Manitou Springs, Colorado
AA-2026-3C3660
On the image
Every family vacation to the Rockies in the 1950s required at least one photograph of the children perched on something historic and stationary, and the retired cog engine at Manitou Springs was built for exactly this purpose. The lettering still reads Manitou & Pike's Peak R'y, a proud reminder that the little locomotive once hauled tourists up a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain, before its retirement to a stone wall where it now hauls nothing but small children into obedient poses.
The girl grips the handrail with the seriousness of an engineer about to depart, while the boy beside her sits with the resigned patience of someone who has been told to smile for one more picture. Neither of them looks at the number 1 painted twice on the boiler, doubling down on an importance the machine no longer has. It has become furniture with a good story, which is the fate of most retired engines and most family vacations alike.
Behind them the mortared stone wall and the pale building above suggest a roadside stop built for exactly this kind of loitering, the sort of attraction where you paid nothing to climb aboard and left with a photograph that outlasted the trip itself.
The historian's note
The Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway, opened in the 1890s near Manitou Springs, Colorado, was the highest cog railway in the United States, carrying passengers to the summit of Pike's Peak. Early motive units from the line were periodically retired and displayed as static exhibits along the route and in the surrounding town, becoming informal tourist landmarks decades before official museums took up the task.
By the 1950s, postwar automobile tourism had made Colorado's mountain routes a standard stop on cross-country family trips, and roadside displays such as this one served as free, photogenic attractions for travelers along U.S. highways feeding into the Pikes Peak region. Static locomotives like this one functioned less as transportation history than as informal photo backdrops for visiting families.
The engine's identity as a Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway unit is confirmed by the lettering visible on its boiler, situating the scene definitively within the railway's historic footprint near Manitou Springs, Colorado.
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Kids on the Manitou & Pike's Peak Railway Engine, Colorado, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-3C3660. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/kids-on-the-manitou-pike-s-peak-railway-engine-colorado-1950s.
@misc{aaAA20263C3660,
title = {Kids on the Manitou \& Pike's Peak Railway Engine, Colorado, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-3C3660},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/kids-on-the-manitou-pike-s-peak-railway-engine-colorado-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Kids on the Manitou & Pike's Peak Railway Engine, Colorado, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-3C3660 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/kids-on-the-manitou-pike-s-peak-railway-engine-colorado-1950s ER -
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