The decades following the Civil War brought changes to the Western Slope of Colorado. The miners and prospectors came searching for rich mineral veins, and the homesteaders, ranchers, and farmers soon followed. They arrived by foot, in wagons and on horses.

Railroads were coming as fast as tracks could be laid. The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad kept moving west. Tracks were completed to Gunnison in the 1870s, and trains regularly arrived with goods to be delivered to sites beyond the rail’...