A Silver-Boom Train From 1884 Hands Your Kid a Pumpkin This Weekend

Ninety-five feet of air under a train full of kids, and every one of them walks away with a pumpkin. That is the pitch for this weekend, and honestly it is a good one.

The Georgetown Loop Railroad runs its Pumpkinfest October 9 through 11, roughly 10 a.m. to 3:50 p.m. each day. Every child with a ticket gets a pumpkin to take home. Every booking comes with a 2026 Pumpkinfest Faro Chip keepsake, which is a nice touch if you are the kind of family that keeps that stuff in a drawer forever. We are. No judgment.

You will find it at 646 Loop Drive in Georgetown, about 50 minutes from Denver straight up I-70. Standard tickets are running around $35 per person for 2026 based on recent visitor reports, and you board at either Devil's Gate Station in Georgetown or the Silver Plume Depot up the hill. The silver mine tour and gold panning are sold separately, so decide ahead of time how deep you want to go.

Why this little train is a big deal

Here is the part people miss when they picture a cute fall outing. This is one of the oldest tourist attractions in the entire state.

Back up to 1859. Georgetown starts as a silver-mining camp sitting at 8,458 feet. By the 2020 census it had 1,118 people, so we are talking small, but in the boom years this corner of the mountains was moving serious money.

The problem was geography. Georgetown and Silver Plume are only two miles apart as the crow flies, but the climb between them is brutal. So the builders did something wild. They designed a corkscrew route that spirals up roughly 640 feet over about three miles of track, with grades hitting 4 percent and four separate bridges crossing Clear Creek. The train basically loops over itself to gain elevation. That is where the name comes from.

It was finished in 1884 as a three-foot narrow-gauge line, and people at the time called it an engineering marvel. They were not exaggerating. The showpiece is the Devil's Gate High Bridge, that 95-foot-high trestle. The original 300-foot span was built in Pennsylvania in 1883, then shipped west in sections and reassembled out here. Imagine coordinating that in 1883. No forklifts, no semis, just rail and muscle and a lot of faith.

At its peak the Loop ran seven trains a day out of Denver. Round trip cost three dollars. Three dollars. I mean, try getting anything near a mountain for three dollars now.

The part where it almost disappeared

Nothing gold stays, and that includes silver towns. The route was abandoned and the tracks were pulled up around 1938. For decades it was just gone.

Then in 1973 the Colorado Historical Society started putting it back together, using track donated by the Union Pacific Railroad. The big swing came with the Devil's Gate High Bridge itself. A

million Boettcher Foundation grant funded a full reconstruction, and the replica was finished in 1984 for the 100th anniversary of the original span. Governor Richard D. Lamm dedicated the rebuilt bridge when the whole route reopened.

So when your kid is rolling across that trestle this weekend clutching a pumpkin, they are on a 1984 recreation of an 1883 bridge, on a route that took a half-century nap and came back. That is a better story than most theme park rides can offer.

Today the railroad runs in partnership with History Colorado inside the Georgetown Loop Historic Mining and Railroad Park, which covers roughly 978 acres. It is a real preserved piece of the state, not a parking-lot attraction.

Make a day of it

Here is my honest take. Georgetown is one of those mountain towns that rewards you for actually getting out of the car. The historic district is walkable, the fall color up that valley in early October can be genuinely great, and the drive itself is short enough that you are not committing your whole weekend to it.

If you cannot make Pumpkinfest this weekend, the schedule keeps rolling. The Autumnfest Train runs October 16 through 18 and again October 23 through 25. Then the Trick or Treat Train closes things out October 30 and 31. So there is basically a four-weekend window to catch one of these before winter shuts the door.

A few practical notes from someone who has done the I-70 October shuffle more than a few times. Dress warmer than you think, because 8,458 feet in the shade of a canyon is a different animal than Denver sun. Book the ride window early in the day if you have little ones, because the 10 a.m. departures beat the afternoon crowds and the afternoon meltdowns. And decide on the mine tour before you are standing at the ticket counter with three kids voting at once. Hayley and I learned that one the hard way, different attraction, same lesson.

Three dollars got you a seat here in the 1880s. Thirty-five and a short drive gets you the same bridge, the same loop, and a pumpkin on the way out. That math still works.