Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Old Railroad Tunnels through Ute Pass

Before our last snowstorm I found some old railroad tunnels up above Manitou Springs in the mountains through which the Colorado Midland used to run through Ute Pass. I had an idea where they were, I just had to find a way to get up in there. These tunnels were blasted out in the 1880’s. The Colorado Midland was the first standard gauge railroad built over the continental divide in the state. Later on when gold was discovered in Cripple Creek and Victor, they built the Midland Terminal Railway which was a standard gauge spur from Divide that ran on into the mining district at Cripple Creek and Victor. The old shop for the Colorado Midland is still standing on Hwy. 24 at 21st Street in Colorado Springs. It’s now the Ghost Town Museum. And the old roundhouse building that housed engines, and where they’d turn them around so they could head back up through Ute Pass again, is still standing at Hwy. 24 at 21st Street a little southeast of the old shop. The ore processing mill was at Old Colorado City and the smokestack from that old mill is still standing by a housing development called Gold Hill Mesa, which is built on top of about 14 million tons of processed ore from the gold mines up in the above mentioned mining district. These trains used to run from the mill, up through these tunnels in Ute Pass, to the mines, and haul the ore from the mines back down to the mill at Old Colorado City for processing. Lotta history, and a helluva bunch of hard work involved.

Was stationed at Ft. Carson early 60s before it was reactivated! Always amazed at the history of that part of the country! If I'd had my druthers....I'd have moved there!! Damn hard to grow cotton up there though!!

That is some cool history. I did quite a bit of driving in the Ute Pass area years ago and poured some concrete off the grid up there. Cool country that I had no idea was linked to the Springs area.

Thanks, very interesting.

Family has been there for many decades. The old house was on W. Pikes Peak. Used to walk over to the Garden of The Gods to climb and ride horses.

Always amazed at the volume of work conducted in the old days, only to be abandoned in few years.

Thanks for sharing.

Great pictures and history.

That is some cool pictures of American history.

I thought for a minute that we were looking at Biden's earhole...

I'm in CO too. Very cool you found those. Hard to tell how big they are in the picture. Almost look too small for a full size train, looks like more mining tunnels to transport ore. There's no soot (which could have eroded away) on the portal entrances either, which is typical of coal fired locomotives.

Thank you, that is very interesting to me.

The Midland Terminal made its last run about 72 years ago. They pulled the track up and abandoned the line. A lot of erosion has taken place since then. There was another tunnel I could see about a quarter mile up ahead, but the railbed had completely eroded away and the terrain was near vertical through there. It didn’t get much sun and there was snow and ice through there, and it was just too dangerous to traverse it at that time. I’ll be goin’ back when conditions are better to get into that other tunnel.

Thanks for posting..
Any interesting tracks?
It seems like a good place for game to take shelter....

I thought about that when I was going through two of those tunnels in the pictures above. They were pretty long and had a curvature to them; it got pretty flippin’ dark for a ways in there. And the only light I had was the one on my phone. Didn’t do schit. Wouldn’t wanna run into a black bear or a lion up in there.

Nice photos and history.

Monuments... to some man's life work..... who's name will never be learned or remembered.

I thought those were narrow gauge as std gauge could not handle all the twist and turns. Another railway wentup the gold camp road.