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Cardiff

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1887–1918. 3 miles south of Glenwood Springs on Garfield County 163 (Airport Rd.)

Little remains of the once large rail complex of the Colorado Midland Railroad except for a loading mill and a few shacks. In 1910 Cardiff, a CM division point, was a smoky village of 462 where coal brought by the railroad was fed into ovens to be cooked into coke. At Cardiff, ruins of about 50 of some 200 beehive ovens once connected by a stone wall still line a half-mile stretch of former railroad grade. Colorado Midland trainmen tweaked the curiosity of tourists by telling them that the ovens were used to heat the water for “Glenwood's so-called natural hot springs.” Last owned by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which closed them in 1915, the Cardiff ovens produced over 1.3 million tons of coke for smelters in Colorado and Utah.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Thomas J. Noel
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Data

What's Nearby

Colorado Mountain College
Linwood Cemetery
First Presbyterian Church
Kaiser House
First Church of Christ Scientist

Citation

Thomas J. Noel, "Cardiff", [Glenwood Springs, Colorado], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/CO-01-GF17.

Print Source

Buildings of Colorado, Thomas J. Noel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 483-483.

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