Canon City, Colorado, to Colorado Springs Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic to ride the railroads of North America with

my reliable Appletons' guide.

Published in the late 19th century,

Appletons' General Guide to North America

will direct me to all that's novel,

beautiful,

memorable

and striking in the United States.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

As I journey across this vast continent,

I'll discover how pioneers and cowboys conquered the West...

GUNSHOTS

..and how the railroads tied this nation together,

helping to create the global superstate of today.

My rail adventure continues to the West,

and will bring me to some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.

I'll discover how a poet described the grandeur to be found

between sea and shining sea,

and how the iron horse catered for tourists with nerves of steel.

The Rocky Mountains were the last barrier in the railroads' race to

win the West.

The stakes were high and railroad tycoons would fight for the chance

to open up this wilderness to settlement and to trade.

My railroad journey began in St Louis, the gateway to the West,

and crossed the Kansas plains to the frontier cow town, Dodge City.

I continue now west to Colorado Springs in the Rockies

and then on to Albuquerque in New Mexico

before finishing at Arizona's most scenic landmark.

On this leg, I visit Colorado's Canon City,

and explore the Rockies by heritage railroad.

It's then north for the 19th-century spa town of Colorado Springs,

and an ascent with a patriotic heart of the great Pikes Peak.

This time, I ride the historic railroad that sparked a war...

They actually built forts along the canyon walls and they aimed the guns

each other. Shots were fired back and forth.

# America, America... #

..explore the origins of an iconic national hymn...

She took an excursion to the top of Pikes Peak and was inspired by

the vistas and penned America The Beautiful.

..and ascend to over 14,000 feet.

Oh, my word.

We are going to the very edge.

That's unbelievable.

Colorado's southern Rocky Mountain region

was a winter refuge for Indian tribes such as the Ute, Arapaho

and Cheyenne.

The United States gained the territory in 1845

when it annexed Texas.

By 1848, America's western territories

stretched beyond this natural frontier to the Pacific

and lay open for conquest by the railroad.

Expansion west would fuel this region's commerce

and draw visitors in the tens of thousands.

This pretty place is Canon City,

which Appleton says is

"a flourishing mining town with coal deposits,

"oil wells and mineral springs.

"The attraction for the tourists

"lies in its proximity to superb scenery,

"and Main Street points straight at it."

My late 19th-century guidebook is drawing me about two miles west to

a railway that enters the gorge of the Arkansas River

and cuts through steep granite walls for eight miles.

This scenic highlight through the Rockies was made possible by

the construction of an historic narrow-gauge railroad in 1880.

-Hello.

-How are you doing?

Very well, thank you. Looking forward to this.

I bet you are. OK, you're going to be in this car right here.

-Thank you.

-Not a problem.

-Enjoy your trip, sir.

-Thank you very much.

-RADIO:

-'Got a tour on board. Let's take 'em west, over.

INDISTINCT REPLY

HOOTER BLOWS

Every year, 100,000 visitors take this,

one of Colorado's most scenic two-hour trips.

Today I'm fortunate to be riding up front

with the locomotive engineer and some fellow enthusiasts.

Hello.

-I'm Michael.

-Ken Craig, nice to meet you.

-Hello, Ken.

-Steve, nice to meet you.

Hello, Steve. Very good to see you.

It's a great privilege to ride in the cab.

-It is.

-I know how I got here, how did you get here?

Well, we're on a nine-day tour of historic railroads around Colorado

and paid the extra admission to come up here and get a first-class ride.

It's a wonderful view, isn't it?

This is one of the most spectacular routes in the western part of the country.

Just a beautiful thing to see.

You sound like a bit of an aficionado of railroads?

So, I volunteer on the weekends at a railroad museum and actually

rebuild steam locomotives for fun.

Wow, you really are, may I say, a fanatic.

-That's fantastic.

-Well, to a degree, yes.

-I'm not going to distract you any longer.

-Thank you, Michael.

-Good to see you. Steve.

-Nice to meet you.

The Royal Gorge Railroad tracks the Arkansas River,

which for three million years has eroded the granite of Fremont Peak,

making the gorge over 1,000ft deep.

I'm hoping to learn more from museum curator Lea Davis Withero.

Lea, hello.

-Hello.

-I'm Michael.

-Nice to meet you.

-This is one of the most beautiful railways I've ridden on, it's absolutely superb.

What's the history of this, how did it start?

Well, this railroad began as part of William Jackson Palmer's vision

to connect the front range of Colorado to the rich mines of the Rocky Mountains.

After the Civil War,

the Americans turned their eyes to the West

and there is a mania to connect the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts.

