Sand & Smoke| Sand & Smoke |
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| Written by Andrew Leonard | |
| Saturday, 01 August 2009 00:00 | |
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I am a strange person. I enjoy knowing extreme minutiae of things, such as how counties change their borders over time, or the specifics of subway maps. So when I picked up “Sand & Smoke - A Mile By Mile Guide for the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad”, by Doris B. and Becky Osterwald, I knew I’d found something I’d like. I haven’t seen a Mile By Mile Guide before, so the concept was new to me. Basically, it is exactly what it says - it’s a guide for the trip on the train, with every historical event and beautiful vista noted by the milepost. It’s not exactly a pocket guide, being the size of a magazine, but it is useful to give you an outline of what to look for and context of what you saw. For someone who has not been on the route, which runs 61 miles from Alamosa to La Veta in Colorado, the guide gives an excellent mental image of the sights and sounds a traveler would pass by. Included to help are highly detailed and colorful maps, detailing each milepost and the small settlements, past and present, which dot the route. Perhaps a better asset than the mile-by-mile guide itself is the immense historical background presented. Lots of research must have gone into this, which details the history of the region all the way back to the Spanish land grants, explaining how the trails became rails and the evolution of the route. For example, a town named Russell moved several times, as the railway progressed, until finally the fourth Russell was renamed Garland City, which was itself abandoned and moved to the railway’s final western terminus, Alamosa. Accompanying the extremely well documented history are dozens of photographs, both recent and historic, comparing past with present and documenting the history and view of the ride. For example, while there’s no trace of Garland City today, photos in the book show that in the past, it was a thriving town. Following the history section and main guides are smaller sections, including a mile by mile guide southbound from Alamosa to Antonito, a catalogue of the equipment being used on the railroad today, and detailed sections on the local geology and nature. A mile by mile guide of anything - interstates, train routes, coastline - is something that is right up my alley. Each guide, eastbound and westbound, takes up a third of the book. But for me, the initial third, detailing and illustrating the history of the region, was the far better read. I recommend this to anyone, not just people who have or intend to ride on the San Luis & Rio Grande, but anyone with an interest in railroad history and the history of southern Colorado. Sand & Smoke - A Mile By Mile Guide for the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad by Doris B. Osterwald and Becky Osterwald 87 pages, soft cover, 2008 Western Guideways Ltd., PO Box 280904, Lakewood, CO 80228
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