Gore Canyon – Inspiration Point

Inspiration Point is the turn-out on Trough Road (Grand County Road 1) where the road climbs onto the south rim at the western mouth of Gore Canyon. Gore Canyon itself has no road: Wikipedia describes it as "roadless and inaccessible by most traffic, except for the Union Pacific Railroad's Moffat Tunnel Subdivision and whitewater boats", and notes that part of it can be seen from Trough Road along its southern rim. This pull-off is where that view is closest.

The coordinates are those of the pull-off mapped in OpenStreetMap beside the road. From there the nearest track lies approximately 450 m (1,480 ft) to the northwest and about 174 m (570 ft) below you (USGS elevation service: 2,356 m / 7,730 ft at the pull-off, 2,183 m / 7,162 ft at the rail). A short tunnel on the line sits at the canyon mouth approximately 550 m (1,800 ft) to the north-northwest. The WaltersRail railfan blog says that from Inspiration Point one can view eastbound trains "for several miles" and that shots of westbounds exiting the canyon are "spectacular, in part because the river is hundreds of feet below"; it adds that photographs "can be taken almost without leaving your vehicle". A Trough Road overlook video (Roger Deschner) shows the eastbound California Zephyr passing through a short tunnel and entering the canyon.

This is a waiting spot, not a busy main line. Freight traffic on the Moffat line has fallen sharply with the decline of coal from northwestern Colorado, so bring patience, food and water, and watch the river below in summer for rafts leaving the canyon toward the BLM Pumphouse Recreation Site 2.3 km (1.4 mi) to the southwest. For a closer, river-level angle, the BLM Gore Canyon Trail starts at Pumphouse Launch 1 (day-use fee) and follows the south bank upriver to the canyon mouth, where its end is approximately 115 m (380 ft) from the track across the river.

Gore Canyon is a short, deep gorge cut by the Colorado River through the northern end of the Gore Range southwest of Kremmling. Wikipedia gives it as approximately 4.8 km (3 mi) long with walls rising approximately 300 m (1,000 ft) on either side, and the BLM's Upper Colorado River guide says the river drops 68 feet per mile (about 13 m per km) for three miles through it, in rock the guide describes as Precambrian gneiss, schist and granite nearly 1,800 million years old. Visit Grand County calls it a 3-mile isolated canyon with class V rapids.

Inspiration Point sits where this gorge opens out. Looking north-northwest you see the canyon mouth and the railroad clinging to the canyon side above the river; looking west and southwest the valley widens toward Pumphouse, and the track follows the river's north bank. Trough Road around the pull-off is paved for about 2 km (1.2 mi) according to OpenStreetMap, with gravel on either side; Visit Grand County describes the whole road as 24.4 miles of partly paved, hard-packed dirt with hairpin turns, climbing between 7,000 and 8,329 feet (2,134 to 2,539 m).

The land around the pull-off is administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM national surface management layer). There are no houses, shops or services here; the nearest town is Kremmling, approximately 10.6 km (6.6 mi) away in a straight line.

Gore Canyon was contested ground at the start of the 20th century. The BLM's Upper Colorado River guide recounts that two power companies and the Bureau of Reclamation wanted to dam the canyon, a project that would have covered 20,000 acres and flooded Kremmling, while David Moffat was surveying it for a railroad. From 1903 there were camps on both sides of the river at the mouth of the canyon, power plant workers on river left and railroad workers on river right, until President Theodore Roosevelt decided that a railroad would go through. In 1906 the railroad survey began by anchoring ropes and logs in the canyon to make bridges, and the BLM guide gives September 1907 as the date the railroad was completed through the canyon; the line then ended at McCoy.

The Moffat Road became the Denver & Salt Lake Railway. According to Wikipedia, it reached Steamboat Springs in the winter of 1909 and Craig in 1913. The 6.2-mile (10.0 km) Moffat Tunnel under the Continental Divide was holed through on July 7, 1927 and formally turned over to the railroad lessee on February 26, 1928 (Wikipedia), and the Dotsero Cutoff between the Moffat line and the Denver & Rio Grande Western at Dotsero, completed in 1934, finally gave Denver a direct rail line to Salt Lake City. The Denver & Salt Lake was fully absorbed into the Rio Grande in 1947; the Rio Grande was taken over by Southern Pacific in 1988, and Southern Pacific by Union Pacific in 1996.

The canyon itself is named after Sir St. George Gore, an Irish baronet who hunted big game across the region between 1855 and 1857 with Jim Bridger as one of his guides (BLM guide). The first recorded attempt to navigate the canyon by boat, by Captain Samuel Adams in 1869, ended with both boats smashed on the rocks.

Gore Canyon has no road through it, so the railroad and whitewater boats are the only ways to travel its length. Inspiration Point is the one place identified in the sources read for this record where a driver can look down on the Moffat line at the canyon mouth from a public road, without paying a fee and without hiking. The river-level alternatives nearby, the BLM Pumphouse and Radium recreation sites, are fee areas.

The height is the defining feature. At approximately 174 m (570 ft) above the rail and 450 m (1,480 ft) from it, a train reads as a small moving line against the Colorado River and the canyon walls rather than as a close-up subject. It is also where the California Zephyr can be photographed each day in a canyon that its passengers otherwise see only from the train.

The river adds a second layer of activity. The BLM guide calls the three miles through Gore Canyon the most challenging commercially rafted stretch of river in Colorado, and Visit Grand County mentions the annual Gore Fest races held in August; in summer, rafts and kayaks emerging from the canyon can share the frame with a train.