Bailey Bridge: Unedited Version

The oldest railroad bridge in Colorado happens to be in Bailey and is getting a spiffy new facelift for its new chapter in history.

A small plaque on the top of the Bailey bridge names it the Keystone Bridge.

The pin-joint trussed bridge was made by the Keystone Bridge Company, somewhere in the 1880's.

Arthur Hall of Bailey is the president of the Park County Historical Society and co-administrator of the Great Outdoors Colorado grant funding the reconstruction of the bridge. Hall loves history, and has a special place in his heart for the Keystone Bridge, an oddly placed steel structure that straddles the North Fork of the South Platte River in Bailey.

He believes the bridges were a way to showcase the high-quality metals from the Pittsburgh Steel Company that constructed the bridge’s components.

The bridge has a105-foot span and a16-foot-wide roadbed, and a mystery.

Hall has watched over the bridge’s restoration and improvement but has tried to piece together the bridges history. A random source for information on the bridge is a catalog from the late 1800’s that Hall found that includes a likeness of the bridge.

The catalog sold bridges in kits that were made-to-order to accommodate load, location, use and size. The pieces of the bridge were manufactured and shipped by rail to the buyer, along with instructions how to assemble the bridge. For an additional modest fee, an engineer would accompany the shipment and supervise the bridge’s construction.

The cost of bridge from the 1870 edition of the Keystone Bridge Company catalog is unknown.

Hall said he believes it’s the only bridge in Colorado made by the Keystone Bridge Company.

Different theories exist about the bridge’s journey from the steel mills in Pittsburgh to the mountains of Colorado.

Kenton Forrest, archivist for the Colorado Railroad Museum said he knew about the bridge’s history, and that it was probably built around 1878. He said it was placed in its original location in the canyon in 1902, and he wonders about the bridge’s gap in time.

A standard gauge bridge, Forrest said that he thinks the bridge’s location in Waterton Canyon/Strontia Springs wasn’t it’s first home. He believes the bridge spent some time in Eastern Colorado and may have been replaced and moved to the Waterton Canyon area.

“It’s a piece of history that’s lost,” said Forrest.

Forrest said that until there’s a piece of paper that shows what happened and where the bridge originally came from, we’ll never know.

“It’s a great mystery,” Forrest said.

Forrest said that somewhere in five boxcars of old documents owned by the railroad museum is the answers to many questions about this bridge and others.

He said that storekeepers from the old railroads would hide information so no one could find them. It was their prize and they didn’t want people to know anything about their bridge.

Besides the railroad museum, other organizations have documentation of the bridge’s history.

According to Bob Wilson, from the Colorado Department of Transportation, the bridge was part of the Denver South Park and Pacific Railroad that ran tracks from Denver, following the South Platte River and parts of the then non-existent U.S. 285. The rails went over Kenosha Pass and through South Park, making stops in the town of Jefferson, where the old rail building still stands.

The goal was to get the rail all the way to the Pacific, according to Wilson, but the route only went as far as Gunnison.

Wilson said the tracks were used until 1938, when he said the rail was abandoned.

“It was a difficult route and it didn’t make money anymore,” said Wilson.

Beth Roman, staff analyst for the Denver Water Department said the bridge’s original location is now underwater, under the Waterton Canyon/Strontia Spring Reservoir.

Roman said the there were two bridges in the small canyon, and she believes one bridge is still under water.

Denver Water purchased the bridge on May 17, 1977 for $100 from the then Colorado and Southern Railway, a successor to the Denver South Park and Pacific Railroad, according to Roman.

In a memo of understanding with the U.S. Forest Service, dated Jan 20, 1978, Denver Water would pay to dismantle the bridge, number each piece, and store it. The bridge was deemed to have historical significance, and would have been lost with the creation of the reservoir.

The Forest Service would assume responsibility for finding another location for the bridge. That location was a segment of river in Bailey.

Park County Historical Society granted a license to the Denver Water Department on March 11, 1986 for reconstruction of the bridge on the channel improvements property where it’s now located.

Forrest said that he has an article from the Iron Horse News, dated May 1985 telling the story of the bridge’s introduction

According to the 1985 newsletter story, an engineering battalion erected the bridge across the South Platte in 1985. When the bridge was dismantled, it cleared the way for the dam at Strontia Springs.

Given to the Forest Service originally, the plan was to re-erect it on the Snake River near Keystone, but it was then given to Bailey instead, according to the story.

No date was given for that transaction in the article.

Forrest believes that there was indeed two bridges, but not at the same time. He said the Keystone Bridge was mostly likely a replacement or upgrade for a bridge that either was washed away in a flood or wasn’t strong enough to support heavier rail cars.

Forrest said he wish he knew where the bridge was during its approximately 30-year railroad tour.

“It’s the mystery of the bridge,” Forrest said.

McGraw Memorial Park is located at McGraw Memorial Park, U.S. 285 and County Road 68 in Bailey.