What was or perhaps still is Grand Lake Junction?

[ROMO]

Greetings, it’s me once more, Andrew Wolf here, with another inquiry related to a location on the Rocky Mountain Railway Company. My question is, what was or perhaps still is Grand Lake Junction?

From what I’ve gathered online, it seems to have been situated south of Highway 34, serving as a stop for the Rocky Mountain Railway. Company However, the information is sparse. I am also in search of photographs, postcards, and maps depicting Grand Lake Junction in Grand County, Colorado. Is it located beneath Lake Granby or not?

For many years, I’ve been trying to uncover more details about it, but I’ve had little success, apart from the train ticket I possess, which I shared in two of my posts—one concerning transport before Rocky Mountain National Park it was a national park and the other focusing on Glen Haven, Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Lake, AllensPark, Meeker Park, Estes Park, Drake, Jamestown, Springdale, and essentially all the communities within the Rocky Mountain National Park region of Colorado. If you need to search for Grand Lake Junction, I sincerely hope you can assist me.

I am truly grateful for any help you or your team can provide in finding this information. I eagerly await any answers, as I am in dire need of them. Sincerely, Andrew Wolf.

[Chris Walker]

Andrew,

Here are answers to your enquiry in previous posts on this subject.

http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/pre-Rocky-Mountain-National-Park-Transprt-Part-1of-ether-10or20-tp20202p20959.html

This answer has the Maps you seek:
http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/Did-any-of-those-places-ever-get-a-Train-Line-and-a-train-depot-and-also-what-is-this-place-known-asn-tp21034p21039.html

You can get there yourself here:
https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/#12/40.1249/-105.8936

Did you not read the info provided in the above; such as this one?
 https://stories.grandcountyhistory.org/article/monarch-grand-countys-city-atlantis

Do you use AI to generate your questions?

[ROMO]

I am ever so very sorry there has been a huge misunderstanding Grand Lake Junction is not in Rocky Mountain national Park to the south of the park south on highway 34. Nobody seems to know about what it is or even what it was.


It might be underneath lake Granby it might not I'm for sore for something that may or may not still be around that something may or may not still stand from Grand Lake Junction I still need everybody's help/anybody's help someone at all who can indeed help me.


 It is on the train ticket in my post pre Rocky Mountain national Park transport I still need everybody's help/anybody's help on this matter just like I still need photographs postcards and also maps that I have and also sos the old and also knew locations of.Grand Lake Junction it is somewhere in grand County Colorado just south on Highway 34.


 I hope everyone/anyone can indeed help me with this matter at hand. I am off to send a reply to a few more posts. Of mine this is Andrew Wolf here going to my next post. Thank you and also keep looking..

[Todd Hackett]

Andrew - The ticket you posted was from the Rocky Mountain Railway Company, which appears to have been nothing more than a spur off of the Moffat line from Granby to Monarch (a mining operation at the site that is now Monarch Lake, just south-east of Lake Granby. According to the sources I found online, it was built in 1907 by the people who ran the mining operation to get their supplies and products to and from the DNW&P railhead in Granby. These say that a branch to Grand Lake was planned but never built, so Grand Lake Junction was probably just what they called the spot where they railroad turned east, probably under water now toward the west end of Lake Granby. Some of these sources say that it only ran for a few months for the mining company, but that it apparently had some sort of operation after that - probably sporadic uses such as a rancher with a makeshift railcar and transporting fishermen. I don't know if the one steam locomotive they apparently had remained that whole time, or what was used, but it doesn't seem to have ever been a proper common carrier railroad. It's listed in Colorado Railroads Chronological Development by Tiv Wilkins (which gets most of its information from public records), which says that 13.6 miles of track were built in 1907 and abandoned in 1917, with a note that the reports of the Colorado Tax Commission showed the tracks until 1937.

Some other sources I found were this article on Monarch, a bit about Monarch in this article, and these notes about Charles Wolcott records at CU. Before you ask for any follow-up, I don't know much about this, and these are just items I found from simple internet searches. You would do better following up on your own than asking me to. The Charles Wolcott records could be interesting, but you probably need to see those in person at the Norlin Library in Boulder.

[Chris Walker]

Locomotive #7 was built in 1882, by Dickson cn 356, originally for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western as their #293.


Charles Ryland Collection
Excerpted from Robert A. LeMassena's Colorado's Mountain Railroads; Sundance Publications 1984 pg 304.

There was a one-mile long spur at the Switzer Ranch.

Grand Lake Junction, as planned, as far as I can determine, was half-way, Sleepy Hollow School might be more accurate, just shy of Lehman; the proposed branch to Grand Lake never built.



However Lidar reveals the roadbed, at the crossing of the Colorado R.





Continuing to the end of the line.

Lidar revealed more roadbed.

[Todd Hackett]

I hadn't thought to look in Colorado Mountain Railroads. I also didn't think of the Encyclopedia of Western Railroad History Vol II - The Mountain State until now. It has mostly the same information with a little more detail on the loco (Dickson #356 built 9/82 97,572#, 57" drivers) and notes it was listed with the ICC in June 1907 as having 13 miles owned and in use, then two years later as not in operation, then back to in use in June 1912 through the end of 1916, then abandoned. It also has information from Railway Age from December 1906 that grading was complete and later in the month that rail laying was complete.

This book has little maps off each railroad (including the Rocky Mountain) and the whole state every 5 to 10 years, and I skimmed through all of them to see if there were any more in this area that I hadn't heard of, and didn't see any that haven't already been covered in this forum.