The Place Where She Only Sleeps

 Location: MP 1566.8

Grant-Kohrs Ranch

Not far from Deer Lodge, headed west on the transcon we arrive here, at Grant-Kohrs Ranch where the Resourceful Railroad only sleeps.  Instead of empty right of way and scattered gravel, steel rail still binds the land in this place that is unlike the many other hundreds of miles along Lines West.  Across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, on federal Park lands, the railroad only seems to rest and slumber while waiting for a new time to come. 

Against the backdrop of Montana clouds that hold no rain, the catenary poles can still be found here standing against the endless skies.  The lineside poles that mark an era of railroading now gone still hold to the right of way.  It is not hard to imagine them whipping by outside the windows of an Olympian under the electrified power of a Quill or Joe.  Perhaps an XL Special could easily whisk across the scene above as though decades had never passed.

Things don't seem so forgotten or beyond hope in a place like this.  Where the scrappers dared not tread across these National Park Service lands, this little bit of remnant holds for those who seek it. 

This escape from reality does not last.  Too soon the trip of a fanciful imagination that considers what was or what could be comes to an abrupt end along with the  rails. Only empty roadbed extends beyond as the catenary memory comes to a halt and the gray skies loom large ahead.  Mountains mark the horizon line to greet the wanderer who looks out beyond the preserved relic, and from sleep to buried it returns.

Comments

SDP45 said…
I've heard of this place. I'd like to go see it, almost like a pilgrimage to the Milwaukee.

Dan
11/02/2023 09:19:00 PM
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