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stewart Posts: 25
4/17/2011
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I was going to tag this post onto the back end of one containing Daren's excellent photos, but figured I might as well just post it fresh, here. There's a lot written about Carrizo Gorge, but I wanted to share a book I've been reading, "Baja California Railways," by John A. Kirchner. Though he focuses mostly on the Mexican side of things, what he writes about the Carrizo Gorge is fascinating. He also gives the details of the flooding of the Colorado River into the Salton Sea, 1905-1907.
For instance:
The San Diego to Yuma line was actually two railways, the Tijuana Y Tecate and the San Diego & Arizona. Tycoon John D. Spreckles drove the last (gold) spike in 1919. It was his efforts, and money that kept the railway construction alive when Southern Pacific backed out (SP owned the right-of-way rights granted by the Mexican government to build in the first place).
The completed line was a big hit, as San Diego had been vying for a railway east since 1850. Traffic was good initially, particularly on the Mexican side, but the railway began its history just as bus and automobile traffic was about to run between San Diego and Yuma more quickly and more cheaply. And San Diego never developed into the international port it thought it would, so freight traffic that could be carried east remained limited.
50,000 tickets were sold each year during the 20s and 30s, but as freight and passenger traffic declined, eventually only a caboose was available for passengers. Tropical storm Kathleen severely damaged the line in 1976, and a 1983 fire in a Carrizo Gorge tunnel was the fatal blow, at least to the US side. That is, I think, more or less the state one finds the railway in today.
The Carrizo Gorge section was, and perhaps is, the most expensive railroad ever built. due to the vulnerable tunnels and trestles. The notion that the railway could be resurrected is not entirely a dream, I think, though it's difficult to see how a freight or tourist line could pay its own way, given the line's expensive history.
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