Palmer comes up with a unique vision to connect them with a north-south line running south from Denver

all the way through Santa Fe to El Paso, Texas,

and eventually to connect to the rich trade of Mexico.

Clearly a very innovative man.

Who was this Palmer?

Palmer grew up in Philadelphia during the Industrial Revolution and

he fell in love with railroads.

He travelled to Britain,

he enjoyed travelling on your railway system and learning all about coal technology

and how it could increase efficiency in American railroads

and he brought those ideas back to America.

In 1859, Palmer suggested the Pennsylvania railway should burn coal instead

of wood in its locomotives,

and thereby halve the company's fuel costs.

He also introduced three-foot narrow-gauge railways

to North America on his Denver And Rio Grande line.

But in 1877, Palmer had a fight on his hands.

Rich silver camps had been discovered in Leadville,

around 80 miles north-west.

And there was a race to reach it by rail.

He faced the most competition from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe,

a more powerful, more well-financed,

a bigger railroad, who actually got here first.

So they both headed into the canyon,

laying stakes and surveying right alongside each other but,

as you can see, there's only room for one railroad.

Over time, they armed themselves and they actually built forts along

the canyon walls and they aimed guns at each other,

shots were fired back and forth.

They were known to go up to the top of the canyon walls

and throw rocks down at their competitors.

It might injure someone and definitely would disrupt the building of the railroad.

The courts eventually had to step in and the Supreme Court

actually gave the Rio Grande the right of way.

Despite that ruling in Palmer's favour, battle continued.

The Santa Fe sabotaged commerce for the Rio Grande,

leading to more Wild West thuggery.

Trains were commandeered, depots were put under siege

and bullets flew.

Finally, the railroad war was settled by treaty in 1880,

and the line extended to Leadville.

Lea, I have to say, for anybody that's not here at the moment,

it's difficult to describe the grandeur of this.

The rock is just towering over us, it rises completely sheer.

It is beautifully lit today.

It just is awe-inspiring.

The word awesome is appropriate today, isn't it?

-Spectacular.

-And the only thing better than a beautiful gorge is one

-with a railroad through it.

-Absolutely.

My Appletons' was enthusiastic about this railroad and tells me that,

"through the Royal Gorge the track runs for 200ft

"along an iron bridge suspended over the river

"by steel girders mortised into the rock on either side."

An amazing piece of construction.

Absolutely. It's more remarkable that we're still using

the same bridge 146 years later.

This is beautiful. So this is actually

fixed, bolted onto the rock.

-It's remarkable.

-It's one of the great thrills of travelling on a railroad.

But, you know, it takes ingenuity to build rail roads in the West,

and these men had vision.

Palmer's Denver And Rio Grande Railroad continued its conquest of

the Rockies and in 1883 connected

with other lines to span the continent.

Peaking at around 11,000 feet,

it was for a short time America's highest mainline rail service.

Sadly, Palmer's historic line was discontinued for passengers in 1967,

leaving me high and dry.

I need to get from Canon City to Colorado Springs,

and unfortunately there is no train.

But, luckily for me,

there is a 1957 Ford two-door coupe going in my direction.

On the eastern flank of the Rockies lies Colorado Springs,

another creation of William Jackson Palmer.

A good review in Appletons' for Colorado Springs.

"A flourishing little city 6,000ft above the sea

"with a fine view of the mountains.

"It contains many fine residences and a pretty opera house.

"In summer the days are warm without being uncomfortable,

"and the night is always cool."

The West doesn't sound very wild here.

Indeed, it's almost British in its gentility.

I've heard that the British influences stem from Palmer's co-founder,

a London physician, Doctor William Bell,

whose friends invested in this New World enterprise.

On the banks of Fountain Creek,

I'm visiting Bell's Victorian stately home,

Breyer Hurst Manor, which became the social centre of its day.

Matt Maybury is museum director.

-So I believe this solid and rather opulent house was built by William Bell.

-That's correct.

Bell was a physician from Britain,

came to the United States and formed a partnership with General William Jackson Palmer.

Together they created the Denver And Rio Grande Railroad

and they created the cities of Colorado Springs and neighbouring Manitou Springs.

In 1868, Bell and Palmer were surveying the area for a railroad

and fell for the scenery and the refreshing Manitou Springs.

Palmer predicted a great resort at the base of Pikes Peak,

and a year later purchased 9,000 acres on which to build.

The Victorian spa was founded in 1871 and three months later

the Denver And Rio Grande Railroad reached town.

There was an interest in what the railroads could do to open up

business opportunities in the West, to make community building possible,

and to enrich yourself.

