Rio Grande Southern Railroad Derrick Car

Built in 1948. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

From the record

“The Rio Grande Southern Railroad Derrick Car is a railroad derrick car which was produced in 1948 for the Rio Grande Southern Railroad. It is one of only three W60 Series A Derrick Cars narrow-gauge examples ever built by the Fairmont Railway Motors Inc., and it is the only one still extant.”
Wikipedia article Rio Grande Southern Railroad Derrick Car, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 28 National Register listings published here for Montrose County · listed in 2010 · category: Structure · built in 1948.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. 82800Q 83rd Rd, Cimarron Visitor Center, Curecanti National Recreation Area, Cimarron, 81220
When was it listed? May 2010
Category. structure
Census division. Montrose
When was it built? 1948
National Register reference number. 10000237 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

12 since 1993

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 12 fires within 5 miles of Rio Grande Southern Railroad Derrick Car between 1993 and 2020, burning about 455 acres in total. 6 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	6
Debris and open burning	2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2
Smoking	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
4 August 2000	Natural	under an acre	Southwest District, Montrose	STUMPY CRK
8 July 2002	Natural	2.5 acres	Southwest District, Montrose	DRY FIRE
4 July 2002	Natural	under an acre	Southwest District, Montrose	STUMPY RD
3 July 2002	Natural	under an acre	Southwest District, Montrose	MORROW P 2
29 July 1995	Natural	under an acre	Southwest District, Montrose	SHIRLEY
14 July 2000	Natural	1.5 acres	Southwest District, Montrose	SQUAW
17 June 2004	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	not named
5 May 2016	Smoking	2.0 acres	Montrose Fire Protection District	UNKNOWN

Every fire recorded in Montrose County

Mines and quarries near this property

5 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 5 workings within 5 miles of Rio Grande Southern Railroad Derrick Car: 5 occurrences. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Mica, Feldspar, Beryllium. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Black Canyon Beryl Prospect	Beryllium	Occurrence	1943
Goat Hill Mine	Feldspar, Mica	Occurrence
Goat Hill #1	Mica	Occurrence
Mica Property	Mica	Occurrence
Muscovite #1	Mica	Occurrence

Every working recorded in Montrose County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Box Outfit Car No. 04414	under 500 feet	2009
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Stock Car No. 5620	under 500 feet	2010
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Stock Car No. 5679D	under 500 feet	2010
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Caboose No. 0577	0.7 miles	2009
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Boxcar No. 3132	0.7 miles	2009
Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Locomotive No. 278 and Tender	0.7 miles	2009

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 10000237 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Montrose County	All 28 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.