Was there a CONOCO dealership in Blackhawk?

[Jim Courtney]

While looking through my book collection for color C&S photos, I noticed this photo of the Blackhawk depot in Abbott, et al, Colorado Central Railroad, page 179:





The photo is attributed to the "1939 Valuation Survey Photos", but unlike the adjacent photos, no negative number is cited.

In the background, on a spur to the northeast of the depot, sits a wide underframe CONOCO tank car, still in the silver/green paint scheme, likely CONX 35.

From Rick Steele's articles about Central City back in the mid-1980s, we know that there was a small tank farm of sorts in the little yard by the Central City depot. After the abandonment of the switchback line from Blackhawk to Central, was a new CONOCO distributorship built down in Blackhawk? Were there storage tank(s) along the spur, for off loading gasoline? I can't find any thing on the valuation maps to indicated such.

[Chris Walker]

It is entirely possible that the Central City tank was moved down to Blackhawk after the Switchbacks were taken up.


http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/fullbrowser/collection/p15330coll22/id/78616/rv/singleitem/rec/408

[Robert McFarland]

Is this photo a new posting on DPL-I've never seen it before.It shows the depot from a different angle.

[Jim Courtney]

Chris, it may have been that the tanks (pleural) were moved down to Blackhawk in the late 1920s.

I looked up Rick Steele's article "A Mini Tank Farm" in the May/June, 1983 issue of The Narrow Gauge . . . Gazette, pages 75-77.  This photo was used by Rick to illustrate the article:


Colorado Historical Society, by Rick Steele's attribution


In his article and drawings, Rick states there were three storage tanks at Central (I can only make out two in the photo). His text suggest that other photos of the tank farm exist. He identifies the facility as belonging to the Continental Oil Co (or predecessors, CONOCO may have been the final owner), existing as early as 1906-1907, gone after abandonment of the Blackhawk to Central City line. He makes no mention of it being moved down the hill to Blackhawk.

Rick, could you shed some light on all this?? (And if your drawings of the "tank farm" are not copyrighted by Bob Brown, would you consider posting them here?).


And Robert, note all the people in Chris's photo, watching a baseball game in progress, just below the Central City yards.

[Fred H.]

Hello! Fred Hutchison here! (First post.) This photo was taken before the flume in front of the depot collapsed. According to Brunk's book, that occurred sometime in the mid-1930s.

[Rick Steele]

I don't mind posting the drawings here at all. Just let me find the originals, if you would.

I found these photos looking through literally hundreds of them.

I do know that the tanks were moved prior to the covering of the depot by the Chain O'Mines tailings.

I found a H.H.Lake photo in one of his albums of the yard showing the empty concrete cradles after the line was abandoned. I don't think that this photo was ever photographed and released as part of the public collection. Probably because nobody but a foamer like me could identify what it was....

It was looking at these cradles where I saw the smaller middle indentation in the cradle where the third tank probably sat, do I drew it that way.

Rick