Boysen State Park’s Abandoned Tunnel Is Last Reminder Of Fierce Railroad Fight

At Boysen State Park in Fremont County, Wyoming, visitors can see an abandoned tunnel beneath the existing railroad bridge with dirt falling in and the sky showing through a huge hole where the tunnel has collapsed in one spot.

It’s one of those things that stick out and makes many who see it say, “I wonder what the story is with that?”

The story of this tunnel involves a failed gold and copper rush, backroom deals and a fight between one man and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad to bring electricity to the region.

As fishermen navigate the Wind River below for prized trout at the state park, the tunnel crumbling above them now looks out of place and random with the railroad tracks running next to it.

This quiet place on the river, with eagles and ducks flying overhead, is reserved for recreation. In the early 1900s, it served a much different purpose as miners rushed the area, lured by gold and copper.

When it was in use, the railroad tunnel was near the unincorporated town of Boysen, once home to 1,000 workers from around the world and the dreams of a man banking his fortune on promise of copper and gold.

The story of the tunnel begins years before it was even built with one man’s ambition.

There’s Gold In That Canyon

Asmus Boysen, a Danish immigrant born in 1868, had worked his passage across the ocean to America as a cook when he was 17. Three years later, he married into a wealthy family and built a fortune through real estate.

He settled in Iowa and was included in the inner circle of the powerful politicians of the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations.

Boysen sought to increase his wealth, and on a mining exploration trip to Wyoming found the opportunity he was looking for.

In 1899, rumors of gold and copper in the Wind River Canyon were beginning to spread. According to Lawrence Woods, author of “Asmus Boysen and His Dam Problems,” Boysen acted quickly.

He used borrowed stationary of the Iowa Legislature to ask permission of the U.S. Interior Department to go on the Shoshoni Indian Reservation in Wyoming to negotiate a lease to mine coal and other minerals. Boysen secured permission and the contacts he would need to proceed on this new venture with the support of powerful allies in Washington. D.C.

Ed Bille of the Pacific Power and Light office in Casper, Wyoming, wrote of Boysen’s entrepreneurial spirit: “Boysen's party had come upon the Wind River Canyon in the Owl Creek Mountains. Perhaps something about the bleak landscape reminded Boysen of his boyhood in Denmark. At any rate, he remarked to a companion, ‘Never saw land yet that didn't have some kind of potential.’ Don't know what it would be in this forsaken spot, though.

“His companion replied, ‘Copper, maybe, and gold ore. Rumor has it that Copper Mountain over yonder has plenty of both. No practical way to mine it, of course.’”

Bille also wrote that Boysen was hooked right away.

“Boysen's interest was instantly aroused,” he wrote. “He thought for a moment, and then said, ‘It could be done. Anything can be done. First, you have to have a supply of electric power and that could come from a dam. Why certainly, a dam … that's the answer.’”

Boysen’s Dam

“Boysen had found his challenge and he immediately set out to meet it,” wrote Bille. “First, he made a treaty with the Indians for many acres of land on the Wind River Reservation. Next, he imported $10,000 worth of Missouri mules to haul materials to the site. Then construction started, and Boysen found himself in a battle so savage that even his stout heart must have weakened at times.”

Boysen’s first battle to build his dam was against nature.

Because of the flow of the Wind River, the preliminary work was done during a bitter Wyoming winter.

All the materials for concreting had to be heated which was costly and time-consuming. Newspaper accounts reported that workers from Italy, Austria, Greece, Bulgaria and Japan were brought into the remote canyon to do the work with numbed fingers in the extreme cold. They were well-paid for their efforts as Boysen poured his money into the project.

Although his own search for copper in the Copper Mountain hadn’t panned out, Boysen still expected the area to produce commercial quantities of ore and believed that the region needed electricity. He had moved forward with construction despite his many setbacks, including unexpected resistance from the railroad.

Railroad Fight

The plans for the Burlington Railroad in the remote Wind River Canyon were frustrating Wyoming state officials.

