History, Part 5

The Chili Line

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WE’RE LOOKING AT THE YEAR 1940. This train is chugging north through downtown Santa Fe on Jefferson Street, nowadays called North Guadalupe Street, crossing the bridge over the Santa Fe River. You can see the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe poking its head up behind the train, looking like it does today when we pass it in the car.

From here the train continues north in 1940 across Arroyo de las Mascaras near Griffin Street, as shown in the next photo. Nowadays that arroyo is buried in culverts underneath Paseo de Peralta.

After crossing the arroyo, the train heads west on Rio Grande Avenue and passes within 20 or 30 feet of the property line of our condominium. I’m taking liberties with language because the train is doing this in 1940 and Rio Grande Avenue and our condominium haven’t been built yet.

In case that last sentence wasn’t clear, let me put it this way. If you stand today in the middle of Rio Grande Avenue, right in front of the condo, and magically transport yourself back to 1940, you may get run over by a locomotive. Good thing time machines don’t exist!

A little over seven hours later this train will pull into Antonito, Colorado, where passengers and goods can transfer to other lines and go anywhere in the country.

Trains like this one made this trip six days a week for more than half a century. While one train traveled from Santa Fe to Antonito, a second train traveled in the opposite direction on the same track. To pass each other, they used a siding in the middle of the route. The crews spent the night in the destination cities and made the reverse trips the next day. People called this railroad the Chili Line because it sometimes carried chilies, but its real name, in its final years, was the Santa Fe Branch of the Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW).

Rio Grande Avenue wasn’t built yet when the railroad operated, so nobody was bothered by trains rolling down the middle of it. But the same trains rumbled down the middle of Guadalupe Street next to cars and trucks. Maybe this arrangement seemed less strange when it started than it does today because cars weren’t in use yet when the rails were laid.

The train in the picture above is traveling east past Rosario Cemetery. The small structure to the train’s right is the Closson Mausoleum (see location). It’s visible today if you walk west on Rio Grande Avenue, cross the arroyo, and look left over the cemetery fence.

The Chili Line shut down in 1941, the victim of the growing use of cars, trucks, and buses. It had been losing money for years.▼ This photo shows the final train pulling into its last stop for the last time. After the Chili Line closed, the Joseph Pepper Construction Company carted the rails away for scrap.▼ The story went around Santa Fe that the rails would be used for the war. Parts of the trestle over Arroyo del Rosario, which was located where the three culverts pass under Griffin Street today, remained standing for years.▼

This railroad map, made in the 1920s, shows the origin of Rio Grande Avenue. Originally it was the right of way for the railroad.

The video below shows what those trains looked like in their own time. The railroad cars in the video are actual vintage D&RGW equipment. Some or all of them may have passed in front of the place where our condo stands today.

The trestle

The railroad trestle over Arroyo del Rosario, which was located where the three culverts pass under Griffin Street today, was called “Bridge 404-D” in the railroad’s naming system. It was a 3-panel fire-decked frame trestle, 49 feet long, located at milepost 404.98. “Fire-decked” meant that some of the timbers were covered with sheet metal to protect them from coal embers which flew out of the locomotives’ chimneys.▼

Notes

▲First photo by Richard B. Jackson, 1940. Courtesy Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, catalog number RD089-096. Apparently digitized from print owned by California Railroad Museum in Richard B. Jackson photograph album, Collection MS 479, album 117, page 31.

▲Second photo by Richard B. Jackson, 1940. Courtesy Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, catalog number RD089-097. Apparently digitized from print owned by California Railroad Museum in Richard B. Jackson photograph album, Collection MS 479, album 117, page 25.

▲Photo by Robert W. Richardson, 1941. Courtesy Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, catalog number RDS077-105.

▲Photo by Otto Perry, 1941. Courtesy Denver Public Library, call number OP-8202.

▲Photographer unknown, 1941. Courtesy Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, catalog number RD016-013.

▲Losing money for years: Branch Line Report, Santa Fe Branch, 1938, Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Company.

▲ Joseph Pepper Construction Company: Gjevre, John A. Chili Line: the narrow rail trail to Santa Fe, 2nd ed, 1971 Rio Grande Sun Press, p. 94.

▲ Trestle remained standing: Personal communication from Joe Roybal who grew up in our neighborhood in the 1950s and 60s.

▲ ICC railroad valuation map: Original blueprint work copies are held by the National Archives and other institutions.

▲ Digitized by Rob Fine: I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get credited by name in a publication for digitizing a document, but Rob did an extraordinarily good job. He used a camera not a scanner.

▲ The railroad trestle: The Chili Line: photographs & bridge data, published by TheSantaFeBranchChiliLine@groups.io, page 87.

Links

This page was first published on March 16, 2022 and last republished on December 13, 2024.