In 1988 Willy Nelson made a movie for television called, “Where the Hell’s That Gold.” The movie was of little notice and it has quietly dropped out of sight. A railroad scene, which included an explosion, was included in the film and during the filming said explosion caused a fire which destroyed a trestle on the Cumbres and Toltec.
Local legend can be related to the experience many have had with a child’s game, "telephone", in which children stand in a circle and a person whispers something in the ear of the person next to them. The story is whispered from person to person and the person at the end of the line then tells it out loud. It is always good for a laugh when a simple story at the beginning becomes something unrecognizable at the end. Local legends work like that. They have a basis in fact but the story is changed over time until it has another meaning which may, or may not, have a basis in truth.
 |
| Ferguson Trestle |
Lacking a place to hang the miscreant the mob or at least we assume it was a mob – that is also how a local legend works, decided to hang him from the nearest high object which happened in this case to be a railroad trestle. At this point you have visions of a timber lattice work hundreds of feet long and nearly as high – the power of local legend – but, such was not the case in this instance. The trestle of note was bridge 285.8 on the San Juan Extension of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad – a picture is attached. This trestle is 85 feet long and about 45 feet high; high enough to swing the rascal from the end of a rope. The problem was the location of the bridge some 5 miles west of Antonito. Clearly the fastest way there was rail, not horseback.
So the throng – the story keeps on getting better – stormed the D&RG engine house and absconded with a locomotive. With the dastardly Ferguson bound and a rope in hand the locomotive tore west, at all of 10 mph, to the final destination for the evil cur; and so he died by hanging from the bridge. So says the local legend.
As the story was told and re-told bridge 285.8 changed names to forever remember the execution of that dastardly villain “Ferguson” and with time it became known by yet another name in honor of the method of his execution.
Ferguson Trestle - Bridge 285.8 - was constructed in 1880 and 108 years later a thoughtless act, an explosion, by a motion picture crew occurred near the structure. The ensuing fire totally consumed the structure and resulted in the closing of the railroad. A temporary culvert and fill took the place of the original trestle and over the next year the trestle was reconstructed as an identical copy of the original.
In 2012 the Rio Grande San Juan Extension was declared a National Historical Landmark. In the analysis all the historic objects were included in the declaration. Now the entire 65 mile route is part of that landmark but the stuff of local legend – Bridge 285.8 ~ Ferguson’s Trestle – is not included in that designation.
The Trestle, for all its notoriety, is in fact a copy and not an original structure. Landmark designation specifically excludes copies and so it is that the bridge now fondly referred to as “Hangman’s Trestle” will never be a historical landmark. And that is how local legend's work.
