1/3/2023 0 Comments Pikes peak cog railroadAnnually, more than 750,000 people reach the summit via the Pikes Peak Highway, the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway, or, for the more adventurous, the Barr or Crags hiking trails. Pikes Peak is a national historic landmark.Īnd just as Bates was inspired, so are visitors today. There is only one other railroad like this in the United States and it’s the Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire. In fact, it’s the highest and longest in the entire Northern Hemisphere. This is the world’s highest and the world’s longest cog railroad, the highest railroad in the United States. It’s no wonder that t he Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway, which has just reopened after a nearly four-year renovation with new tracks, new trains, a new depot, and new visitor center, is hugely popular taking 200 visitors at a time up what’s known as “America’s Mountain.” And just outside Colorado Springs in the small town of Manitou Springs there are plenty of quirky shops for souvenir browsing. Who cares, your kids might ask? You might suggest while traveling this summer that exploring the spectacular sites at our national parks might inspire them to appreciate nature in all its glory, especially at Pikes Peak, the highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and a top Colorado tourist destination. On the clearest days, you can see five states (Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Kansas)! A Cog Train Operates on its Grand Opening Day. Samuel Ward had composed the music even before Bates wrote her poem, but it wasn’t until 1910 that the music and the poem were first published together and titled “America the Beautiful.” When she got back down the mountain, she hastily scribbled the poem that would become “America the Beautiful,” first published two years later. That was in 1893 when Bates, a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, was spending the summer teaching at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, (the alma mater of two of my daughters and son-in-law). … All the wonder of America seemed displayed there…” But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. Near the top, we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. “One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to the 14,000-foot Pikes Peak,” the young English professor wrote. Yet when tourists board the train again on May 1, they’ll be treated to the same views over Colorado-proving some things are timeless.Katherine Lee Bates wasn’t bargaining for such an exhausting adventure. The city of Colorado Springs rebuilt the summit’s visitor center, too, adding an outdoor dining terrace and exhibits detailing the peak’s history, geography, and conservation initiatives. Today’s crew had an advantage: The railway is in billionaire Philip Anschutz’s portfolio, and the Anschutz organization invested $100 million in new track and refurbishing the historic train cars and the depot. “It was backbreaking work, then and now,” says general manager Spencer Wren. And because the slope couldn’t always support machinery, they’d have to do much of the labor by hand. Workers would have just three years to demolish and rebuild nine miles of track that gain 7,795 feet in elevation as they wind from the Manitou Springs depot to the summit. The goal? May 2021, a month before the icon-the train has carried visitors up the 14,115-foot mountain since 1891-celebrates its 130th birthday. Still, when the Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway closed for renovations in spring 2018 and the owners set a hard deadline for reopening, punctuality seemed implausible. Sign up today!Īll the best trains arrive on time. The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado.
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