Moffat Tunnel Centennial Commission
Moffat Tunnel Centennial Commission: The Road to 100 Years Starts Here
Legislative updates will be shared here as the proposal advances.
This page is a working public-information resource for the proposed Moffat Tunnel Centennial Commission. Details may change as the draft legislation is refined, reviewed, sponsored, amended, or formally introduced before the Colorado General Assembly. As new information becomes available, including bill language, sponsors, hearing dates, committee activity, fiscal notes, and public-comment opportunities, updates will be posted here.
As Colorado approaches the 100th anniversary of the Moffat Tunnel’s opening on Saturday, February 26, 2028, a proposed Moffat Tunnel Centennial Commission Act would create a temporary, revenue-neutral commission to help coordinate, document, and elevate the centennial of one of Colorado’s defining engineering achievements.
The Moffat Tunnel was not simply a railroad improvement. It was a statewide undertaking shaped by geography, finance, engineering, water, labor, risk, and political will. When it opened to railroad traffic on February 26, 1928, the 6.2-mile tunnel through the Continental Divide reshaped transportation across Colorado, shortened a punishing mountain crossing, and created a combined railroad and water-tunnel system that drew national attention for its scale, difficulty, and innovation. Contemporary engineering accounts described the tunnel as the longest railroad tunnel in the Americas at the time of construction and documented the extraordinary quantities required to complete it: roughly 750,000 cubic yards of excavation, 16 million board feet of timber, 2.5 million pounds of dynamite, 700 miles of drill holes, 28 million kilowatt-hours of electrical energy, and 25 million man-hours.
The centennial offers Colorado a rare opportunity to tell this story with the seriousness it deserves. A commission would provide a public framework for that work, helping ensure that the anniversary is not reduced to a single commemorative date, but instead becomes a coordinated effort to honor the people, places, records, engineering, communities, and consequences connected to the tunnel’s creation.
PURPOSE OF THE PROPOSED COMMISSION
The proposed Moffat Tunnel Centennial Commission would serve as a temporary coordinating body for the 2028 centennial. Its purpose would be educational, commemorative, and documentary: to support public understanding of the tunnel’s history, encourage collaboration among communities and institutions, and help preserve the stories and records that explain why the tunnel still matters.
The commission would be designed to bring together historical, geographic, engineering, governmental, and community expertise from across the tunnel corridor. That structure matters because the Moffat Tunnel was never the work of a single town, industry, or institution. It connected Denver and the Front Range with Middle Park, northwestern Colorado, and the broader railroad and water infrastructure of the state.
WHAT THE COMMISSION WOULD DO
The proposed commission would help coordinate centennial-related research, interpretation, events, educational materials, public programs, and partnerships. Its work could include encouraging exhibits, lectures, publications, archival projects, oral-history efforts, engineering interpretation, historic-site documentation, and community events tied to the 2028 centennial.
The proposed commission is intended to be revenue-neutral, with centennial activities supported through gifts, grants, donations, or other non-state funds rather than a required state appropriation. That structure is important: it recognizes the public value of the centennial while respecting the fiscal constraints facing Colorado.
WHY THIS BELONGS BEFORE THE COLORADO GENERAL ASSEMBLY
This proposal belongs before the Colorado General Assembly because the Moffat Tunnel centennial involves more than commemoration. The tunnel is state-owned/state-controlled infrastructure with deep connections to Colorado’s rail, engineering, and public-history legacy, so a centennial effort involving East Portal, the tunnel corridor, time capsules, public programming, or official recognition deserves a clear public framework. A legislatively recognized commission would help coordinate partners, guide private support without requiring a state appropriation, align centennial planning with the tunnel’s public ownership, and ensure Colorado marks the 100th anniversary with dignity, transparency, and historical care.
PROPOSED CENTENNIAL EXPERIENCES
The proposed Moffat Tunnel Centennial Commission would help coordinate signature experiences leading up to 2028 that are worthy of the tunnel’s scale, mystery, cost, and consequence. This was not just a bore through a mountain. It was a passage carved beneath the Continental Divide by surveyors, engineers, miners, muckers, electricians, cooks, clerks, families, financiers, and communities that placed their faith in a future on the far side of granite, water, darkness, and risk.
