Seventy-one percent complete and months ahead of schedule, October 1925 tested how far determination could outrun terrain.
Moffat Tunnel Construction Happenings from 100 Years Ago
Exactly one hundred years ago this month, the Moffat Tunnel continued moving from vision to inevitability. By October 1925, engineers projected completion “four to six months ahead of time stipulated in the contract,” placing the finish line ambitiously close: December 1926. Newspapers began treating the tunnel less as an experiment and more as destiny.
“The record-breaking progress being made on the construction of the Moffat Tunnel and the certainty that it will be completed by December of next year,” reported the Routt County Sentinel, “is already causing an influx of new capital into Routt County, all Northwestern Colorado, and the Uintah Basin in Utah.” “There is no predicting the progress and growth that may ensue with the opening up of the Moffat Tunnel,” the paper continued. “Side by side with the revival of mining, which is really taking place, is coming a development of agriculture and industry.” Investors, farmers, and speculators saw the bore under the Continental Divide as the key to opening an isolated region. Steamboat Springs, the paper predicted, would soon host creameries, canneries, sawmills, smelters, and even a potato-chip factory—because, it insisted, “the best potatoes on earth grow here.” The optimism was bold, but the reasoning was practical: transportation had always been the barrier, and the tunnel was about to remove it.
Underground, progress matched the headlines. By late October, seventy-one percent of the total work was complete—seventy-three percent for crosscuts, forty-two percent for the full-size railroad bore. The east heading had reached 13,062 feet, directly beneath the Continental Divide near Rollins Pass; the west had advanced 9,954 feet. Crews had broken all known world records for tunnel driving, until the mountain reminded them who set the terms. Roughly 10,300 feet from the West Portal, officials announced that the softest rock yet encountered had been struck, while at the east end a flow of eighty gallons of water a minute slowed drilling. Both setbacks tested patience and slowed the pace, but neither stopped it.
Then weather joined the contest. On the 25th, a blizzard snapped the Public Service Company’s power line over the Divide, silencing compressors and lights until repairs were finished the next day. The line, fed from the Boulder Canyon hydraulic plant, had carried power over the mountains to West Portal; its loss underscored how fragile the link between progress and interruption could be. Yet even isolation had its antidotes. Each afternoon, the off-shift crews at West Portal crowded into the recreation hall, drawn by the crackle of KOA Radio carrying the World Series across the mountains. “This group, isolated on four sides by almost impenetrable mountain barriers, is believed to be the largest single assemblage of [nearly 500] radio-baseball fans [following] the Pittsburgh-Washington struggle for baseball supremacy over the Rocky Mountain broadcasting station.” Specially built electric scoreboards flashed every strike and run as loudspeakers relayed play-by-play reports from Pittsburgh and Washington. The setup—built with help from KOA and the Denver Express—allowed the miners to follow every inning in real time. For a workforce hemmed in by increasing snow and diminishing granite, the daily broadcast was more than just entertainment; it was proof that the world beyond the Divide still reached them.
Commerce and daily life were also taking shape around the project. W. H. Wood advertised timber, mining props, and ties for delivery to Idaho Springs or upper Clear Creek, noting his “good location for wood” at West Portal—an early sign that local suppliers were strategically positioned near the construction camps. And amid the noise of drills and the crackle of radio, life continued in quieter forms: James Hayward of West Portal and Margaret David of Denver filed for their marriage license in early October, bridging the distance between the mountain’s workforce and the city that would soon benefit from their labor.
Technical progress coincided with administrative cleanup. Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work finally approved the tunnel commission’s right-of-way filings—more than two years after digging began. The delay stemmed from a clerical error in 1923: one application had been filed for both the railroad and water bores, when federal law required separate submissions. With the corrected filings approved, attention turned to the project’s lingering legal gaps. The commission still lacked title to water rights west of the bore, meaning, as one official noted, “there will be no water to run through the water tunnel when it is completed.” Litigation over those rights—covering the Fraser River and its tributaries—continued in U.S. District Court. Both rights-of-way followed nearly the same six-mile course through Grand County, underscoring how closely rail and water ambitions were intertwined.
Meanwhile, engineers from across the country gathered in Denver for their semi-annual conference with the tunnel commission. J. Vipond Davies and J. Waldo Smith of New York joined D. W. Brunton and L. D. Blauvelt of Denver to review progress, assess geology, and verify cost projections. Their findings affirmed that, despite soft rock and water seepage, the tunnel remained on track for early completion.
The legal framework itself was also clarified that month. “It is set forth in the law under which the tunnel is being constructed,” officials reminded the press, “that the tunnel commission may not grant exclusive rights to use the tunnel or its approaches to any person or corporation, either public or private.” As of October 15, the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad—the Moffat Road—remained the only bidder to operate through the bore, while the City of Denver had filed its own application to carry water through the pilot or pioneer tunnel. The commission emphasized its financial model: “It is the plan to rent the tunnels at a rate sufficient to pay for the interest and retirement of the tunnel bonds…. Rental of the tunnels for an amount sufficient to retire and pay the interest on the bonds will mean that the cost of the tunnel will not fall back on property owners in the tunnel district.”
Denver’s water board, already planning ahead, calculated that diverting 100,000 acre-feet of western-slope water through the pilot bore would require an initial outlay of $2,335,000 just to deliver the water to the West Portal—figures that gave scale to the city’s long-term transmountain ambitions. At the same time, the Oak Creek Times pointed out that once completed, the tunnel would eliminate the “excess grades by way of Corona,” allowing regional coal to move east at competitive cost. For the coal miners of Routt County, that was more than progress; it was survival.
Historian Marshall Sprague once observed that mountain passes act as “Great Gates,” funneling humans and animals across the relatively lower crossings of the Continental Divide, such as Rollins Pass. The Moffat Tunnel would break that pattern. Here, the physical landscape of this part of Colorado would no longer follow the mountain’s course—it would defy it. Water and snowmelt that once flowed toward the Pacific would be sent east toward the Atlantic watershed. Trains that once climbed the Divide would now pass through it. With the Moffat Tunnel, Colorado was beginning to rearrange nature itself—and its future.
October 1925 was a month when every discipline—engineering, finance, law, and labor—pushed forward together, sometimes awkwardly but always forward. Soft rock and snowstorms slowed the drills; legal errors and power outages interrupted momentum. Yet the work kept advancing, and belief in its purpose never wavered. Every headline—about soft rock, broken lines, or courtroom filings—was matched by the conviction that this work mattered. The mountain still dictated the tempo, but no longer the outcome; after all, Colorado was learning how to go through, not around, its obstacles.
Image Caption #1: The W.H. Wood Lumber & Supply Company was headquartered at West Portal, near the present-day entrance to Rollins Pass West.
Image Caption #2: Wet, heavy ground impeded the teams’ progress at West Portal. Several details in this photograph warrant attention: Multiple streams of water pour from the tunnel ceiling, their impact on the puddle below sending droplets upward—evidence of the steady, relentless seepage inside the bore. The worker standing in the mid-ground wears a hat, jacket, and trousers soaked through, underscoring just how saturated the working environment was.
B. Travis Wright, MPS | Preserve Rollins Pass | October 22, 2025
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