David Halliday Moffat (July 22, 1839 – March 18, 1911) was an American financier and industrialist, who was one of the original pioneers of Denver, Colorado.

The decision to build the transcontinental railroad to the north had left the Denver area stranded from the major transportation routes.

As a result, Thomas Durant, vice president of the Union Pacific, pronounced Denver "too dead to bury."

As a result, Evans, together with other local business leaders, including David Moffat, William Byers (founder of the Rocky Mountain News), Bela M. Hughes and others partnered with East Coast investors to form a railroad company that would link Denver and the Colorado Territory with the national rail network.

It was a historic narrow gauge railway that operated in Colorado in the western United States in the late 19th century.

The railroad opened up the first rail routes to a large section of the central Colorado mining district in the decades of the mineral boom.

The railroad took its name from the fact that its main line from Denver ascended the Platte Canyon and traversed South Park.

Denver Tramway was started by Colorado Governor John Evans, David Moffat and other associates in 1886.

David H. Moffat resigned as president of D&RG in 1891 due to foreign bondholder's displeasure with Denver management of company.

Moffat had wanted to build directly west from Denver to Salt Lake City and had spent $200,000 of the D&RG's money on surveys in the James Peak neighborhood.

Moffat built his own depot for his railroad at Fifteenth and Bassett, which was three blocks west of Denver's Union Station.

[2] By 1913, reorganized as the Denver & Salt Lake Railway, it reached Craig in Moffat County, Colorado, along the Colorado-Utah border.