Anne and John Scarffe, Gilpin County. Hugh Lindsey, a 95-year-old resident of Arvada, Colorado, was the first child through the Moffat Tunnel west of Rollinsville on a test run through to the West Portal. He also lived in East Portal and West Portal. Gilpin County has current plans to restore buildings near the tunnel. 

Meet Hugh and Elizabeth Lindsey. They have been married 77 years. They have had a good life and live in Arvada with their daughters visiting regularly for shopping, since neither drive any more. Hugh’s wife, Elizabeth, was born in 1927 and was raised in Grand Lake, Colorado, as one of seven children. 

Hugh was born in Yampa, Colorado, in 1925. His father worked on the Moffat Tunnel, which was built as a railroad and water tunnel through the Continental Divide, and the family lived in East Portal. 

Hugh’s father had worked in mining and fathered 13 children, with Hugh as the middle child. His grandmother ran a boarding house on Corona Pass, which is now called Rollins Pass. Two towns existed there, one for the Irish, the other for the Chinese working on the railroad. 

His grandfather worked in the tunnels, traveled by train to the job and once was snowed in at the top of the pass. He had to wait to be dug out, and, while waiting, they ran snow through the steam engine to stay warm. 

While living in East Portal, the house did not have running water, but his father had a wagon and a team of horses and would carry water from the river for cooking and bathing. One of his sisters, Edith, who died at the age of twelve, when she was electrocuted accidentally as she was collecting used wire near the tunnel, and found some that was connected. Hugh said he came home to find his sister lying dead on the couch.

At a young age, Hugh was playing under the front porch steps and dug up a coffee can full of coins. He never was told anything else about that cash after he gave it to his mother but remembers it still. Elizabeth said, “I still wonder what was in that can.

When the tunnel was completed, during a huge celebration with dignitaries and management, “Doctor Susie” from the community, gave a searing speech, that “the big shots didn’t build this tunnel. It was the workers who built this.”

Hugh was the first child through the Moffat Tunnel on a test run through to West Portal. He recalls it was the lousiest train ride that he ever took with lots of smoke and cinders. 

He was sent to an aunt’s house in West Portal, near Winter Park. After the state developed water for equipment, they had running water. 

Hugh lived in West Portal for 12 years and graduated from Frazier High School, before going to Grand Lake, where he met Elizabeth. He worked for five years for the Big Thompson project, which included the Adams Tunnel and Dam.

Hugh worked as a motorman, laying power cabling. He said he never rode all the way through the project, just one side or the other, and reversing back to the entrance at the end of the day’s work. He could have continued with the cabling crew to a job in Pennsylvania but chose not to.

Hugh then worked for Rocky Flats, first as an electrician helper, then after layoffs, he moved into the laboratory. He worked for them for 33 and a half years, and lived in Coal Creek Canyon, west of the elementary school. 

They moved to Arvada in 1993, because the canyon snows became too heavy and too much for them. Hugh realized recently that he’s now been retired longer than he ever worked. The year after he retired, 1986, they took a camper trip to Alaska. 

Hugh and Elizabeth have taken other train trips, several to Oregon to visit two of their sons who live there. In their 77 years, they parented six children. They have 20 grandchildren, more than 30 great grandchildren, and three great great grandchildren.

They said they enjoyed the opportunity to reminisce about their lives and Hugh’s historic trip through the Moffat Tunnel.

(Originally published in the May 28, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)