Among the experiences under consideration is the return of The White Desert, the 1925 silent film tied to the snowbound drama of railroading over Rollins Pass and the Moffat Tunnel era. With live piano accompaniment by Hank Troy, a centennial screening could become more than a film showing; it could be a doorway back into the 1920s, where flickering images, mountain weather, railroading peril, and live music bring audiences closer to the world that made the tunnel necessary.
Other concepts under discussion include a historically inspired black-tie centennial dance, paired with broader public programming so the commemoration remains both elegant and accessible, exhibits of rare photographs and tunnel-era artifacts, interpretive programs on both sides of the Continental Divide, community events along the corridor, and the opening of the East Portal time capsule, along with the placement of a new centennial capsule.
The commission could also help support one of the centennial’s most important acts of remembrance: a formal reading of the names of the men who perished during construction. Their labor made the tunnel possible, and their deaths remind us that Colorado’s great engineering achievements were not abstractions of steel, timber, and stone. They were human undertakings, paid for in time, injury, grief, courage, and sacrifice. Reading their names aloud would return individuality to a story too often told only in miles, tons, dollars, and dates. After all, no plaque or cenotaph currently exists to honor these men.
Together, these experiences would give the centennial texture, humanity, and profound consequence. They would invite Coloradans to step beyond the familiar headline of “a tunnel through the Divide” and encounter the larger story waiting beneath the surface: the silent film, the ballroom, the time capsule, the portals, the workers, the families, the mountain, and the names that should not be allowed to disappear into the dark.
A TEMPORARY COMMISSION WITH A DEFINED END DATE
The proposed legislation would create a temporary body, not a permanent bureaucracy. Under the draft concept, the commission would complete its work and dissolve automatically by December 31, 2028, with a final report due before that time. That sunset structure keeps the effort focused on the centennial itself, while creating a public record of what was accomplished and what future stewardship may still require.
PROPOSED MEMBERS OF THE MOFFAT TUNNEL CENTENNIAL COMMISSION
The draft Moffat Tunnel Centennial Commission Act includes an initial slate of proposed founding members intended to bring historical knowledge, corridor familiarity, community credibility, and long-term public-history commitment to Colorado’s 2028 centennial effort. The proposed slate remains subject to legislative review and refinement, with the goal of balancing continuity, expertise, corridor knowledge, and public accountability:
LEGISLATIVE STATUS
The proposed Moffat Tunnel Centennial Commission Act is expected to be brought before Colorado lawmakers during the 2026 legislative interim this fall. That interim period provides an opportunity for discussion, refinement, sponsorship, and review before any formal bill introduction in a regular legislative session.
This page will be updated as the proposal advances, including any bill number, sponsors, hearing dates, committee activity, amendments, fiscal notes, and opportunities for public comment.
WHY THIS MATTERS TO COLORADO
A century after the Moffat Tunnel opened, Colorado has an opportunity to do more than celebrate an engineering landmark. The centennial can help reconnect the public with the workers who built it, the communities shaped by it, the landscapes altered by it, and the records that still deserve careful preservation.
Without a coordinated framework, the centennial risks becoming scattered across disconnected programs and fleeting social-media posts. With a commission, Colorado can approach 2028 with discipline, transparency, and shared purpose, ensuring that the Moffat Tunnel’s story is preserved not as nostalgia, but as a lasting part of the state’s civic memory.
Track the centennial of the construction and opening of the Moffat Tunnel!
A five-year public history project tracing the construction, opening, and long-buried stories of the Moffat Tunnel. Along the way, we’ll follow the survey lines, the money, the floods, and the fires, while uncovering accounts of murder, heroism, family ties, and the grit of daily life in the West Portal and East Portal tunnel camps, where one of Colorado’s great engineering achievements was built from thousands of human moments.
Five years. One remarkable story.
Our five-year story started in the summer of 2023 exclusively on this Facebook page for our social media followers and expanded on our Great Gates Blog for a broader audience. It will culminate on February 26, 2028, marking the centennial of the Moffat Tunnel’s opening ceremony. We’ll revisit original reports, unveil never-before-seen imagery, video, and artifacts, along with stories and perhaps some special guests along the way as well.
The primary purpose of our work is to inform the public.
