The late author and historian Forest Crossen wrote of Boulder’s early railroad era, stating that in the 1870s the town’s residents “were gripped with railroad fever.” He added, “Few people today can understand the magic that the word ‘railroad’ carried. Every crossroads settlement felt that with a railroad, it might grow into a city.”

The frontier town of Boulder became one of those cities. Boulder embraced the “fever” and became a busy railroad hub, complete with a maze of railroad lines. By tracking down these railroads today, we gain insight into Boulder’s transportation, mining, and tourism industries —— giving us a sense of our past.

Railroads arrived in Boulder 150 years ago, in 1873. The first line was the Colorado Central. It ran between Black Hawk and Longmont (and later, Cheyenne) and built a depot at Pearl and 31st Street. The second line, the Denver & Boulder Valley, shuttled passengers and mail between Boulder and Brighton and stopped at a depot at Pearl and 21st Street.

These early trains burned coal and ran on steam, as did the narrow-gauge Greeley, Salt Lake & Pacific Railroad (that never saw its namesakes). Beginning in 1883, the G, SL& P wound its way from Boulder to gold mining communities in the mountains west of Boulder. Miners used the railroad to bring up coal for their steam-powered mining equipment and to haul ore back down to mills and smelters.

Tourists started riding the mountain railroad, too. Before long, the locals called it the “Switzerland Trail of America.” As did the earlier railroads, the G, SL& P (and its successors) had its own depot. Passengers heading to the mountains boarded at 10th and Water (now Canyon) streets until 1907 when the depot was blown up by an arsonist.

By 1890, passengers were so much on the move that the Union Pacific, Denver & Gulf railroad steamed right into Boulder — stopping at the UP’s handsome stone depot at 14th Street and today’s Canyon Boulevard. Before long, the mainline railroad stretched from Billings, Montana, to Fort Worth, Texas. This only surviving depot in Boulder has been moved to Junction Place, near Pearl, where it’s been repurposed as a restaurant.

Perhaps the busiest time in Boulder’s rail history was in 1908, when the Denver & Interurban began shuttling commuters between Boulder and Denver.

The one-to-three-coach trains made 16 round-trips per day and ran from 6:20 a.m. to well past midnight.

The Interurbans’ route through Boulder passed through the University of Colorado campus, ran down the hill behind today’s Boulder High School’s football field, crossed 12th Street (now Broadway) at Marine Street, crossed Boulder Creek at 11th Street, and then (1908-1917 only) followed 12th Street to Pearl Street to return to Denver. After 1917, it followed one lane of today’s Canyon Boulevard.

The Interurbans ran on electricity. A coal-fired power plant in Lafayette, with a substation on Broadway, powered the overhead lines. In 1926, the popularity of the automobile put the train out of business. But a year or two earlier, when Crossen first came to Boulder, he arrived on the Interurban. “It was a lovely Sunday morning,” he later recalled, “and we came up through Marshall and across the University campus. I thought it the most delightful trip I had ever taken.”

No wonder he became a railroad historian.

Silvia Pettem and Carol Taylor alternate the In Retrospect column. Silvia can be reached at silviapettem@gmail.com.