Across the river from our winter rental is a large industrial building, falling each year into further disrepair. The building was an engine maintenance facility for the Denver-Rio Grande Railroad. Salida was founded by the railroad in 1880, Shortly thereafter, the town became a central transfer and repair center for trains heading south to New Mexico, north to Leadville, west into the San Juans, and east down the Arkansas River canyon to the mills and smelters of Pueblo.
The texture of the metal sided building, the clerestory with its broken panes, the contours of the water tanks, the colors as they change with the angle of the sun, these features have always captured me. An abstract of form, texture, color and shading.
This remnant of the industrial past is a healthy tonic for those who come to Colorado and look at the mountains and who believe that skiing and ranching is all that happened here. The energy, the smoke, the rail yard rhythms of metal being beaten, of engines being torn apart and being put back together, of workmen and passengers crossing over tracks to change trains...that sense of energy and capital coming together to move, to move, to move people, freight, minerals across the State, the continent. All that is missing.
Salida's library has a book on railroads containing a painting of the scene as it looked in the last century. A train engine running at a good clip past the repair yard. But now it is quiet on the opposite shore...the only sound is that of the Arkansas River still flowing down to Pueblo and beyond.
