The Royal Gorge - Fremont County, CO - Colorado Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

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Panel 1: Title: The Royal Gorge
Royal Gorge Railroad War - Racing to lay the first tracks into the Rockies in April 1878, the Denver & Rio Grande and its rival, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, reached the Royal Gorge in a dead heat. Competing construction crews stared each other down at the mouth of the crucial portal while judges struggled to end the right-of-way dispute. D&RG owner William Jackson Palmer, leaving nothing to chance, armed his workers and had them sabotage the enemy’s operations. The AT&SF responded in kind, sparking two years of non-lethal but costly combat. An 1880 settlement finally ended the “war,” with Palmer taking possession of the coveted gorge and all that lay beyond. Victory in hand, he set out to claim the spoils. The D&RG spent its remaining years steaming from lode to lode, a railroad in search of a destination.

Royal Gorge Bridge

The Royal Gorge Bridge does not profane or vandalize the grandeur and sublimity of the great chasm it spans, but adds to its beauty and makes available to the vision mighty depths otherwise hidden from human eyes.
–– Cañon City mayor T. Lee Witcher, at the 1929 dedication of the Royal Gorge Bridge

Plans to span the Royal Gorge began circulating in 1906, when Congress ceded the site to Cañon City as a public park. Local boosters conceived of the bridge strictly as a tourist attraction, not a practical means of transport. One early blueprint (quickly rejected) even called for a plate-glass surface enabling visitors to peer straight down into the abyss. It took more than twenty years to work out a feasible, cost-effective design, but the wait was worth it.When the 1,260-foot-long structure opened in 1929, it immediately became one of Colorado's most heavily visited sites. For all its elegance and ingenuity, the Royal Gorge Bridge remains a road to nowhere, dead-ending at the canyon's southern rim. But this dramatic span is a destination unto itself —a highway into mid-air, 1,053 dizzying feet above the Arkansas River.
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PANEL 2 TITLE: ARKANSAS RIVER VALLEY

Florence Oil Field

Alexander Cassiday dug a twenty-three-foot-deep oil well near here in 1862, making this Colorado's first oil producing region. Cassiday and others spent nearly two decades plumbing the hollows and seeps, sure that a major source lurked somewhere nearby. It did—more than a 1,000 feet down. Drillers reached it in 1881, and within a decade nearly 400 producing wells dotted the hills around this area. Output peaked in 1892 at over 824,000 barrels, making the field an important part of Colorado's economy. Though production declined over the next forty years, the wells maintain a slow but steady flow. Well 42, tapped in 1882, still brings forth a trickle—the nation’s longest continuously producing oil well.

Natural Resources

The Arkansas Valley boasted one of Colorado’s first orchards, planted near here in 1859. The future, however, lay in manufacturing plants, not fruit-bearing ones. Coal, iron, calcite, silica, limestone, gypsum, gold, and other treasures streaked the surrounding hills, and all came by freight to Cañon City and Florence, whose downstream locations and good rail access made them natural refining and distribution hubs. Though gold production declined in 1912, the cities’ smelters and mills stayed busy cranking out steel rails and cement from the 1890s through World War II. Today, rivaling these industries, is yet another resource—the Arkansas River itself. Since the Great Depression the Arkansas has enticed recreationists in such numbers that into the twenty-first century it may rightly claim to be the world’s busiest whitewater rafting locale.
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PANEL 3 TITLE: CORRECTIONS CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

When Colorado Territorial Prison opened in June 1871 just west of Cañon City, it drew a mixed reception from law-abiding locals—some daunted by the prospect of felons on the loose, others eager for the jobs and services that came with the facility. Over time the economic benefits outweighed the hazards of the occasional jailbreak, and by the early twentieth century the prison had emerged as one of Fremont County's key assets. Indeed, local leaders actively courted new institutions housing ever-larger numbers of convicts. Though this proliferation of cells made some residents jittery, no one minded the attendant profits. The county brought in four new federal penitentiaries in 1994, including an ultra-high-security building called SuperMax for the nation's most dangerous criminals. These additions raised Fremont County’s total of state and federal prisons to thirteen.

Skyline Drive

Fremont County hardly suffered from the convicts’ presence; on the contrary, local communities made good use of the involuntary tenants. In 1905 Cañon City officials employed convict work crews to build scenic Skyline Drive, making an otherwise expensive construction job downright affordable (it cost taxpayers just $1,200). Based on that success, area leaders began using prison laborers for various infrastructure projects, most notably U.S. Highway 50. In addition to giving inmates a breath of fresh air, these work programs yielded tangible public benefits and made the prisons seem less threatening. By the early twenty-first century, Fremont County had come to accept its unusual industry, even to take pride in it. Today it bills itself as the “Corrections Capital of the World.”
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Panel 4 - Pictures

Group or Groups Responsible for Placement: Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) Colorado Historical Society County or City: Fremont County - Closest town is Florence Date Dedicated: 1999 Check here for Web link(s) for additional information: [Web Link]

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