unique places to stop for a photo moment and somewhere between Santa Fe and Antonito, a winery, a bridge over the Rio Grande, and a nearly dwindled patch of mountain snow (see “The Progression of a Snowball Fight,” January 2012) slow our journey to the railroad’s end.  But we spy the tracks and follow them as best as the narrow roads through the mountains allow.  When we stop at an inspiring outlook, we hear the whistle blow in the distance, echoing off the peaking at our backs.  We race onward in search of the historic locomotive and its length of cars being pulled through the wilderness.  And with winding swiftness, we gain on its caboose and parallel its path for nearly a mile.  When it bends westward, we push forward attempting to get ahead of its steaming engine so we can watch its approach and feels its thunder as it meets our vantage point.

 

We zip ahead and see a marked crossing where we strategically position ourselves and prepare for its approach.  First we hear the vibration of the rails stinging from the weight and motion pulsing towards them.  Next, we hear the engine pounding, chugging, working less difficultly than it must have through the mountains, but nonetheless exerting its force to move towards us.  Then we see the mighty machine round a bend to the north and the puffs of smoke are left hanging in its wake.  Then as it approaches the crossing and the road we previously skirted, it blasts its whistle, a sound unmatched by modern technology, and a sweet reminder of the history behind this mode of transportation.  But it’s no longer a mode of transportation, nor is it even a reminder of a historic era faded into the past.  For us, it is a piece of our favorite adventurer claiming the Cross of Coronado and riding off into the sunset.  And once the engine and its full length pass us, we hop back in our car and do the same.

Ponies and Locomotives

Time Travel

Were time travel possible, I would transport myself to the American West the year Abraham Lincoln won election to the Presidency.  Not that I am particularly anxious to see the horrors of the Civil War, but more so than any other span of the nineteenth century, this decade represents, in my opinion, the greatest period of change in the history of America.  Even without the conflict between the industrialized Northern states and the plantations of the Confederacy, I would witness the very definition of obsolescence as history unsuccessfully tries to keep up with itself.

Between 1849 when Joseph Sutter’s team stumbled upon gold at his mill and 1898 when the American frontier effectively closed, the transformation of the American West spiraled.  Change dramatically impacted nations from the last nomadic Native Americans losing their ability to sustain their centuries-long livelihood to Mexicans redrawing their northern borders and handing over land to the rapidly expanding country to the north.  Yes, if someone discovers how to manipulate time and transport people through it, please plop me down right there in the middle of all that change.

You Are Obsolete

Driving north on US Highway 93 between Wendover, Utah and Ely, Nevada, the old Pony Express trail crosses the road where a wide swath of dirt marks the historic and mission-critical route traversed by solitary horsemen to deliver mail across the open West.  In 1860, the first rider braved the elements and the terrain between Missouri and California and each successive rider pushed his horse to get to the next hand-off point.  Within a year and a half, the service folded, not coincidentally just days after telegraph service bridged the two coasts.  What a tiny fraction of US history this dirt lot represents along a lightly-traveled US Highway and a still-unpaved county road – a short period of history that found itself outdated almost as soon as it started – a speck of history that symbolized the expansion of the American West.

On a similar route just slightly north, the railroad companies busily drew their own lines across the map.  Driving north from Idaho, this out-of-the-way location at Promontory Point, Utah represents history’s next crossing of the United States: when train travel united the post-war east to the expanding west.  First the mail, then telegraphs, and now people took a direct route across the country.  But as I arrive here in the twenty-first century, a short stretch of track recreates the site where the final golden spike joined the nation, but no train traffic pushes through the remote site headed westward.  Much like the riders of the pony express, and the relays along the telegraph wires, the trains, too, became obsolete.  I want to travel to that brief and fleeting moment in history when these places mattered.