The railroad had not publicly committed to building a line through the canyon; however, it wanted to keep that option open. Although the railroad had not even officially decided on this route, Burlington was not willing to change these plans to account for a higher river due to Boysen’s dam.

“When Boysen filed an application for a 60-foot dam, the Burlington railroad became very concerned,” wrote Woods. “Boysen dismissed this objection, as he still did not believe the Burlington would extend its line south from the Big Horn Basin through the canyon.”

However, unknown to Boysen, the railroad had begun negotiations in 1907 for a route through the canyon which, though expensive, would link the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Northwest. A dam in the canyon would hinder that effort and the railroad was prepared to fight against Boysen’s dam in the courts.

The result was that the state engineer would only allow Boysen to build his dam 35 feet high for the “public good.”

Although the miners and a delegation from the towns of Shoshoni, Birds Eye and Thermopolis protested the ruling, and Boysen proved that the lowered dam would result in much less electricity being generated, the ruling stood.

The lawyers had pointed out that the mining had already failed and that the copper and gold rush in the area was over.

Dashed Dreams

Construction continued with Boysen hoping that the railroad would go elsewhere and he could have his higher dam. He even spent extra money on larger footings in anticipation of the railroad plans changing.

Frequent blizzards turned the canyon into white, frozen chaos, but finally in 1908, the dam was completed. Boysen' s entire fortune of $2 million had gone into its construction.

However, nature had the final word.

Soon after the dam was finished, a flash flood washed quantities of silt into the reservoir. More silt accumulated and Boysen was forced to raise the structure's height.

More litigation followed, and Boysen's resources were spent.

By the time the dam was completed, Boysen couldn’t even afford to buy the generating equipment to make his power plant pay for itself. He was a broken man. More than 1,000 men worked for him, and it was transmitting power by 1911, but this was not enough to save his dam.

Over the ensuing years, his son Allan Boysen took over, trying to save the family fortune and name, but he also failed.

Meanwhile, the railroad had been built through the canyon and the water behind the higher dam menaced the railway bed and their tunnels. By May 1911, the first line had broken through the canyon; however, disaster struck.

A cloudburst washed out 4,000 feet of track and work could not be resumed until July.

By September 1914, a through train was running between Denver and Billings. The C, B&Q line was now complete from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico and they continued their legal battles against Boysen and his dam, demanding that it be torn down to protect the tracks and tunnel at the mouth of the canyon.

By 1915, the Wyoming State Court declared that Boysen’s dam would have to be torn down. More than 15 years of appeals followed until, in 1931, his dam was abolished. In 1938, Boysen visited Wyoming for the last time and died the following year.

“Boysen’s hopes, efforts and dreams had come to naught,” Bille wrote. “Yet, in another and very real sense, Boysen won his battle against Wind River Canyon and the railroad.”

Government’s Dam

Forty years later the United States Bureau of Reclamation made the railroad move the tracks and tunnel it had worked so hard to protect. The railroad relocated its tract to enter a tunnel on the east side of the new dam. Completed in 1950, the railroad moved 13.5 miles of tracks, seven bridges two sidings and a tunnel.

This relocation was finally made because the government had decided Boysen was right, and a dam and electric plant were needed in the area for residents. This dam was built 220 feet high to hold back a reservoir of nearly 1.5 million acre-feet and named in Boysen’s honor.

It was much larger than Boysen’s 35-foot dam and built without the court battles. It is 1.5 miles upstream from the original site and Bille wrote that the new dam is a testimonial to Boysen's courage and vision.

So is that now abandoned tunnel to nowhere.

“Although the new reservoir was not a threat to the railroad in the canyon, it would still flood the Burlington railroad tracks south of the new dam.” wrote Woods. “We do not know the details of the negotiations that followed.

“We do know there were no lawsuits, at all, because the federal government was far more formidable opponent for the railroad than Asumus Boysen, and besides, the government was willing to pay for the privilege of having its own way.”

Nearly 75 years later, the abandoned tunnel is now crumbling, and taking with it the last evidence of a battle against the railroad and nature that Asmus Boysen lost in his bid to build a dam and his fortune in the Wind River Canyon.

Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.