Palmer expressed the vision as he wanted Colorado Springs to be

the best place in the West to build a home.

Yes, because I've come through places like Dodge City and I've been

thinking about gunslingers,

and here I find in my guidebook that there was an opera house here.

So this is a very different sort of West.

It is. And that was part of the vision,

that this would not be your typical western town with gunfighters and saloons.

In fact, alcohol was forbidden in Colorado Springs,

you could not sell it and you could not open a saloon.

Palmer built opulent hotels,

developed the springs and marketed the resort's health benefits

and rail link.

Within a decade of its founding, Colorado Springs had become a famed retreat,

welcoming 25,000 visitors each summer.

The streets were broad,

which was attractive to people who might come from the east,

and it was a grid pattern, so it was very orderly.

-Did it attract Europeans as well as people from the east of the United States?

-It did.

Many Europeans came to Colorado Springs.

In fact, Colorado Springs had the nickname Little London because there

were so many Brits who came here.

Two of our most famous were Oscar Wilde,

who performed in our opera house,

and Charles Kingsley, the famous author.

Bell's British investors visited to see the fruits of their speculation,

as did British backers of Palmer's railroad.

By the late 1880s, Little London had 2,000 English residents.

Anglophilia help this elite enclave to flourish

with schools and gentlemen's clubs.

I hear that, incongruous as it seems, they had a cricket club,

and that's exactly where I'm heading.

'It may not be Lord's, but I'm up for a game.'

East of downtown, at Memorial Park, the Colorado Springs Cricket Club,

or Titans, practise twice weekly in the season

and maintain a respectable rank in the Colorado league.

-Howzat!

-Howzat!

-Well played.

-Thank you, guys.

I'm afraid I may have let the side down.

You may have noticed, I'm not much of a cricketer,

but I am impressed that you have had a cricket club here in Colorado Springs

since the late 19th century.

That's fantastic. And obviously you keep it going today.

-Yes, we do.

-There's about 12 clubs here in Colorado.

And there's a couple that come down from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So, yeah, we've got a lot of cricket going on here.

So that's a very different impression than people would have

back in Europe, they would think cricket was extinct, at least in the far west.

So you are very dedicated to it, aren't you?

We are. This is the one sport that I love and this is the one physical

activity that I think I'm really good at.

Is he quite a useful player?

Oh, yeah, he's one of the best players we have in the league right now.

-Really?

-A few hundreds to his name.

And what about you?

Me, well, I'm a bits and pieces player.

From what nationalities is your team drawn?

I'd say about 90% of our players are from India.

We do have anywhere the British have touched,

you know, we have the West Indians, Australians, South Africans,

Sri Lankans, Pakistanis.

Have you ever converted an American to cricket?

We've converted one at least.

He's not playing right now because he's a flight instructor,

so when he's free he comes down and he gets to play.

So I'm going to give you what is known as the cricket test.

During your intervals,

do you eat cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off?

We don't, but we'd love to.

What we do here is pizza.

-Pizza?

-Yeah.

Yeah, this is America, isn't it?

What a pleasure to wake up to Colorado Springs' warm climate

and clean air, and to glimpse from town the most eastern peak in the Rockies.

Named after the explorer Zebulon Pike, who discovered it in 1806,

it inspired an American patriotic hymn still popular today.

# ..for spacious skies

# For amber waves of grain

# For purple mountain majesties

# Above the fruited plain

# America, America

# God shed his grace on thee

# And crown thy good with brotherhood

# From sea to shining sea. #

Thank you very much, choir and Gary for that.

-Thank you, sir.

-Beautiful, beautiful words.

-Who wrote them?

-Katherine Lee Bates.

And her statue is right behind us.

And what is her connection with Colorado Springs?

Well, she was visiting Colorado College and took an excursion to

the top of Pikes Peak and was inspired by the vistas and penned America The Beautiful.

Katherine Lee Bates was professor of English literature at

Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

In 1893, she travelled 2,000 miles across America for a summer job.

Her journey up and view of Pikes Peak stirred her to write about

the nation's greatness from sea to shining sea,

and to appeal to its people's brotherhood.

I mean, obviously it's a terrific celebration of the American landscape.

Does it mean more than that to you?

It does to me, personally, and I think to a lot of Americans.

It speaks of the bounty of America,

how fortunate we are to live on this continent.

But I know she was thinking about the goodness of America and what

the people and the nation stand for.

Because the nation exists only because of the people.

Yeah, it appears mainly to be about geography, amber fields of wheat,

purple mountains majesty.

-Yes.

-But "crown thy good with brotherhood."

What do you think she had in mind?

