A Mountain Excursion

A Mountain Excursion. . Since the opening of the railroad, pleasure tourists have poured across the trestle to Cloudcroft. Trains arrived daily at 12:00 and 4:00, blowing their steam whistle as they cross the trestle to let people know they were 15 minutes away. Greeting visitors at the depot was a daily festivity for residents of Cloudcroft, and guests enjoyed the company of locals after their breathtaking, and sometimes frightening, train ride., The climate and elevation of the Sacramento Mountains attracted people who were ailing from various maladies, including tuberculosis. In 1911, a baby sanitorium opened its doors to sick children, many of whom lived in El Paso and needed to escape the summer heat. Nicknamed the Baby San, many generous donors provided assistance to those who could not afford the expense on their own. After treating hundreds of sick children, the Baby San closed in the 1940s when the tuberculosis epidemic began to wane., With the railroad, came people searching for respite in the cool, clean air of the mountains., "It surely was a great climb, and many times I feared the little narrow gauge engine (the A&SMR was actually standard guage) would be unable to make the grade, but we finally reached Cloudcroft on the summit of the Sacramento Mountains." , Governor Otero 1899, Captions , Image courtesy of Virginia Stanbrough