In 1927, the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad (later merged with the
Denver & Rio Grande Western) completed the Moffat Tunnel in
Colorado. The six-mile bore eliminated the treacherous main line
over Rollins Pass, providing a shorter route from the Midwest to
the Salt Lake basin. In the nineteenth century, Denver had been
bypassed by the Union Pacific, the first transcontinental
railroad. While it grew to become the great city of the Rocky
Mountain West, it had only roundabout lines westward across the
mountains. After lengthy court battles and bruising political
fights, David Moffat was able to begin construction of the
tunnel that bears his name. For three years, miners labored far
beneath the blazing summer sun and frigid winter storms to carve
a mainline railroad tunnel, through mostly solid rock, at an
elevation of more than 9,200 feet above sea level. When the
miners broke through in February of 1927, they had managed to
drive two working faces 32,800 feet through the Continental
Divide-and meet dead-on in th