@thesilentstructure: Eleven thousand six hundred and sixty feet above the sea, a railroad once clawed its way over the Continental Divide. 🏔️ This is Rollins Pass, Colorado — David Moffat's Denver, Northwestern and Pacific Railway, later the Denver and Salt Lake, which from 1904 dared to summit at Corona, among the highest mainline railroad passes in America. The mountain fought back every winter. Drifts thirty feet deep swallowed the summit. Miles of wooden snow sheds sheltered the tracks. Rotary steam plows chewed through the white and hurled it aside — and still the line would vanish for days, for weeks, buried beneath the snow. At the crown stood Corona — Latin for "crown" — with its hotel and dining hall, where tourists marveled at snow in summer. Then, in February 1928, the Moffat Tunnel opened beneath the Divide. The trains descended into the rock, and the high line above was left to the wind. By 1936 the rails were torn up. Today the old grade is a rough four-wheel-drive road. Corona is stone foundations and rust. But some trestles — like the Riflesight Notch trestle — still stand, echoing a railway that dared to touch the sky. The split view in this reel: the 1920s scenes are AI reconstructions; the "now" photograph of the trestle is a real recent photo via Wikimedia Commons. Have you ever driven an old railroad grade? Tell us below. 👇 Follow @thesilentstructure for more forgotten infrastructure. #abandoned #urbex #abandonedplaces #railway #abandonedrailway #ghostrail #colorado #rockymountains #railroadhistory #trestle #snowplow #steamlocomotive #industrialhistory #forgottenplaces #lostplaces #abandonedamerica #History #engineering #vintagerail #mountainpass #continentaldivide #moffatroad #silentstructures

thesilentstructure

Open In TikTok:

Region: US

Tuesday 13 October 2026 11:02:48 GMT