Wynkoop Street RR Bridge

Wynkoop Street RR Bridge. Denver's first settlement was along the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. Arapahoe Indians named Cherry Creek for the wild chokecherries they harvested here in the fall. They respected the stream's power and warned the first town builder's against building on its banks. Disregarding Native American wisdom, gold-seekers and pioneers poured into the area, quickly followed by railroads to supply the burgeoning community. The first railroad was the Denver Pacific, later part of the Union Pacific Railroad system. The Union Depot was completed in 1881, and by the mid-1880's, a veritable smorgasbord of railroad acronyms had come into being: the Denver and Rio Grande (D&RG), the Denver, South Park, Pacific and the Denver and New Orleans (DSP&P and D&NO) - later called the Colorado and Southern (C&S) - the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (AT&SF) and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (CB&Q), which today is the Burlington Northern (BN). Cherry Creek has been traversed by seven railroad bridges since 1887. Five of the seven still stand. Bridges built before the flood of 1878 were simple wood pile trestles, but after the 1885 flood, these were gradually replaced with iron and steel truss construction. Four of the bridges were single track, two double-track and one four-track. The Wynkoop Street Bridge was used by the Denver and Rio Grande as a mainline track to supply the industries and warehouses along Wynkoop Street. This steel version was constructed in 1908 and remains a lonely reminder of a once frenetic past, which has seen neither traffic or trains for many years.