What’s most remarkable about the Gunnison Tunnel? To me, the non-engineer, it is that construction started simultaneously from the east and the west and the tunnels met! But do you remember the old cartoon in Mad Magain the Golden Spike celebrating the new continental railroad. The second frame, an aerial view, reveals those tracks didn’t line up. Oops! Of course, that’s another story.

Let’s go back 140 years. The promise of “free” land brought settlers into the Uncompaghre Valley in ...