Named After a Turn in the Track
The History of the Town Arrow
By Jon de Vos
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The Moffat Road Railroad brought many travelers to the town of Arrow, c.1905. Photo courtesy of Kalmbach Books. |
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Bill Clemson smelled the town of Arrow five miles before he got there. It was a rich, earthy smell, a smell of open fires and people living together, cooking odors, and, yeah, maybe it smelled a little like opportunity, too.
He urged his horse forward with his knees, eager for some dinner and a real bed. He’d camped and ridden six hard days from Pike’s Peak after he got his brother Tom’s letter urging him to come to Arrow.
Bill had decided he’d go before he even finished the letter. He packed that night and left before dawn the next day. His gold claim had played out, but a reassuring leather pouch, heavy with the nuggets he’d panned over the summer, was tied to his waist.
Tom had been working for the Denver Northwestern and Pacific Railroad (DNPR), but his letter said there was a lot better money to be had selling whisky to the loggers and railroad workers that were settling into temporary quarters around a hastily thrown together town.
Tom described Arrow in the letter as a tent city with a few thrown-up clapboard buildings, hotels and some restaurants, perched halfway up the western side of the Continental Divide. He ended the letter with a plea, “... but I need money and some help. Please come, Bill, this place smells to high heaven of opportunity.”
Later, over dinner at the Graham Café, the brothers talked. “The DNP Railroad is a fool’s mission,” Tom said. “Thirty years ago, the Union Pacific tried to find a route from Denver to Salt Lake. They finally gave up and laid their tracks north to Cheyenne. Denver thinks it’ll dry up if they don’t get a direct rail to Salt Lake City. A guy named David Moffat is spending a fortune on a train track to Salt Lake. I worked for two months laying track up the other side. I started calling it Hell Hill and the name caught on. I finally quit and came to work here at Graham’s.”
“Is Moffat going to make it?” Bill asked.
“Maybe, but right now, between the cattlemen, surveyors, loggers, carpenters and excavators, there are more than two thousand men and a handful of women, living and working around Arrow. Every one of them making good money and every man Jack of them is looking for a drink at the end of the day.”
“Well. Let’s do it,” said Bill excitelly. “We’ll order up some kegs of whisky out of Denver and set ourselves up proper.”
“We can’t,” his brother replied. “We’re on federal land and the sheriff ’s arresting anybody he catches with liquor.”
“Is it against the law?” said Bill.
“Nobody’s sure, but he’s the only law hereabouts, and he’ll throw you in jail unless you come up with a two dollar fine.”
Bill looked steadily at his brother before asking, “Then what’re we doing here?”
“There’s a town meeting tomorrow night where folks are going to vote on incorporating the town of Arrow. We’re pretty sure that’ll stop the sheriff from throwing us in jail. Liquor’s the only issue involved. And as soon as we incorporate, you and I’ll be its first saloon keepers.”
“Will enough people vote for it?”
“For liquor? Hank Johnson was killed last month when a tree bucked and fell on him, but I promise you he’ll rise up and vote for it.”
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MAIN STREET ARROW: The photo was taken by Tom Jacob’s grandfather, George Engel, in 1911 on his way from Argentine, Kansas, to Denver, Colorado, to visit his cousin Lea Penman. Photo courtesy of Tom Jacobs, www.mypresentpast.com. |
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And so it was in that August of 1904 when the town of Arrowhead was preparing for the arrival of the Denver Northwestern and Pacific railroad. Arrowhead was named for the topographical view of the railroad wye, a turnaround junction just above it on Ranch Creek but the locals just called it Arrow. It was the busiest town in Grand County, burning brightly through the following decade.
The 1904 World’s Fair in Saint Louis celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, when America bought all the land that lay between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. America paid France 15 million dollars for those 850,000 square miles, a pittance for the land that opened up the entire Western expansion. The railroads followed the wagon tracks across the new frontier, but not everywhere; as early as 1866, the Union Pacific Railroad declared that a rail track over the Divide was impossible.
David Moffat’s critics questioned his mental health, but most agreed the man was a visionary who overcame a lot of obstacles and spent a vast fortune to build a railroad from Denver to Salt Lake. The path over the Divide was steep and rugged with 32 hand-wrought tunnels just to get up the east face.
By September 1904, the tracks were laid to the crest of the Continental Divide, topping out at Corona, the Crown of the Mountain. From 11,660 feet, they looked west into the vast expanse of the Grand Valley and the job ahead of them next spring. Eleven miles below, down a winding 4 percent grade, Arrow was coming to life in the grime and sweat of an existence where the most powerful tools were dynamite and a mule.
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Massive snow sheds with huge smoke stacks, sheltered engines and people. Under the snow sheds there was even a cafeteria where travelers ate and escaped the cold, c. 1913. Photo courtesy of Grand County Historical Association. |
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From Arrow to Kremmling, the surveyors were moving ahead of the loggers who were followed by the excavators, just ahead of the railroad workers laying ties. Local, hand-hewn lodgepole ties were used for the straight runs; imported oak and hickory ties were used for the curves. The work was hard, the conditions could hardly be called human, but they kept trains running over Corona until the Moffat Tunnel opened in February, 1928.
The railroad tracks that were laid through Arrow eventually carried away Arrow’s reason for existence when the DNPR moved the train supply station to Tabernash. The Clemson brothers sold their saloon in 1913 and headed to the Ontario Gold Rush. The men who drank and gambled in their establishment faded away to other jobs; the post office, the hotels and cafes, the bars and the livery – all drifted on to other communities. Even the hardiest remainders gave up when the Elk Saloon was burned down for the insurance money in 1927.
Today, Arrow is completely gone. Its future may be a subdivision of homes overlooking the ski area and the town of Winter Park as time churns the past into new beginnings. Arrow’s past lives on only in sepia-toned reminders of the transitory affairs of men.
READ MORE STORIES FROM THIS ISSUE:
• Aiming at the Stars: A man, a Telescope, and Far Off Galaxies
• Green Parade: Power to the Students = Power to the School at MPHS
• History: Hot Sulphur Springs First to Jump into Competitive Skiing
• Lifestyle: The Grand Circle Yurt Route ... Impossible Dream or the Future?
• Winter 2010 Articles |
