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.

The railway that went up Gold Camp Road was narrow gauge, it was nicknamed ‘the short line.’ The railway that went up Phantom Canyon from Florence was narrow gauge too. But this one, the Colorado Midland...and the Midland Terminal...was standard gauge. Much of present Hwy. 67 between Divide and Cripple Creek runs along the old Midland Terminal spur between Divide and the mining district. There is a former wood-shored Midland Terminal tunnel that was once used as a one-lane highway tunnel on CO 67 until the 1990’s when part of it collapsed. It was bypassed with a new cut and the old tunnel is still there. You can look inside of it and still see the shoring on the inside. Access has been closed with a grille though. It’s at the trailhead for Pancake Rocks on CO 67.

OK,I was thinking since the one running from Cripple Creek to Victor is narrow gauge,so were those.Interesting to know

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

Relatives in a beach community in SoCal have some homeless folks that they could ship you folks. Those look like they'd make a good shelter.

No, those are really cool.

That's cool Ant, I was going to ask you what you thought happened to the tracks. Have you been in the old mines yet?

About twenty or maybe twenty-five years ago, there was a big stink about bums and tramps living in the tunnels. I thought that the tunnels were closed off. Guess not.

A lot of the old tracks all around the country were torn up and used for steel during WW2.

Well said

Looks like a good place to dump a body

I think a commercial tourist operation went in there later on and laid that narrow gauge track on part of the old standard gauge railbed, and now it’s the Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad. I believe it’s only about 4 miles round trip.

Thank you Antlers. Be Well, RZ.

When they abandoned the railroads, they took up the tracks. This country is honeycombed with old mines. Literally thousands of miles of shafts, slopes, tunnels, cross cuts, drifts, stopes, and chutes. I have been in many; many are flat-out dangerous; many...due to erosion, collapse, and the passage of time...have an opening that is only a foot or so across, and from top to bottom. In a few more years they’ll be gone. Some of those big mines up in the mining district at Cripple Creek and Victor had enclosed headframes so they could continue working 24/7/365 in inclement weather at 10,000 feet elevation.

Good stuff antlers.....

You always post cool stuff..............

Enjoyed that, antlers, very interesting time in history. I grew up on a ranch between Fairplay and Hartsel. Have explored that area back in the day.

I love that part of Park County that the Middle Fork of the South Platte runs through. There’s some awesome ranches up in there.

Ssshhh!

Cool pictures! Thanks for sharing.

USRA drew a line across the country and decided all the rail traffic for ww1 should use the midland. They did have small tunnels so were limited on locomotive size, and with 3.5% grades, single track couldn't do it. So all the traffic was sent elsewhere. Led to bankruptcy. The only thing they did right was design some very good standardized locomotives

Over by leadville there is the carleton tunnel and busk-ivanhoe tunnels, part of the same RR. Lots of old track fills and cuts on Trout creek pass area.

Nice pictures,I worked at a Rv Park (Mountain View Resort) for 5 months on 8 mile hill west of Canon City.Wife and i went all over the place sightseeing,had lots of fun.Beautiful country

I’m real familiar with that area. I climb and hike in and around the Gorge all the time.

We were there when they had the 2013 fire that burned down the Gorge,had to leave the park
for 4 days before we could return.

It still looks like a surreal landscape through a lot of the park to this day because of that fire. I was just out there again for a couple of days last week. Climbed Fremont Peak again one day during a long trek. And trekked out to Point Alta Vista again on the second day during a long go of it. I really like it out there.

Crazy that they needed the business, and the business they got was so overwhelming that they couldn’t handle it all...so they were dropped like a hot rock. Then they went out of business.
I think the tunnel you referred to is now used solely as a water diversion tunnel. It’s way up there at about 11,000 feet.

My all time favorite class in high school was Colorado history. Problem is, there is so much there that it would take several years to encompass it all, especially the mining periods. Thanks for the pictures.

I have driven through the tunnels when they were open years ago.

Wow, that's pretty amazing. I love the history of the West, it's so cool.

Your school was way cooler than my school, obviously.


Great pics, Antlers!

Cool pics! I don't know that area of the state.

As interesting as the hardrock mining history is in Colorado...and all that it entails...the coal mining history in southern Colorado is fascinating as well.

I can almost hear the rattlesnakes in those tunnels.

Nice pics!

I've only been in that area 3 times before (2 with the Scouts, once on vacation).

Would love to take a day hike or two and explore those tunnels...as well as climb and camp Pike's Peak!

I am surprised to see this thread!! Way back in the 1970’s my wife and I lived in the Colorado City / Manitou Springs area. We got curious about those railroad tunnels on the south side of Ute Pass and walked through some near Manitou (Crystal Park??). Deep in one curving tunnel almost pitch black we came up to something white. And it moved!!! We freaked out until we realized it was a horse! Someone was using it as a stable! We went on to the probably the midpoint of that segment and found it was completely blocked by chain link, from top to bottom.

Later found out land access to one of those tunnel segments was owned by someone I worked with.

Aaaaand swipe that off the bucket list! lol


It's OK though because with my luck, I would probably get 10 feet into the tunnel and the whole thing would come crashing down.

Believe it or not, ND even has a railroad tunnel.

The line that ran over the Gold Camp was also Standard gauge. CS&CCD (Colorado Springs &Cripple Creek District) The short line and the Midland would loan engines to each other in times of need. Check out the Colorado Rail Annual book about the CS&CCD at a library, but with out looking through my RR books I cannot recall the issue number.

When the CS&CCD went bust the rails were pulled up and trestles had floors installed and it became the Corley Mountain Highway for auto traffic.

You are correct, and I was wrong about it. My bad. Thanks for pointing it out.
I still drive the entire length of it occasionally, but I have to take Old Stage Road until it intersects with Gold Camp Road at the collapsed tunnel, and then Gold Camp goes on into the mining district. The Cathedral Park area is especially pretty. I’ve hiked between the collapsed tunnel at Silver Cascade Falls and the collapsed tunnel before St. Peter’s Dome many times.

Back in the 80's (I think) reading that the processed ore tailings at Gold Hill Mesa still contained a billion dollars of gold that was not captured by old-time ore processing. ... At today's gold price there's probably 5 billion dollars worth of gold there now. I wonder who owns the mineral rights and if they will evict all the current surface rights homeowners, scrap off their houses, and re-process the tailings!!!!

rail was expensive, labor was cheap, pull the rails leave the ties, esp when mines played out and new ones opened in next valley/canyon.
same with logging railroads in AZ.

Yep. The processing at that time was reportedly 97% effective. And they’ve said that contained within those 14 million tons of wasterock there’s still 3% gold. At today’s prices, that equates to a bunch of moolah.

Only if there are rats. Coyotes might do....