Urubamba Valley, Peru
AA-2026-4CE045
On the image
Somewhere between Cusco and Machu Picchu, a dozen tourists have decided that the safest place to stand in a narrow Andean gorge is directly on the railway line, on the sound theory that trains announce themselves well in advance and mountains do not. The rock cuts on both sides leave nowhere else to walk, which was less an oversight than the whole design of foreign travel here in this decade: you went where the rails went, and the scenery was the compensation for the danger.
Everyone is dressed for a business trip rather than a hike, cardigans and slacks and one good jacket per person, because a 1960s tourist to South America still traveled as though appearing before customs officials at every turn. Two men have climbed a boulder off to the side for a better vantage, the universal instinct of anyone handed a camera near a cliff. The group clusters and waits with the patience of people who have been told the train comes 'sometime,' which in this era of Peruvian rail travel was less a schedule than a rumor.
A line of raw stone cliff falls away on the right, terraced slopes climb on the left, and somewhere ahead the valley opens toward the ruins everyone came to see. None of them look worried. That was the era's arrangement with risk: you accepted it quietly, in good shoes, and photographed the view instead of the danger.
The historian's note
The rail line through the Urubamba Valley connecting Cusco to the Machu Picchu access point was completed in stages during the early twentieth century and became the principal means of reaching the ruins after Hiram Bingham's 1911 expedition brought the site to international attention. By the 1960s the route was operated by Peru's state railway and had become the standard corridor for a growing wave of foreign visitors drawn by postwar interest in Inca archaeology.
Walking along or beside the tracks was a common practice for passengers and local travelers alike, since the narrow gorge left little alternative right-of-way and rail traffic on the single line was infrequent enough to make the tracks a de facto footpath. The steep, terraced valley walls visible here are characteristic of the pre-Columbian agricultural terracing that survives throughout the region.
Tourism to Machu Picchu expanded substantially through the 1960s as international air travel made Peru more accessible, transforming what had been an expedition destination into an established stop on regional itineraries.
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Tourists on the Tracks, Urubamba Valley Railway, Peru, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-4CE045. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/tourists-on-the-tracks-urubamba-valley-railway-peru-1960s.
@misc{aaAA20264CE045,
title = {Tourists on the Tracks, Urubamba Valley Railway, Peru, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-4CE045},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/tourists-on-the-tracks-urubamba-valley-railway-peru-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Tourists on the Tracks, Urubamba Valley Railway, Peru, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-4CE045 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/tourists-on-the-tracks-urubamba-valley-railway-peru-1960s ER -
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