DURANGO — Narrow Gauge Day is a hallowed occasion.
It’s the annual kick off for the beloved Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, the historic coal-fired locomotive that draws people from all over the world. The community gathers on a May day to grill hot dogs and hobnob with neighbors as the Bar D Wranglers serenade the crowd with classic cowboy music.
For Kristi Nelson, who played with toy trains in her living room as a little girl and who worked for the railroad for 15 years, the season’s start means it’s time to celebrate.
But not this year.
Nelson is one of more than two dozen area residents and businesses suing the railroad and its owner for causing last summer’s 416 fire, the sixth-largest wildfire in Colorado history that triggered thousands of evacuations, destroyed 54,000 acres and caused millions of dollars in economic damage.
The lawsuit, filed in September, accuses the Durango & Silverton of carelessly running its vintage train despite extreme drought conditions. A federal investigation concluded that hot cinders from the train’s smokestack sparked the fire, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Tuesday filed another lawsuit to recoup the more than $25 million spent fighting the wildfire.
For Durango, which owes its 140-year-old existence to the train, the locomotive is the town’s identity. And it’s the region’s economic lifeblood, responsible for $250 million every year in the local economy.
The lawsuit has created two camps in town: Those who believe the train should be held responsible for the fire and those who believe its owners should be forgiven because of all the good the locomotive has brought to the region.
Some, such as Nelson, avoid community events. Friendships have been severed. Others avoid speaking openly about their views for fear of retribution. Even the local attorney who brought the lawsuit agonized over whether to follow through.
The train’s staunchest defenders can’t understand why anyone would go after the town’s economic engine.
“They’re really foolish and short-sighted,” said Duane Smith, a longtime Durango historian. “For heaven’s sake, this is not the right solution.”
As the community rallied behind its local treasure on May 3 for the start of a new season, Nelson avoided the festivities for the first time in 20 years.
“It’s with a heavy heart that I entered the lawsuit,” Nelson said. “It’s not my intention to hurt the railroad.”
416 Fire
On the morning of June 1, 2018, two residents said they saw a fire start moments after the train chugged up the drought-stricken Shalona Hill, just north of Durango.
The trains, which are nearly 100 years old, commonly shoot burning cinders and, particularly under dry conditions, “pose an extremely high risk of fire,” federal prosecutors wrote. The train ignited multiple fires in the month leading up to the 416 fire, the federal lawsuit said.
What started as a small brush fire quickly spread into a massive wildfire. The flames burned more than 54,000 acres across southwestern Colorado, shutting down the San Juan National Forest for the first time in its 113-year history. Firefighters fully contained the blaze by the end of July.
As the fire raged, the railroad suspended service for 41 days. While trains sat idly in the depot, local businesses struggled. The Durango Chamber of Commerce estimated the town’s economy took a $33 million hit in June alone.
A year later, Al Harper, the railroad’s owner, said he’s making changes to ensure the trains run safely this summer.
Harper spoke softly, projecting an aura of calm even as the U.S. Attorney’s Office was preparing to sue for millions of dollars in damages and the local lawsuit was winding its way through La Plata County court.
Sitting in his office above the train depot in downtown Durango in late June, Harper said he couldn’t comment on the fire due to the pending litigation, but he previously has said he would take “whatever steps necessary to make it right” if the railroad caused the fire.
Some changes already are taking shape. The train company is spending $6 million on improvements, Harper said, including the purchase of two diesel-powered trains that he hopes will be ready by September. Diesel locomotives can run in any weather and pose a lower fire risk.
While he had been considering adding diesel trains for years, “last year encouraged us to do it more quickly,” Harper said.
Other additions include $1 million for new tracks to accommodate the diesel trains and another $1 million for track improvements, Harper said. The railroad operator also is converting a 60-year-old oil-burning engine to add to its fleet.
The above-average snowfall this winter has eased some anxiety about the 2019 season’s fire conditions, but Harper said they will take no chances. On days with heightened risk, the railroad will park its coal trains and run the diesel engines. Helicopters carrying water likely will fly every day during peak season, Harper said.
“We’re probably the most fire conscious of any organization in the state of Colorado,” Harper said.
After a slow start due to this spring’s late snowfall, Harper said the railroad is within 2 percent of its normal passenger rate.
Durango’s “Golden Goose”
To understand Durango is to understand the railroad’s legacy. And it helps explain why so many people — even those who were significantly affected by 2018’s fire — remain avid train defenders.
“Without the train, Durango wouldn’t be here,” Smith, the retired history professor who taught at Fort Lewis College in Durango for 40 years, said.
The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad founded Durango in 1880 to service the nearby San Juan mining district, part of the fevered gold rush era which attracted eager investors to the region. In 1882, tracks to Silverton were completed, and the train started hauling freight and passengers.
After mining began to falter in the 1930s, the train transitioned into a full-time tourist attraction, Smith said. And its majestic tour through the San Juan Mountains became the primary reason for people to visit Durango.
“We’re a pretty isolated spot down here,” Smith said. “So without that train, Durango would just be an isolated college town.”
The train impacts every industry in town, from shopping and dining to lodging and rafting. The railroad, and its 200,000 yearly riders, brings about $250 million a year to the region, said Jack Llewellyn, executive director of the Durango Chamber of Commerce. The railroad employs 200 people during the summer rush and 100 in the off-season.
Rod Barker, owner of Durango’s historic Strater Hotel, said 70 to 80 percent of his guests ride the train.
“It’s really an anchor for Durango and the surrounding area,” Llewellyn said. “They’re very resilient and we hope they keep running.”
