The Regal Ditch

If you know your geography you might be able to figure out the tourist draw I am referring to - The Royal Gorge.  John called it the Ditch all day long!

The Royal Gorge Bridge was built in 1929 and, until 2009, it was the worlds tallest suspension bridge at over 1000 feet above the Arkansas river.  It is about 1/4 mile long and has all wood decking.  We could drive our car across if we wanted to but only between 7 & 9 am or after the attractions close in the evening.

The Vista Dome car & open train car at the narrowest section of the Gorge where a short suspension system was built to hold the tracks.

I came here as a kid with my family but that was so long ago that I convinced John we had to see it again.  There was absolutely no comparison to 50 years ago as a wild fire came through the gorge in 2013 and burned almost all of the buildings around the bridge and even burned some of the wooden decking on the bridge.  There used to be a cog rail train that ran down to the bottom and back and that was destroyed as was the original gondola and the visitor center.  The city of Canon City owns the Royal Gorge Bridge and much of the land around it.  They got busy and built a new visitor center, gondola ride, children’s play area, theatre and other small attractions.  There is also a zip line across the gorge and a sky coaster (swing).

But what we really came to do was ride the train along the river’s edge at the bottom of the gorge. It was a two hour ride over 12 miles up and back.  It stopped under the Royal Gorge Bridge and crossed its own short suspension span.  We got a little of its history and some great views of the gorge.  We rode in a Vista Dome car with windows  curving up overhead but we spent a lot of time on the open air car with nothing to block our view.  Before we even left the station we were served our hamburger lunch.

An original section of the wooden water pipe.

Canon City is the home of a regional prison that was built in the late 1800s by the prisoners it housed.  These prisoners also built a water line to the city from about 8 miles up river where a damn was built.  The original pipe was made of wood from the Giant Redwood trees and there is still evidence of the pipe all along the route. Several years ago the damn was removed so that the rafters did not have to portage around it, rafting is very popular on this stretch of the river.