Moffat Tunnel

The 6.2-mile-long Moffat Tunnel spans two counties: Gilpin County (East Portal) and Grand County (West Portal).

The Arapaho refer to the area as hooxee hookute’ (wolf’s canine).

The Moffat Tunnel was bored through a shoulder of James Peak located on the Continental Divide.

A train moving east to west through the Moffat Tunnel begins at an elevation of 9,196 feet at the East Portal, ascends a very gentle 0.3 percent grade, and 14,054 feet later, reaches the tunnel’s apex at 9,238 feet above sea level. Descending the remaining 18,746 feet toward the West Portal, two different grades are encountered (0.9 percent and 0.8 percent) toward the portal’s elevation of 9,098 feet.

The construction of the Moffat Tunnel was, “remarkably accurate” penned McMechen, “To guard against possible error due to refraction of the sun’s rays, the projected line into the tunnel was checked repeatedly against the surface line, under the direction of Betts, office engineer in charge of surveys. For night work powerful lights, permanently located at each portal, were used as sights, and long and short sights were taken. The engineers would leave the portal camps during the afternoon and make the steep ascent in time to arrive at the summit before dark. Conditions were best on cool nights. Permanent targets also were erected on either side of the broad summit, and from these positions sights were taken on the target lights far below in the valleys. Many a wild night above timberland was thus spent in checking and rechecking alignment. A small shelter house at an elevation of twelve thousand feet formed their only protection from the elements, and, on one occasion, a party escape freezing by sitting before a wood fire all night, while a polar blizzard tugged at the frail cabin, and the mercury fell to forty degrees below zero.”

Alignment devices, such as Transit and Sunflower were used to not only keep the alignment straight but also to measure cross sections of the tunnel. Very, very few photographs exist, and Preserve Rollins Pass has only seen a handful of photographs of this equipment; all of which are in our collection.

The contractor for the construction of the Moffat Tunnel was Hitchcock & Tinkler.

The Moffat Tunnel opened to rail traffic on Sunday, February 26, 1928—a day so momentous that newspapers across Colorado proclaimed the headline, “Dave Moffat, Here is Your Dream Come True!”

The 50th Anniversary of the Moffat Tunnel was Sunday, February 26, 1978.

The 100th Anniversary of the Moffat Tunnel will be Saturday, February 26, 2028.

In short, the Moffat Tunnel was an extraordinarily expensive undertaking; to change the ‘7’ on each portal to an ‘8’ would have been an additional $80 in an unnecessary expenses. The targeted year for opening the Moffat Tunnel was 1927, and while the tunnel was holed through in February of 1927, enlargement operations continued through much of that year, pushing the opening to 1928.

The answer depends on which bore and which milestone, as “holing-through” occurred in stages:

• Saturday, February 12, 1927 — The pioneer bore was first holed through with a three-inch drill, establishing contact between East and West Portal.
• Friday, February 18, 1927 — President Calvin Coolidge, from Washington, ceremonially blasted the final rock of the pioneer bore by touching a golden telegraph key, symbolically completing the connection.
• Friday, July 8, 1927 — The main railroad bore was holed through “shortly before” 2 p.m. near Crosscut No. 9. This connected the two sides in full, though months of enlargement and finishing work still remained before the tunnel was usable for rail traffic.
• Saturday, December 10, 1927 — The final charges of dynamite were fired in the railroad tunnel, opening it to full size. Still remaining: concreting, equipment removal, and laying track.
• Tuesday, February 7, 1928 — Standard-gauge track through the Moffat Tunnel was officially completed, just under three weeks before opening day. Work could not begin until the week of January 15, when crews first removed the temporary narrow-gauge rails that had carried muck cars and other construction equipment.

The Moffat Tunnel opened for rail traffic in 1928 and has seen continuous use since that date. The Moffat Tunnel was also crucial to helping win World War II as more than 30 defense trains hurried through the tunnel daily.

No—this is an active rail tunnel; please do not trespass on railroad property.

No. However, of interesting note is the 1922 law authorizing the Moffat Tunnel “specifi[ed] that the bore should be used by cars as well as trains.” Several Steamboat Pilot articles mention the plan was to ferry cars through the tunnel “on electric-powered railroad flatcars” and then collect a “toll charge.” If such a plan were enacted, it would slash approximately 28 miles and nearly 4,000 feet of total elevation from the present route up, over, and down Berthoud Pass.

Railcars that have two layers of intermodal containers cannot be sent through the Moffat Tunnel.

