For 111 Years People Dug in a Colorado Creek for a Lost Locomotive. The Railroad Rebuilt It in 1880

East of Denver, just past the town of Bennett, the Union Pacific crosses a creek that is dry for most of the year. For a hundred and eleven years, people dug in the sand under that crossing for a steam locomotive. A real one. Kansas Pacific engine number 51, built in Philadelphia in 1870, which went into that creek with its crew on the night of the 21st of May 1878. Railroad men drove iron rods into the sand looking for it. In January of 1989, more than 300 people turned out on one cold day with metal detectors, radar and a backhoe, and a government satellite searched the ground from above. They found a few bits and pieces. They never found the engine. This is not really a story about a train that vanished. It is a story about where people looked. The answer to where engine 51 went had been written down the whole time, in the one place nobody with a shovel ever thought to dig. IF YOU ARE GOING UP THERE As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Colorado Atlas & Gazetteer (DeLorme), the paper atlas with the county roads and creek crossings east of Denver: https://amzn.to/4dlwd04 Ad. Pit Stop, the iPhone app that tells you what is at the next exits and warns you before a long stretch without gas: https://www.pit-stop-app.com/go/oldalignment WHERE IT IS Kiowa Creek crosses Interstate 70 and the Union Pacific line just east of Bennett, Colorado, on the plains east of Denver. At Bennett the railroad runs a couple of miles north of the interstate. The tracks are railroad property, so look from public roads, and do not walk the right of way or dig. PRONUNCIATIONS Kiowa: KY-uh-wuh A NOTE ON THE IMAGES The research and the script are mine, from primary records and archives, and the sources are listed below. Where no photograph of a place survives, and for this channel that is often, the images are period material from elsewhere rather than the place itself. SOURCES Loyd J. Glasier, "The Lost Locomotive of Kiowa Creek," Colorado Rail Annual Number 22, Colorado Railroad Museum, Golden, 1997. Clive Cussler, The Sea Hunters (1996), and NUMA, Lost Locomotive of Kiowa Creek: https://numa.net/expeditions/lost-locomotive-of-kiowa-creek/ Kansas Pacific locomotive roster, engine 51 and Union Pacific 1026 (Utah Rails, Don Strack): https://utahrails.net/up/kansas-pacific-locos.php Kansas Pacific Railway history (Utah Rails): https://utahrails.net/up/kansas-pacific.php Daily Rocky Mountain News, Denver, June 5, 1878, page 2, and Weekly News, Denver, July 16, 1914, page 6, as cited in the Wikipedia entry for Bennett, Colorado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett,_Colorado Colorado Flood Hydrology Manual, Draft Version 2.0, prepared for the Colorado Water Conservation Board (Kiowa Creek flood history, 1935 and 1965). "The Rail Chain's Final Link" marker, Strasburg (Historical Marker Database): https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=17596 Comanche Crossing of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, National Register of Historic Places. IF YOU WERE THERE If you were at the creek for the January 1989 search, or your family worked for the Kansas Pacific or in the Union Pacific shops in Kansas City, I want to hear it. Comment or write to [email protected]. Old Alignment. Abandoned American roads, railroads and infrastructure. New video every other day. #KiowaCreek #Colorado #RailroadHistory