Kenosha Pass

[Ken Martin]

I was looking through an 1880 "Railway Review" when I found the following clip of a etching of Kenosha pass.
It was part of an article on the steep mountainous railroads of the west.
I think the picture shows the grade steeper than it was.

Ken

[Jeff Young]

Yeah, that’s a pretty fanciful interpretation. ;

(On the other hand, it’s not far off the later western approach to Alpine Tunnel.)

[ComoDepot]

The grade is steeper on the South Park side, a bit of artistic license.

[Kurt Maechner]

Hmm...looks like a 20% grade in that photo.

[South Park]

  Maybe a lot of the mountain/s eroded away since that picture was doodled out (?),
but the distant peaks and steep hollside where the grade is cut looks more like Otto
Mears line over Red Mountain.

  Victorian America was a place and time of fantastical adventure and just plain fantasy.
Read the popular "dime novels" of the day and they were always long on wild adventure
of a "wild west" sort, making what was (by today's standards) pretty crazy, laborious
stuff, wild and wooly, living-on-the-edge reading to those with the means to enjoy the
luxury of such reading.