Smith can look out his home’s window and see the train’s billowing smoke as it hauls legions of tourists from around the world. He’s watched the railroad keep the town afloat through lean years. It’s with this historical perspective that he questions the motives of those suing the railroad.
Smith is hardly alone in his sentiment.
Sheree and Danny Culhane own the Honeyville shop and farm just down the road from Nelson’s house on U.S. 550. They could hear trees exploding last June as the fire engulfed the forest beside their 100-year-old business.
The Culhanes and their employees evacuated for nine days, and while the fire didn’t make it to their shop, the smoke did.
“The whole experience was terrifying,” Sherry Culhane said. She estimated the business incurred $100,000 in damage as the couple tried to sell their sweet goods out of their garage.
Still, Culhane said she does not blame the train.
“It was so dry,” she said. “Nobody could have stopped it.”
After the fire, Culhane said railroad employees came by the store to see how they were doing.
“This town supports the train,” she said. “If the train didn’t run, tourism would dry up.”
Tom Bell can practically see the Durango train depot from the front of his shop on Main Avenue in downtown Durango. He’s managed the Lanka Blue Jewelry store for 25 years and sees how inextricably linked the train is to businesses around him.
“I don’t want to participate in a lawsuit against my golden goose,” Bell said. “It’s the cornerstone of our economy.”
A “precarious position”
While the railroad chugs back to normalcy a year after the devastating fire, Nelson is still picking up the pieces.
She lives just down the mountainside from where the fire first sparked, but it wasn’t the flames that upended her life. It was the ensuing mudslides which came down like a torrent, the charred soil unable to absorb the downpour pummeling the hillside.
The first flood on July 17 brought 18 inches of mud into her garage. Then, a week later, it happened again.
The flooding closed highways and county roads, inundating houses and businesses in the north Animas Valley with boulders, rocks and avalanches of mud.
“That one just took me to my knees,” Nelson said.
A foot-and-a-half of mud seeped into her kitchen. A boulder rammed her car. The walls in her house still bare faint lines marking where the sludge inched upwards. Nelson’s beloved garden, completely destroyed. It took 23 semi-dump truck loads and $116,000 to dispose of the debris on her property.
Like many people in the area, she didn’t have flood insurance.
“That kind of damage, when you’re retired?” Nelson said. “That’s a huge nut to crack.”
For Nelson, the fact that the train company might have been responsible for the damage put her in an uncomfortable position.
Nelson’s a train fanatic.
Just beyond her front door, framed pictures show a young Nelson grinning at the camera as she played with trains in her childhood home. Above the old photos, a G-Gauge LGB electric train sits on tracks circling the entrance way. Nelson flicked on the power, hooting as the mini locomotive chugged around the room.
Nelson even worked for the Durango & Silverton railroad company, serving eight years as vice president of sales and marketing and another seven as a contractor doing special events.
“I am a huge supporter of the railroad,” Nelson said, a refrain she repeated multiple times during a June interview at her home. As she spoke about the flood damage, the familiar whistle of the Durango & Silverton carried into the kitchen. “But now my relationship with them, of course, has changed.”
For Nelson and others, the decision to take legal action against the train carries personal consequences.
Since entering the lawsuit, Nelson hasn’t spoken to her old colleagues — many of whom she considers good friends. She skipped Narrow Gauge Day and the first day of service, when people line up in Silverton to welcome the season’s first trains. People around town ask why she’s taking legal action.
“It’s a precarious position I’m in,” Nelson said. “However, if the tables were turned and I mistakenly ran a vehicle of mine into train property, I would expect my insurance to pay. My hope is that their insurance will help pay for expenses I incurred.”
Nelson’s attorney, Bobby Duthie, had similar unease entering the lawsuit. A Durango native, Duthie woke up to the train nearly every day of his childhood. He loved it.
“My reluctance was, ‘Should I be involved in litigation against the train management for its decision to operate the train in those drought conditions?'” Duthie said. “Because I love Durango, and I didn’t want to hurt Durango.”
After reading news reports with eye-witnesses and fielding calls from clients regarding property and business losses, Duthie, in tandem with the Denver-based Burg Simpson law firm, decided to take the case.
Duthie said his involvement probably has affected some personal relationships.
“Some people are downright upset with me,” he said. “On the other hand, others are really supportive. There’s two camps.”
The animosity around the town has been too much for some.
One plaintiff contacted by The Denver Post declined to speak publicly for fear of retribution. The individual said he has been confronted on multiple occasions since his decision to sue and said more publicity would only inflame tensions.
Last summer, a vandal targeted railroad owner Harper’s house with graffiti — although the man tagged a neighbor by accident. “(Expletive) the Train” the man wrote, according to the Durango Herald.
“It would be disingenuous to say the circumstances of 2018 weren’t stressful,” Harper said.
But he believes the majority of Durango’s residents fall on his side.
“My guess is 90-percent-plus in the community understands the importance of the railroad, understands how hard the railroad, and my family personally, worked to make sure we’re good citizens, make sure we’re good caretakers of the forest,” he said. “So that 90 percent gives me the faith that I don’t worry too much about the rest of it.”
Meanwhile, Nelson spends her days clearing rocks from her property, replanting lost vegetation. She’s added concrete barriers leading up to her home, and water engineers helped carve a new path to the river in case another flood comes. Every time it rains, she gets anxious.
“This was life-changing for me,” Nelson said. “It’s tenuous because I am a huge supporter of the train. But I feel like some difficult decisions should have been made.”