40 MPH.

The creation of the 6.2-mile-long Moffat Tunnel through the Continental Divide was a monumental undertaking; 400 tons of drill steel were used for the 700 miles of drill holes made through the heart of James Peak. Dynamite—1,250 tons of it—loosened 750,000 cubic yards of rock for excavation, the equivalent of 1,600 freight trains, each 40 cars long.

The East Portal company town had a 24-hour mess hall serving high-quality food, a six-bed hospital with an operating room and x-ray machine, a movie theater (admission was 35¢), women’s bridge clubs, a post office, and a school. The whole operation was dry—the Moffat Tunnel was built entirely during Prohibition—and the town of East Portal is one of the few communities in early Gilpin County without a saloon.

At East Portal, the most specialized buildings such as the compressor house, machine shop, and powder magazine, all located closest to the tunnel entrance toward the south, were demolished first. The most adaptable buildings continued to be used through the early 2000s as housing for workers who helped maintain the Moffat Tunnel. This solves the mystery for those trying to reconcile the buildings’ historic use and yet see a sizable, aged satellite dish outside of the cottages.

Building 1577 (Master Mechanic’s home), closest to the tunnel, 1186 square feet; Building 1574 (Commissary Manager’s home), front left, 1033 square feet; Building 1573 (East Portal Paymaster’s home), front right, 1001 square feet; Building 1576 (Assistant Superintendent’s home), back left, 1113 square feet; Building 1575 (Superintendent’s home), back right, 1066 square feet. For a map of the buildings, please click here and refer to page 2 in the PDF.

Yes; the five remaining cabins at East Portal were listed in 2020 as one of Colorado’s Most Endangered Places by Colorado Preservation Inc. While Mother Nature and Father Time exert tremendous forces on the outside of these structures, heartbreaking vandalism seeks to shatter these buildings from within. The West Portal held 200 more workers, yet none of the historic structures remain. To view the 2020 Endangered Places Program announcement, tap here.

Yes, there is a time capsule in the façade of the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel. The original time capsule was placed in a 50-year vault and was opened Saturday, February 25, 1978. A second vault holding a time capsule is scheduled to be opened on Saturday, February 26, 2028—the 100^th anniversary of the first official train through the tunnel. This capsule contains newspapers, photos, tickets, and booklets from the 50^th anniversary.
 
Preserve Rollins Pass has the original receipt book from the first train passage through the Moffat Tunnel—a rare gem that should absolutely be showcased at the 100^th anniversary celebration!
 
The plaque on the East Portal says the current time capsule is the “Property of the Moffat Tunnel Commission and the Intermountain Chapter National Railway Historical Society.” The Moffat Tunnel Commission was dissolved February 1, 1998; the Colorado Department of Local Affairs is the custodian of and has administrative authority over the Moffat Tunnel Improvement District, which owns the rail tunnel known as the Moffat Tunnel. (The pioneer bore—located 75 feet to the south of and parallel to the rail tunnel—was later converted into The Moffat Water Tunnel and sold to the Denver Water Board in 1998.)

Yes! The Gilpin County Board of County Commissioners approved the East Portal Camp Cabins at the Moffat Tunnel to be a Gilpin County Local Historic Landmark (Designation LM-23-1) on June 13, 2023, by a vote of 3-0. Learn more here.

At its deepest point beneath the surface, the Moffat Tunnel lies directly below the Continental Divide, where the surface elevation reaches approximately 12,039 feet. With the tunnel’s highest point—or apex—at 9,238 feet, this places the bore more than 2,800 feet beneath the summit. To put that in perspective, that’s almost the equivalent of stacking two Empire State Buildings, including their antennae, end to end. This extraordinary depth wasn’t just a product of geography—it was a deliberate choice to bypass avalanche-prone slopes, wind-lashed ridgelines, and the snow-blocked wagon and rail routes that had plagued efforts to cross this section of the Rockies for decades. The tunnel’s construction cut deep into the Earth’s crust, securing a year-round transportation corridor beneath one of the harshest alpine environments in Colorado.

To understand the magnitude of that depth, consider the footprint of a single standard railcar—about 50 feet long and 10 feet wide. The rock column directly above that one car contains roughly 1.4 million cubic feet of stone, weighing over 115,000 tons. That’s the equivalent of more than 50,000 mid-size SUVs stacked vertically on top of a single railcar. This staggering overburden underscores the precision and foresight required to safely bore a passage through one of the most geologically demanding stretches of the Colorado Rockies.

Please review our Moffat Tunnel Deaths page for additional information.

The Water Tunnel and Main Heading each measured 9 feet wide by 8 feet high, with their centerlines spaced 75 feet apart. The completed railroad tunnel, by comparison, is 16 feet wide and 24 feet tall at its highest point, measured to the top of the arched interior.

