File:Royal Gorge Bridge, From the Gorge, 100 images Stacked. Orange glow is Cañon City lights reflecting off of haze from New Mexico fires.jpg

English: Created by the natural eroding properties of the Arkansas River flowing from Tennessee Pass, the Gorge is perhaps the best illustration of what’s called a two-cycle mountain range. The entire Front Range is also a two-cycle range, meaning that the mountains have been uplifted, worn away by weather, and then uplifted again, allowing streams and rivers to begin cutting through the range, forming canyons.

Though the railroad’s original purpose was serving the mining communities, there’s no real reason for a road to exist over the Gorge, other than as a tourist attraction. The bridge itself was never necessary for transit or commerce. It used to be possible to access the bridge from the south on a seasonal basis, but the south entrance has been closed since the Royal Gorge Fire of 2013, and will most likely remain closed in an attempt to limit traffic on the bridge itself.

The sight of the Gorge from the top is just too tempting, though, and people would visit, whether they could drive across or not. The fire only slightly damaged the bridge, but most of the buildings in the park were destroyed, as was the funicular (cable railway) that took visitors to the bottom of the canyon. It was one of the few funiculars in Colorado, and was built in 1931, just after the bridge in 1929. A very modern visitor center was built to replace the destroyed buildings. The bridge is currently not accessible to car traffic, making it easier to enjoy as a pedestrian.

John C. Fremont scouted this route in 1845, but he was far from the first to be here. Zebulon Pike and his team were here in 1806, just before their difficulty near Salida, and of course native Americans traversed these mountains continuously for hundreds of years prior. The bridge was built in 1929 as the highest bridge in the world, which remained its title until 2001, when a higher bridge was built in China. The Royal Gorge was still the world’s highest suspension bridge until 2013, when it was beaten by another Chinese bridge. Although the official height is 1,053 feet from the river, the actual height has been measured several times, and the numbers are all different. The real height is probably about 955 feet, measured from the deck of the bridge.

Although the rail line underneath used to be extremely active, the route was finally closed to all commercial traffic once the Tennessee Pass line was closed in 1989, and this portion of the line was sold to a private company called Royal Gorge Express. The only train running today is the scenic Royal Gorge Route Railroad.