Looking toward Sunset.

images made 10.05.09

Looking west to Sunset, the small grove of aspens in dead center of the image. Pennsylvania Gulch up to Glacier Lake, above Sunset, lies in the misty rays of the morning sun.

The visible right-of-way here, at the bottom of the image, is actually Four Mile Canyon Road.

The original RR ROW runs across the creek to the south, paralleling this road, and is now deeply buried in the overgrowth of the forest. When the Greeley, Salt Lake and Pacific RR ROW was washed out in the flood of 1894, the new roadbed was constructed above the river at a higher level. I've not yet sorted out how much of the new ROW was actually along the course of the present Four Mile Canyon Road. One stretch that does is at the Black Swan Curve, as shown in this journal entry.

As the terminus of the original Greeley, Salt Lake and Pacific and the juncture for the later Colorado & Northwestern, then the Denver, Boulder & Western, Sunset was a key geographical feature in mountain railroad history. Many, many entries here will be devoted to it.

In an image by Rocky Mountain Joe Sturtevant published in Forest Crossen's book, we see the trestles for the Eldora branch to the south, Eldora branch moving north. The locomotive at the right of the image is on the Ward branch.

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