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Royal Gorge Route Railroad
The Royal Gorge Route Railroad is a heritage railroad located in Cañon City, Colorado. The railroad transits the Royal Gorge on a 2-hour scenic and historic train ride along what is considered to be the most famed portion of the former Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. The 1950s-era train departs the Santa Fe Depot in Cañon City daily.
==History==
In the late 1870s, miners descended on the upper Arkansas River valley of Colorado in search of carbonate ores rich in lead and silver. The feverish mining activity in what would become the Leadville district attracted the attention of both the Rio Grande and Santa Fe railroads, each already having tracks in the Arkansas valley. The Santa Fe had tracks in Pueblo and the D&RG had tracks near Canon City, Colorado, some 35 miles west. Leadville was over 100 miles away through the "Grand Canon of the Arkansas," a mountain valley 50 miles in length at a consistent and railroad-friendly water grade of one per cent. For two railroads to occupy a river valley ordinarily was not a problem, however, west of Canon City the Arkansas River cuts through the Royal Gorge, a high plateau of igneous rocks forming a spectacular steep-walled gorge over a thousand feet deep and six miles long. At its narrowest point sheer walls on both sides plunge into the river, creating a nearly impassable barrier.〔http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/co/17/chap9.htm〕 Sharing is not an option along this route.
On April 19, 1878, a construction crew from the Santa Fe's proxy Canon City and San Juan Railroad,〔The CC&SJ had been formed by the Santa Fe in February 1877 and a board of directors selected from local businessmen to give the Santa Fe, which was not incorporated in the state of Colorado, standing in the Colorado courts. The directors then appointed the operating officers of the Santa Fe as its own operating officers. This legal fiction was common practice and was undertaken to allow the Santa Fe to stake a plat of the first 20 miles of the canyon and file it with the General Land Office of the Department of the Interior to comply with the provisions of the Right-of-Way Act of 1875, something the Rio Grande was tardy in doing for its 1871 and 1873 surveys of the gorge.〕 hastily assembled from sympathetic local citizens, began grading for a railroad line just west of Cañon City in the mouth of the gorge. The Rio Grande, whose track ended ¾ of a mile from downtown Cañon City,〔This was the contractual terminus resulting from a $100,000 bond issue approved by Canon City voters. The D&RG's refusal to complete a line to downtown Canon City after coercing the bonds from the town was the source of widespread citizen resentment of the Rio Grande.〕 raced crews to the same area, but they were blocked by Santa Fe graders in the narrow canyon. By a few hours they had lost the first round in what became a two-year struggle between the two railroads that would be known as the Royal Gorge War. Temporary injunctions forbidding further construction were filed in the Colorado courts and soon moved to the federal courts, each company claiming prior right to use of the gorge.〔
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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