So just
where did the railroad go, back in the day when
Prescott was served by the Santa Fe? Before I moved, I managed to snag the 1947 15-minute USGS Prescott quad topo, which shows a much smaller town, including the railroad tracks. Scanned and magnified, the topo does a nice job of showing the route. BTW, the tracks are designated by a solid line with periodic cross hatching.
East of the
depot down on Sheldon at the foot of Cortez, the tracks headed northeast up through the Whipple Military Reservation -- now the Ft. Whipple VA, then along Granite Creek toward the Dells where the old right of way is now a popular hiking trail.
Here's a snippet of a map I found at the
Sharlot Hall web site, a close-up of the area surrounding the station. A couple of fascinating details: two round houses, one for oil tankers ... and the little dam on Butte Creek (right center) which held one of the early city water impoundments. (It's still there, though hard to find as it is completely silted up.)
Less well known is the course of the tracks through the city west of the depot. Basically, it followed Miller Creek briefly, crossed Miller Valley Road at Rodeo Drive to serve the fairgrounds, then headed northwest to Iron Springs Road, which it followed out of town. More or less the same route as Gail Gardner Way, incidentally.
Look behind the espresso shack on Miller Valley Road; you will see that there's a fence on an extreme diagonal which heads southeast behind the Mexican restaurant and the old stone building.
A short distance further south, you will note a little stub of a street on the east, opposite to the road heading to J&G Sales on the west side of Miller Valley. The stub leads to an unnamed bit of street that follows the old railroad course; there was at one time a spur track all the way to J&G's present building (it shows on the map if you look carefully.) As a matter of fact, the iron rails of the spur were still there, embedded in the road surface when we first came to Prescott at the beginning of the '80s.
And the Santa Fe was still stopping in Prescott three days a week at that time. However, the western half of the route had been dropped in the 60s; the trains came and left via the Dells. Reason: railroads had switched to long piggy-back flat-bed rolling stock which could never have negotiated the old winding tracks between Skull Valley and Iron Springs. Drive all the way out to Ramsgate on the Dosie Pit Road and you'll understand!
East of the depot down on Sheldon at the foot of Cortez, the tracks headed northeast up through the Whipple Military Reservation -- now the Ft. Whipple VA, then along Granite Creek toward the Dells where the old right of way is now a popular hiking trail.
Here's a snippet of a map I found at the Sharlot Hall web site, a close-up of the area surrounding the station. A couple of fascinating details: two round houses, one for oil tankers ... and the little dam on Butte Creek (right center) which held one of the early city water impoundments. (It's still there, though hard to find as it is completely silted up.)
Less well known is the course of the tracks through the city west of the depot. Basically, it followed Miller Creek briefly, crossed Miller Valley Road at Rodeo Drive to serve the fairgrounds, then headed northwest to Iron Springs Road, which it followed out of town. More or less the same route as Gail Gardner Way, incidentally.
Look behind the espresso shack on Miller Valley Road; you will see that there's a fence on an extreme diagonal which heads southeast behind the Mexican restaurant and the old stone building.
A short distance further south, you will note a little stub of a street on the east, opposite to the road heading to J&G Sales on the west side of Miller Valley. The stub leads to an unnamed bit of street that follows the old railroad course; there was at one time a spur track all the way to J&G's present building (it shows on the map if you look carefully.) As a matter of fact, the iron rails of the spur were still there, embedded in the road surface when we first came to Prescott at the beginning of the '80s.
And the Santa Fe was still stopping in Prescott three days a week at that time. However, the western half of the route had been dropped in the 60s; the trains came and left via the Dells. Reason: railroads had switched to long piggy-back flat-bed rolling stock which could never have negotiated the old winding tracks between Skull Valley and Iron Springs. Drive all the way out to Ramsgate on the Dosie Pit Road and you'll understand!
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