The Bryant Expedition of 1883: Surveying the Black Canyon in Winter

Winter in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. NPS.

A railroad's choice

The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad was pushing its tracks from eastern Colorado over the Rockies toward Salt Lake City. At Cimarron, where a natural break opens in the cliffs of the Black Canyon, its engineers had to choose: follow the canyon down to the town of Delta, or go over Cerro Summit to Montrose. To decide, the company called on Byron Bryant to find out whether a line could be built through the middle and lower canyon, and at what cost.

Bryant had overseen the 150-mile "Uncompahgre Extension" in 1881 and 1882. In December he received a telegram asking him to explore the "Grand Canyon of the Gunnison," as it was then called, from Cimarron to Delta. He hired a crew at once; Charles Hall led the pack train.

Into the canyon

The party set out on December 12, 1883, along the north rim, while Bryant rode the train to Cimarron and worked downstream to meet them. They expected to run their survey line in 20 days.

• Every morning they climbed down 2,000 to 2,500 feet into the canyon — 2,800 feet from their camp on the Crystal River.
• In the snow, the scramble took two to three hours each way, leaving perhaps six hours of work at the river in the short winter days.
• They hopped from ice floe to ice floe, risking wounds and injury. That drove off most of the labourers: when the party moved camp to the south rim, all but three of the original surveyors, and Hall, quit.

Seeing the canyon differently

As the weeks dragged on, the small crew grew close to one another and to the canyon. The transitman, Harvey Wright, talked in his sleep, dreaming out whatever had struck his imagination. He later described the canyon's beauty: feldspar seams in the dark rock that formed an almost perfect, colossal "Goddess of Liberty", like the figure on the silver dollar, seated on a throne some two thousand feet above the river; and view after view of thrilling rock, each replaced by another still more imposing — one like a Scottish feudal castle, the next wilder and more majestic.

The answer

The crew finished the survey in March 1884. Their report told the company that taking the tracks farther down the canyon would be a terrible financial decision, and the railroad never went farther into the Black Canyon than Cimarron.

Sources

• National Park Service, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Curecanti National Recreation Area, "Bryant Expedition - 1883." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/bryant-expedition.htm
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.