Switzerland Trail

The remaining mountain route, about 30 miles (48 km) long, winds between altitudes of 7,000 and over 9,000 feet, from the townsite of Eldora, Colorado, past Nederland, on north through Sugar Loaf and, ultimately, Ward.

In its heyday, near the turn of the twentieth century, the Switzerland Trail was the major source of bulk transportation in the area, carrying supplies and tourists to mining camps and towns in the front range, ore from the myriad mines to a few centralized mills, and refined metal down to Boulder for transport to the rest of the nation.

A federal ore assay office, built at the turn of the 20th century, was located near the now-sleepy community of Wall Street, Colorado, at the intersection of the Switzerland Trail route with Fourmile Canyon.

The building remains and is now something of a curiosity: the James F. Bailey Assay Office Museum, located in Wallstreet, Colorado, now a somewhat remote grouping of houses at least 20 minutes by car from the nearest town (Boulder).

The demise of the line came from a variety of factors, including: the extremely harsh winter conditions in the Rocky Mountains, which limited the tourist trade to about four months per year, forced frequent line closures, and periodically killed train crews; the invention and rise of the automobile; mine closures in Ward and Eldora; and failure of several ventures including a long tunnel/adit mine that was to be dug from Sunset into rich underground gold seams to the northwest.