(Seal of Colorado)
MOFFAT TUNNEL
THE MOFFAT TUNNEL IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT
—
Created by extraordinary session of the Colorado Legislature 1922, to construct the Moffat Tunnel
Act signed by Governor Oliver H. Shoup
May 12, 1922, Commission members appointed May 22, 1922.

Division No. 1
W.P. ROBINSON
C. MacA. WILLCOX
W. N.W. BLAYNEY

Division No. 2
CHAS. H. LECKENBY
CHAS. J. WHEELER
—
This commission elected in July 1923, re-elected in July 1925, and appointed by Governor William H. Adams in 1927, in accordance with amendment by the 26th Colorado General Assembly making the commission appointive by governor.

(Seal of Colorado)
MOFFAT TUNNEL
Visioned by David H. Moffat
Constructed by Moffat Tunnel Commission

—
W.P. ROBINSON, President
CHAS. J. WHEELER, Vice Pres.
C. MacA WILLCOX, Vice Pres.
W. N.W. BLAYNEY, Treasurer
CHAS. H. LECKENBY, Secretary
GEORGE LEWIS, Chief Eng. & Gen. Manager
CLIFFORD A. BETTS, Office Engineer
BURGIS G. COY, Resident Engineer
NORTON MONTGOMERY, Gen. Counsel
ERSKINE R. MYER, Attorney
NELLIE H. VanDEUSEN, Auditor


Board of Consulting Engineers
D.W. BRUNTON
J. WALDO SMITH
J. VIPOND DAVIES
L.D. BLAUVELT


HITCHCOCK & TINKLER, INC.
Contractors
F.C. HITCHCOCK, President
C.C. TINKLER, Vice President
A.H. BAER, Secretary-Treasurer
—
COMMENDATION
To all members of the organization whose concerted efforts have brought this mighty work to completion.

No. There is no documentary or physical evidence that a locomotive was ever buried near the East Portal. Contemporary records from the tunnel’s construction—when Hitchcock & Tinkler, Inc. held the contract—describe spoil disposal, camp infrastructure, and equipment inventories, but make no mention of any locomotive loss or entombment. Steam locomotives were enormously valuable in the 1920s. Burying one would have been prohibitively costly, both in labor and lost material value. Even on nearby Rollins Pass, most equipment and hardware were later removed or salvaged rather than abandoned in place.

Original 1927 construction drawings for the Moffat Tunnel explicitly label the northern fan installation as the “Clarage Fan Room” and “Clarage Fan Duct,” while the companion fan on the opposite side is attributed to American Blower. These references are embedded directly into the engineering blueprints prepared during the tunnel’s final year of construction, making them primary evidence for the original mechanical configuration.

Occasional newspapers or informal sources use the longer terms “Western Portal” and “Eastern Portal,” but these simply refer to the places historically known as West Portal and East Portal. All authoritative engineering, railroad, and federal documents use the shorter forms. The longer versions do not denote different locations—they are informal variants for the same two ends of the Moffat Tunnel.

The tunnel commission executed its agreement with contractors Hitchcock & Tinkler on Wednesday, September 19, 1923, establishing Tuesday, July 19, 1927 as the contractual deadline for completing the work. That fixed window—just under four years—sets the benchmark against which every subsequent delay, acceleration, and engineering challenge must be measured, sharpening our understanding of how ambitious the project’s initial timetable truly was.

No. The Moffat Tunnel has no vertical openings to the surface anywhere along its 6.2-mile length. The railroad bore is a single continuous tube with a maximum overburden of just over 2,000 feet beneath James Peak, which made any mid-tunnel ventilation shaft technically unrealistic and financially out of reach in the 1920s. All ventilation has always been managed from the portals, with the East Portal’s ventilation plant providing forced airflow. Some interior videos show dark vertical recesses in the upper arch that resemble chimneys, but these are simply crown overbreak pockets—small cavities created when blasting fractured rock beyond the intended excavation profile during construction. They are shallow, fully enclosed within the tunnel lining, and do not connect to the surface.

During Prohibition, public-works ceremonies generally substituted nonalcoholic beverages for the traditional champagne. A clear example comes from 1925, when the one-mile Glendale subway in Los Angeles was completed: the christening committee used ginger ale, preserving the ceremonial gesture while staying within the law. The Moffat Tunnel project unfolded under the same federal restrictions, so any formal christening would likewise have required a nonalcoholic stand-in rather than the customary bottle of champagne.

Construction of the Moffat Tunnel required 25 million labor-hours in total.