Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad

At Chama a three-foot-gauge steam train still leaves on summer mornings for Antonito, Colorado, sixty-four miles away over Cumbres Pass, 10,015 feet up, the highest mountain pass reached by rail in the country. The line was laid in 1880 as part of the Denver & Rio Grande's San Juan Extension, built narrow and cheap to reach the silver camps of the San Juan Mountains.

It survived because nobody thought it worth improving. The Rio Grande converted most of its main lines to standard gauge in the early 1900s, but the silver collapse of 1893 had left this one with too little traffic to justify the cost, and it ran on as a narrow-gauge freight line until it was abandoned at the end of the 1960s. In 1970 Colorado and New Mexico bought the Chama to Antonito section together, with nine steam locomotives, more than 130 freight and work cars and the Chama yard, for about $547,000. Excursions began the next year, run for the two states by an interstate commission.

Out of Chama the train climbs a four-percent grade over the Lobato trestle toward the pass, then winds down the Colorado side through two tunnels and along the 600-foot drop of the Toltec Gorge, crossing the state line eleven times on the way. The Chama yard keeps its coal tipple, water tank and shops, and the whole line has been a National Historic Landmark since 2012 for how little of it has changed.

Trains run from late May to late October. The full trip takes most of a day, with buses connecting the two ends.