What we know
The Rio Grande's 1872 station was to be replaced by a larger depot about 1888, when the Santa Fe had just arrived east of town. The two-story depot lost regular passenger trains after World War II; in December 1948 it was sold to W. E. Higby, the former lieutenant governor, and moved out to the new US 85-87 junction on Monument Hill as a cafe, later torn down. In the 1970s the Rio Grande's Monument track was renamed Wood's Spur (McFarland 2019).
Where it was
'Just off 2nd and Front streets, right along the railroad tracks' (Mel McFarland, 'Caboose Cobwebs,' Gazette, Jan. 30, 2019, S-0117); the 2nd and Front intersection in OpenStreetMap. Good to a few hundred feet.
Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.
Sources
- S-0103: OpenStreetMap extracts via the Overpass API (2026-10-05)
- S-0108: The Gazette and The Tribune (Pikes Peak Newspapers) on gazette.com: local-history columns and features
- S-0117: E. M. "Mel" McFarland, "Caboose Cobwebs" columns, The Gazette / Pikes Peak Courier / Tribune, about 2018–2026
Sources are named in the text above. Numbers such as S-0080 refer to our source list. Most newspaper quotations were read in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. Long quotations from recent books are shortened here.