See that curved road running through the middle of the Evergreen Cemetery?

In the Eastonville chapter you will encounter an abandoned railroad that was to run between Denver, Colorado and New Orleans, Louisiana. Quite a dream that never made it. It was a good idea to connect the shipping port at the mouth of the Mississippi to Denver and on to the wild west and ultimately the Pacific Ocean.

This railroad had added a spur line of the Denver and New Orleans Railroad that led to downtown Colorado Springs, running from the Falcon area and passing south of Prospect Lake and a small station near where the Martin Drake Power Plant is today.

Below, you will see a 1907 map of the area that showed the original railroad bed. The railroad ran along the north boundary of the cemetery. Note the “CEM” on old map below. Compare it to the modern map of the same area.

It appears that after the railroad was removed the cemetery expanded to the north but still using the railroad bed as a roadway. This curved road starts at the entrance and has a stone drainage channel lining one side of the road. It is also crowned while the other roads are not.

The curved road that runs through the middle of Evergreen Cemetery is illustrated by the yellow lines on the aerial photo below. This current curved road was originally the railroad running along the northern boundary of the cemetery.

You will notice in this comparison of today’s Google Map view and a map from 1907 that the cemetery’s blocks in the latest addition are larger to the north of the curve.

It gets better! The railroad also constituted the north boundary of the Valley High Golf Course. It wasn’t a golf course at the time according to the map but the property boundaries have carried on this alignment.

These are the only two pieces of the track alignment that I could locate as it ran through Colorado Springs, but what a find!

If you are in this area exploring, I suggest visiting a rolling hillside of randomly placed pioneer headstones to the south of Evergreen Cemetery. Well worth checking out.

Rocky Shockley