Railroads and Palisade Peaches

It’s difficult to imagine now, but as many as 3,000 railroad cars filled with peaches departed Palisade every harvest season, and thousands of tons of ice were stored in huge warehouses in Grand Junction each winter to cool the peaches when they were loaded into rail cars.

First Colorado Midland Railroad train loaded with Palisade peaches in the 1890s

Some of that information and much more is included in the book The History of Railroads in Palisade, Colorado. It was written by Museum of Western Colorado railroad historian Matt Darling and published by the Palisade Historical Society, with financial assistance from the Rio Grande Federal Credit Union.

I wrote about this for The Daily Sentinel.

Here is the link

Palisade Train Book 1-25-21

Other Recent Columns

Here are links to several other columns I’ve written recently, beginning with two about the nation’s first forest ranger, William Kreutzer, seen in the photo here:

First Ranger columns:

Ranger Kreutzer 10-5-20

Kreutzer-vs-Craig 11-02-20

Ski History 1-11-21

Nucla 10-19-20