Haunted at Timberline Home

The Alpine Tunnel was constructed by the Denver South Park and Pacific Railroad in 1882 to provide a train route from South Park to points west. In 1910 a large section of the tunnel collapsed, and several men died. In the time since then, the entrances have collapsed as well. The tunnel required some 400 men to complete in eighteen months. The tunnel is 1771 feet long. Because the west tunnel entrance and the west tunnel complex are in the alpine at about 11,600 feet, most of the buildings and other structures have been completely destroyed by the ravages of high-altitude weather. At the west entrance, a new turntable was built, and the telegraph house was renovated. The opening photo shows the road leading to the west entrance to the tunnel; the tunnel is at the far left. Click anywhere on the photo to see a close-up of the last section of the road. The virtual tour shows the collapsed west entrance to the tunnel, the new turntable, the renovated telegraph house, and the remains of the engine house and section house (crumbling stone foundations across from the telegraph house). The remains of the engine house are directly across from the telegraph house; the engine house was destroyed in a horrendous fire in 1906. The original turntable was part of the engine house.

The first two photos below show the frightening road (the original train track) up to the west entrance to the tunnel. The second photo is taken across the original site of the small town of Woodstock; the road up to Alpine Tunnel cuts across the mountain in the middle of the photo. (In the first photo you can also see the clearing in the forest where Woodstock was built.) It is extremely difficult for Jeeps or any other vehicles to pass one another on this road: construction of the road for the original track is considered one of the great engineering marvels of the 19th century. There have been a number of accidents on this road. The many deaths in this general area over the past 130 years makes a visit to Alpine Tunnel a bit disturbing. What is probably the most disturbing of all, however, is the fact that a horrible avalanche destroyed the town of Woodstock in 1884, killing thirteen people, including six of the eight children of the woman who ran the boarding house. This was the single most deadly avalanche in Colorado history. The town was never rebuilt. Other than flattened foundations, the only remaining structure in Woodstock is shown in the third photograph. However, there is one isolated cabin, built within the last thirty years, on private property deep in the woods just above Woodstock. The owner keeps the curious away through use of large, plastic baby dolls, nailed (through the foreheads) to trees along the dirt road leading to his home.