Well, I think she was just reminding us that "crown thy good" -

we presume we have good.

But we have good because we CHOOSE to be good.

And we are brothers in that goodness, and that is the essence of America.

Do you think America has crowned its good with brotherhood?

That is a very difficult question at these times.

I will say that I believe in my heart

that there is still a spirit of goodness and brotherhood in this country.

I think we get very confused with rhetoric,

we get very confused with doctrinal differences, but, in the end,

we want to be good.

And we do believe that we are all brothers and sisters.

# Oh beautiful for patriots' dreams

# That sees beyond the years... #

With Bates's words in my heart,

I make my way to the foot of the famous peak.

# ..undimmed by human tears... #

This is Manitou Springs, according to Appletons',

"situated at the base of Pikes Peak and the centre of excursions in the district.

"The summit of Pikes Peak is reached by a cog wheel railway.

"Incredibly, the highest rack railway in the world.

"The view, from 14,000 feet, embraces many thousand square miles."

I hope that nothing will cloud my vista of America the beautiful.

The Pikes Peak Cog Railway

is one of the busiest trains I've travelled on so far.

In operation since 1891, it climbs 14,115ft above sea level

to the most visited mountain in North America.

This is a rather special moment for me.

I've been up the Gornergrat and the Jungfraujoch railways in Switzerland,

which are extraordinarily impressive,

but I come here to the United States and this one is going take me even higher.

HORN BLOWS

'Good afternoon, everybody,

'and welcome aboard the Manitou And Pikes Peak Cog Railway.

'I'd like to start today with introductions of the crew aboard.

'At the front of our train is engineer Dick.

'Everybody say, "Hi, Dick."

-PASSENGERS:

-Hi, Dick.

'He's got a big job today, driving this train, 8.9 miles,

'all the way to the summit of this mountain, as he's done so many times before.'

Pikes Peak was a landmark for pioneers and explorers heading west

to seek their fortune in the Colorado gold rush.

Before the railway it was an arduous two-day ascent,

and tourists would have travelled by horse-drawn carriage and mule

to the summit.

You see why you have to use a cog railway,

because we're now moving up at incredible gradients,

up to one in four,

which means that for every four feet we go forward we're rising one foot

in elevation. A cog underneath the train

is engaging with the teeth in the track

and so we're making steady but grinding progress up the mountain.

The magnificent views which struck Katherine Bates from her carriage

first opened up at Glen Cove, at around 11,500 feet.

Oh!

Even though I was prepared for this by the poem,

by the song America The Beautiful, it comes as a surprise to see such

an extraordinary extent of plain, stretching to the far horizon.

I'm looking back here towards the state of Kansas,

looking back over much of the journey that I've been making.

-Hello, Steve.

-Hello.

It's a most impressive train ride, I must say.

One of the greats, I think.

Built in 1891, that's very early?

-Whose idea was it?

-Well, it was Zalman Simmons.

He was an inventor and entrepreneur from Wisconsin.

He'd come up here to check on one of his other inventions,

part of a telegraph system,

and when he got to the summit and he realised the view was so spectacular

that a lot of people would like to see that.

That's what gave him the good idea to do it.

It took him three years, he did it over the course of 18 months, actually,

throughout that three years. They didn't work during the wintertime.

We still use the same trackbed, everything is still the same as it was.

Now, to have a cog railway that goes even higher

than any Swiss cog railway,

that really is quite an achievement.

It really is.

And the railway saves its most extraordinary moment for last.

As we come towards the summit, we have this 3,000ft drop over to

my right, and the train just looks as if it's going to

peek off the top of the mountain.

Oh, my word. We are going to the very edge.

That's unbelievable.

Appletons' visitors would have been awestruck.

As are the hundreds of thousands who visit annually today.

The view across five states, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma,

Wyoming and New Mexico, is breathtaking.

By the time that Katherine Lee Bates, inspired by these views,

wrote about the grandeur and bounty of these lands

in her poem America The Beautiful,

the West had been civilised.

But the United States had fought a Civil War over slavery,

and remained bitterly divided.

It was, perhaps, as a socialist and a feminist,

that she wrote yearningly of her country, "God mend thine every flaw,

"and crown thy good with brotherhood."

Many Americans today would echo her wishes.

Next time, I discover how the elements add to opera's drama...

It would be a shame to enclose the theatre

when we are surrounded by such incredible natural beauty.

..uncover Santa Fe's historic past...

It's the longest continuously occupied public building in the whole of the United States.

..and take up a special invitation to an ancient Native American site.

How long has there been a settlement up here?

We've been here since the beginning of time.