All Aboard!!! The Georgetown Loop Railroad was one of Colorado's first visitor attractions. It was built in 1884 and considered an engineering marvel for its time. And it's a great way to explore the Clear Creek Valley. Only a 40 minute drive from Breckenridge, it's a great activitiy for the family. The Loop takes you between Georgetown and Silver Plume, two towns only two miles from each other. The tracks scale an elevation of 640 feet over mountainous terrain, requiring trestles, cuts, fills, loops, and curves totaling 3.1 miles of narrow gauge track.
The once-thriving mining towns of Georgetown and Silver Plume lie two miles apart in a steep, narrow mountain canyon. To connect the two, the railroad’s builders designed a “corkscrew” route that traveled twice the distance, slowly gaining more than 600 feet in elevation. The route included horseshoe curves, grades of up to 4%, and four bridges across Clear Creek, including the massive Devil’s Gate High Bridge.