The Switzerland Trail is a historic narrow-gauge railroad line that was operated at different times by the Greeley, Salt Lake and Pacific Railway, the Colorado and Northwestern Railroad, and the Denver, Boulder, and Western Railroad around the turn of the 20th century in the Colorado front range mining area near Nederland, Gold Hill, and Ward. The earliest segment dates to 1859, with continual track growth until 1891 by the GSL&P, when a large flood destroyed many tracks and bankrupted the company. The C&N took over for a few years, completing many spur lines and the southern branch of the Switzerland Trail. The C&N is responsible for the name "Switzerland Trail", given in 1898 in a successful attempt to attract the tourist trade. By the end of the '00s, the C&N had folded and the DB&W took over. In 1919 the line was shut down and the tracks were subsequently pulled up, but the railbed remains. A large portion of the railbed is "maintained" (benignly neglected) as a hiking/biking trail as part of the Boulder County road system. It was, and remains, well known for its beautiful scenic views of the Front Range hills.
The main mountain route, about 30 miles long, winds between altitudes of 7,000 and over 9,000 feet, connecting Barker Meadow Reservoir in Nederland, westward toward the town of Eldora, Colorado, and north to Gold Hill and, ultimately, Ward. The line winds past several local historically prominent mines, including the Blue Bird Mine, the old mining community of Batesville, and the Caribou Mine in the then-bustling (now ghost-) town of Caribou. A spur connected the main line down to Boulder, Colorado via Fourmile Canyon, through the mining communities of Salina, Colorado and Crisman, Colorado, and ultimately (via a three-rail track shared with standard gauge railroads) to Denver, Colorado.
In its heyday, near the turn of the twentieth century, the Switzerland Trail was the major source of bulk transportation in the area, carrying supplies and tourists to mining camps and towns in the front range, ore from the myriad mines to a few centralized mills, and refined metal down to Boulder for transport to the rest of the nation. A federal ore assay office, built at the turn of the 20th century, was located near the now-sleepy community of Sunset, Colorado, at the intersection of the Switzerland Trail route with Fourmile Canyon. At the time Sunset was a bustling community, driven by the presence of an ore mill and the railroad. The building remains and is now something of a curiosity: the James F. Bailey Assay Office Museum, located in what is now a remote spot in the woods, at least 20 minutes by car from the nearest town (Boulder). The C&N and the DB&W railroads were more canny than the GSL&P, and did a brisk business transporting tourists from Boulder and Denver up into the mountains. Several dedicated park sites and hotels (including the Mont Alto park site, which is still largely preserved) were built or encouraged by the railroad to draw day-trippers.
The demise of the line came from a variety of factors, including: the extremely harsh winter conditions in the Rocky Mountains, which limited the tourist trade to about four months per year, forced frequent line closures, and periodically killed train crews; the invention and rise of the automobile; mine closures in Ward and Eldora; and failure of several ventures including a long tunnel/adit mine that was to be dug from Sunset into rich underground gold seams to the northwest.
The Switzerland Trail remains a well known hiking and biking trail because the smooth grade and 2%-5% slope of the railway make an easy traverse, while the narrowness of the railbed (typically 8–10 feet wide) brings users close to the spectacular terrain.