After The Royal Gorge War
The Santa Fe resorted to its larger corporate power and announced it would build tracks parallel to and in competition with the existing D&RG lines. The bondholders of the D&RGW, fearing financial ruin from this threat, pressured the management of the D&RGW to lease the existing railroad to the Santa Fe for a 30-year period. This created a short-lived truce in the struggle. The Santa Fe soon manipulated freight rates south of Denver to favor shippers from Kansas City (over its lines to the east) to the detriment of Denver merchants and traffic over the leased D&RGW lines. During this period the Santa Fe constructed the railroad through the gorge itself. The D&RGW, however, continued construction in areas west of the gorge still trying to block the Santa Fe.
After months of shrinking earnings from their leased railroad, the D&RG management went to court to break the lease. An injunction from a local court restraining the Santa Fe from operating the D&RG on June 10, 1879, sparked an armed retaking of their railroad by D&RG crews. Trains were commandeered, depots and engine houses put under siege, bullets flew and a few men died. A final peace in the war came after the intervention of the Federal courts and the railroad "robber baron" Jay Gould, who loaned the D&RG $400,000 and announced the intention to complete a rail line in competition to the Santa Fe from St. Louis to Pueblo.
On March 27, 1880, the two railroads signed what was called the Treaty of Boston which settled all litigation, and gave the D&RG back its railroad. The D&RG paid the Santa Fe $1.8 million for the railroad it had built in the gorge, the grading it had completed, materials on hand, and interest. D&RGW construction resumed, and rails reached Leadville on July 20, 1880. Passenger train service began in 1880 and continued through 1967. The Rio Grande continued freight service through the gorge as part of their Tennessee Pass subdivision until 1989, when the company merged with the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the Southern Pacific name took control of the gorge line. In 1996, the combined company was merged into the systems of the Union Pacific Railroad. The year after Union Pacific purchased Southern Pacific and Rio Grande, the railroad closed the Tennessee Pass line, including in the gorge.
In 1998, the Union Pacific Railroad was persuaded to sell the 12 miles of track through the Royal Gorge in an effort to preserve this scenic route. Two new corporations, the Canon City & Royal Gorge Railroad (CC&RG) and Rock & Rail, Inc. (R&R), joined together to form Royal Gorge Express, LLC (RGX) to purchase the line. Passenger service on the new Royal Gorge Route Railroad began in May 1999. Train movements are still controlled by the Union Pacific’s Harriman Dispatching Center in Omaha, Nebraska.Except for this section of track, the Tennessee Pass line has been dormant. Union Pacific still has hopper cars stored on approximately 5 miles of track west of Parkdale to Pinnacle Rock State Recreation Area. Depending on the demand for these stored rail cars, you may still see some UP trains operating, albeit very seldom. Otherwise, the line is completely silent between Pinnacle Rock and the interchange with the active UP/D&RGW line outside of Dotsero, CO
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