Georgetown Loop
The Georgetown Loop Railroad is a narrow gauge heritage railway located in Clear Creek County, Colorado in the United States.
The Georgetown Loop Railroad was one of Colorado’s first visitor attractions. Completed in 1884, this spectacular stretch of narrow gauge railroad was considered an engineering marvel for its time. The thriving mining towns of Georgetown and Silver Plume lie two miles apart in steep, narrow Clear Creek west of Denver. To connect them, engineers designed a corkscrew route that traveled nearly twice that distance, slowly gaining more than 600 feet in elevation. It included horseshoe curves, grades of up to 4 percent, and four bridges across Clear Creek, including the massive Devil’s Gate High Bridge. The Colorado & Southern Railway operated the line for passengers and freight until 1938. Originally part of the larger line of Colorado Central Railroad constructed in the 1870s and 1880s, it was later dismantled, but was restored in the 1980s to operate during summer months as a tourist railroad, carrying passengers using historic narrow-gauge steam locomotives.
In 1959, the centennial year of the discovery of gold in Georgetown, the Georgetown Loop Historic Mining & Railroad Park was formed by the Colorado Historical Society. The Colorado Historical Society’s chairman negotiated a donation of mining claims and mills, and nearly 100 acres of land. Rail line construction began in 1973 with track and ties donated by the Union Pacific Railroad.
The four-mile segment opened on March 10, 1884 and is a restored segment at the upper end of the historic Colorado Central main line up Clear Creek Canyon west of Golden. It climbs approximately 640 feet between the two towns. The longer main line up the canyon was constructed in the wake of the Colorado Gold Rush and was used extensively during the silver boom that followed in the 1880s to haul the lucrative silver ore traffic down from the mines at Silver Plume. The Loop portion of the line was the crowning segment of the line at the top of the gorge and features a 95-foot high trestle. The entire line, including the Loop, was dismantled in 1939, but interest in restoration of the Loop segment as a tourist attraction in the 1970s led to the construction of a new high bridge and the refurbishment of the segment, which reopened in 1984.
The train ride includes an optional walking tour of the Lebanon Silver Mine, located at the halfway point on the railroad. Visitor walk 500 feet into a mine tunnel bored in the 1870s while guides point out the rich veins of silver and the history of the mine.
Passengers board the train at depots located in either Silver Plume or Georgetown.
