Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

The Denver and Rio Grande laid its narrow-gauge line up the Animas River from Durango to the silver camps at Silverton in 1881 and 1882, shelving it across the cliff face of the Animas Canyon high above the river. Ore came down and supplies went up, and when the mines faded the line kept running for the scenery. It is one of the very few places in the country where coal-fired steam locomotives have pulled scheduled trains every season for well over a century.

On June 1, 2018, in a deep drought, a fire started beside the tracks north of Durango. The 416 Fire burned more than 54,000 acres of the San Juan National Forest over the summer and forced evacuations; the railroad stopped running for more than forty days. Federal investigators concluded that burning cinders from one of the railroad's coal-fired locomotives had started it, and court filings said train crews had reported dozens of smaller fires along the tracks in the weeks before. In 2019 the government sued. In March 2022 the railroad and its parent company settled for $20 million and agreed not to run coal-burning engines when the fire danger is high, while continuing to deny that its train caused the fire.

Since then the railroad has been converting its steam locomotives to burn oil instead of coal. The train still leaves the 1882 depot on Main Avenue in Durango for the 45-mile, roughly three-and-a-half-hour climb to Silverton, with a layover there before the return.