Carson & Colorado Railroad
Carson & Colorado at the Mount Montgomery Tunnel, 1882
The Carson & Colorado Railroad was one of the most ambitious narrow-gauge rail projects in the American West. Incorporated on May 10, 1880, it began as a three-foot-gauge extension of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad from Mound House, Nevada. Gregg Wilkerson and Larry M. Vredenburgh note that its original plan was to run from the Carson River country to Fort Mohave on the Colorado River near present-day Needles. Mining opportunity changed that plan. The railroad never reached the Colorado River; it became instead a nearly 300-mile route through western Nevada and eastern California.
Construction began at Mound House on May 31, 1880, where the new narrow-gauge line met the Virginia & Truckee. The route moved south through Wabuska and Hawthorne, then toward the Candelaria mining district. Rails reached Candelaria in early 1882. From there, the railroad crossed Mount Montgomery at more than 7,100 feet, descended through Benton, and entered Owens Valley.
The line reached Hawley, later renamed Keeler, on the east shore of Owens Lake in July 1883. Regular passenger service began the following month. Keeler became the southern terminus of the railroad and an important railhead for the Owens Lake country, including the trade routes serving Cerro Gordo high in the Inyo Mountains.
The Carson & Colorado did not follow the shortest route between established towns. It followed mining districts, water sources, workable grades, and the hope of new traffic. Wilkerson and Vredenburgh place the railroad within a broader mining transportation network that included connections or proposed connections at Rhodes Marsh, Belleville, Candelaria, Dolomite, Swansea, and the Keeler-Cerro Gordo area. Proposed connections toward Rawhide and Bishop were never completed.
The railroad hauled ore, mining supplies, bullion, livestock, timber, fuel, agricultural products, mail, and passengers. For much of its territory, it replaced long and costly wagon hauls with a dependable, if slow, transportation link. Yet its success depended on mining camps that often declined soon after the rails arrived. The old judgment that the line was "300 miles too long or 300 years too soon" reflected that weakness.
On February 27, 1892, the company consolidated three operating divisions and reorganized as the Carson & Colorado Railway Company. The change refinanced the railroad but did not solve its basic problem: a long route serving scattered and unstable sources of traffic.
Southern Pacific acquired the line on March 1, 1900. The Tonopah and Goldfield booms soon brought new business to the northern end of the system. In 1905, Southern Pacific standard-gauged the route from Mound House to Tonopah Junction, south of Mina, and placed the remaining system under the Nevada & California Railway name. The southern route through Owens Valley remained narrow gauge.
The Mojave-Owenyo standard-gauge connection, commonly called the Jawbone Branch, opened in 1910. It connected Owenyo with Mojave and Southern Pacific's Los Angeles network. Owenyo then became an important transfer point, where standard-gauge freight from the south moved to narrow-gauge trains serving Owens Valley and the remaining Nevada route.
In 1912, the Nevada & California Railway was absorbed into the Southern Pacific system. The surviving narrow-gauge line became known as the Keeler Branch and was widely remembered as the "Slim Princess." It continued to serve Owens Valley communities, mining interests, and the soda works near Keeler, but highways and trucking gradually took away its freight and passenger business.
Abandonment came in stages. The Candelaria branch was removed in 1934. Track north of Laws disappeared during the 1930s and 1940s, leaving the Laws-to-Keeler section as the final narrow-gauge remnant. The last common-carrier run took place on April 29, 1960. The rails were removed soon afterward.
The Carson & Colorado never carried trains to the Colorado River, but it did what many western railroads were built to do: it tied isolated mining districts and desert communities to the outside world. Its grade, surviving equipment, depots, and place names remain part of the historical landscape of Nevada, Owens Valley, and the greater Mojave borderland.
References
Wilkerson, Gregg, and Larry M. Vredenburgh. 2024. "Railroads and Mining in the Mojave Desert and Southwestern Great Basin, California and Nevada." Desert Symposium Field Guide and Proceedings. Available onlineTurner, George. Slim Rails Through the Sand.
Turner, George. Narrow Gauge Nostalgia.
Due, John F. "The Carson and Colorado Railroad." Pacific Historical Review.
Carson & Colorado Railroad Company Records, Bancroft Library
Brief Chronology of the Carson & Colorado Railroad
Keeler, California
Keeler
Southern Pacific
Tonopah, Nevada
Goldfield, Nevada
Keeler Ghost Town
The railroad never did link Carson City with the Colorado River as its named promised: by the time it reached Keeler in 1883, most of the local mines had played ...
Owenyo/Manzanar Route Guide
The road curves north and then east again at the old Lone Pine railroad station. ... Along this stretch, the old railroad bed for the former Carson & Colorado ...
Timeline of History of the Mojave Desert
History of Cerro Gordo - Mojave Desert
... shafts and an aerial tramway connecting the mine with the narrow-gauge Southern Pacific Railroad at Keeler , which had absorbed the old Carson & Colorado ...
Cerro Gordo Route Guide
Keeler was the southern terminus of the Carson & Colorado narrow-gauge railroad. The railroad never did link Carson City with the Colorado River as its named ...
Big Pine to Furnace Creek Route Guide
Along the route: Just after crossing the Owens River a plaque on the left marks the site of Zurich, a railroad station on the Carson & Colorado line. Traces of ...
Monuments in the Mojave desert
Location: On shoulder of NW corner of Colorado River Bridge, North K St, ...... Carson & Colorado Railroad was built between Mound House (near Carson City, ...
Mazourka Canyon Route Guide
Kearsarge Station is also gone, although you may be able to find traces of the buildings and railroad bed. This was the local station on the Carson & Colorado ...
Railroad History in the Mojave Preserve
A more moderately graded route was located in 1868 by General William J. Palmer, working for the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division. [40] That railroad ...
The Salt Lake Route
The first concrete evidence of Union Pacific intentions consisted of the Union Pacific interests pushing construction of a subsidiary Utah Southern southwest from ...
Railroads in the Mojave Desert
Dunscomb, Guy L. A Century of Southern Pacific Locomotives, 1862-1962. Modesto: published ... Hemphill, Mark W. Union Pacific Salt Lake Route. Erin [ Ontario ...
Boron and Copper Discoveries
Immediately Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company bought up the property. In 1905 the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (later the Union Pacific) was ...
Photo labeled "Slim Rails."
1950s map, shows map of narrow-gauge railway from Laws to Keeler via Owenyo, the connection with the SP "Jawbone" branch to Mojave and Los Angeles. The map also shows surrounding towns, such as
Bishop,
Lone Pine and
Olancha. The route of
Hwy 395
is also marked. The map is dotted with little pictures of sites such as Mount Whitney, the hotels at Bishop, and the water tower at Keeler.