Georgetown and Silver Plume lie just two miles apart in the steep, narrow canyon of Clear Creek, west of Denver in the Rocky Mountains. But those two miles gain more than 600 feet in elevation, far too steep for any locomotive of the 1880s. Union Pacific engineer Jacob B. Blickensderfer devised a solution: a corkscrew route that traveled nearly four miles to connect them, reducing the average grade to 3 percent. His plan required three hairpin turns, four bridges across Clear Creek, and a 30-degree horseshoe curve. The crowning achievement was Devil's Gate High Bridge, resting on four iron towers ranging from 33 to 78 feet tall, with sixteen granite piers at the base. The bridge stretched 300 feet across the valley, its iron girders reaching 95.6 feet above the creek below.

The Georgetown, Breckenridge and Leadville Railway was incorporated in 1881 with grand ambitions. The silver boom of the 1880s promised fortunes to anyone who could haul ore from the mines efficiently. But after all that expense and engineering, the line only extended four miles past Silver Plume, halting at Bakerville. The Union Pacific had found an easier route into Leadville through South Park. The Loop portion, completed in 1884, was the crowning segment of a truncated dream. In 1893, the Colorado and Southern Railway took over operations, running passengers and freight until 1938. Between 1906 and 1918, tourists could transfer to the Argentine Central Railway at Silver Plume and continue to the summit of Mount McClellan, but that connection too eventually closed.

What saved the Georgetown Loop from obscurity was photographer William Henry Jackson. His images of the completed loop, taken in March 1884, became among the most famous postcard views of Colorado. The Loop's construction coincided with a growing craze for railroad excursions, and tourists who might never visit a silver mine gladly paid to experience the engineering marvel itself. The narrow gauge steam engines climbed through horseshoe curves while passengers gasped at the drop below. When the Colorado and Southern closed the line in 1939, the high bridge was dismantled and sold for scrap iron. For four decades, the Loop existed only in photographs and memory.

In 1959, the centennial year of the discovery of gold in Georgetown, the Colorado Historical Society began preserving the site. Interest in restoration gained momentum through the 1970s. The Union Pacific donated track and ties, and construction along the old grade began in 1973. In 1982, the Boettcher Foundation contributed $1 million to reconstruct the high bridge. Workers built it to the same specifications as the original, with modifications for heavier modern engines and safety standards. On June 1, 1984, exactly one century after the original construction, Governor Richard D. Lamm dedicated the new Devil's Gate High Bridge. The Georgetown Loop was whole again.

The restored Georgetown Loop Railroad climbs approximately 640 feet between Georgetown and Silver Plume using three miles of track. Passengers board at depots in Silver Plume or Devil's Gate, the latter located about three-quarters of a mile southwest of downtown Georgetown, where modern development blocked the original route. Historic narrow gauge steam locomotives pull the cars through the same horseshoe curves and across the same dramatic trestle that tourists marveled at in 1884. An optional walking tour takes visitors 500 feet into the Lebanon Silver Mine, a tunnel bored in the 1870s, where guides point out veins that once yielded silver. The railroad that was meant to haul ore now carries something more valuable: the chance to experience a vanished era of American engineering and ambition.