40 Fun Facts About Royal Gorge Bridge

Why was the Royal Gorge Bridge built across its Colorado canyon?

As a tourist attraction, the bridge exists purely to give people a view down into the gorge. Its backer leased the site for just $1,000 a year.

Clint Murchison Jr., who inherited the Royal Gorge Bridge with his brother, founded which NFL team?

Dallas Cowboys founder Clint Murchison Jr. and his brother John were left the bridge and its lease by their oil-tycoon father. The family held it into the 1980s.

What destroyed 48 of 52 buildings at Royal Gorge Bridge and Park in 2013 yet spared the span itself?

A wildfire jumped the gorge and burned for four days, leaving the bridge with only minor deck damage. The park reopened in 2014 with new rides.

Which country opened the bridge that ended the Royal Gorge Bridge's 72 years as the world's highest?

China opened the Liuguanghe Bridge just 19 feet higher than the Colorado span. Dozens of newer bridges, most of them Chinese too, have since passed both.

Which river, the sixth-longest in the United States, flows 955 feet beneath the Royal Gorge Bridge?

The Arkansas carved the gorge over roughly three million years, cutting down as the Rockies rose. Early explorers called the result the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas.

Stuntman Eric Scott crossed the Royal Gorge in 21 seconds, with no parachute, using which device?

A jet pack fuelled by hydrogen peroxide carried him across at about 75 mph in 2008. It held only around 30 seconds of flying time, so he landed with little to spare.

What forms the deck of the Royal Gorge Bridge, laid over its steel frame in more than 1,000 pieces?

Wooden planks, more than 1,000 of them, cover the steel structure. With no stiffening truss beneath, the thin deck noticeably shakes whenever a vehicle crosses.

Which Old West lawman did the Santa Fe railroad hire to lead its gunmen in the Royal Gorge War?

Bat Masterson, then a Kansas sheriff, brought dozens of hired guns to hold stations for the Santa Fe in 1879. Despite the standoffs, there is no reliable proof anyone was killed.

Since Congress handed over the Royal Gorge in 1906, who has owned the parkland around the bridge?

A nearby city, Cañon City, owns the gorge and takes a share of the park's revenue. The deal has paid well enough to let it cut local property taxes.

Roughly how long did a crew of about 80 men take to build the Royal Gorge Bridge?

Six months was all it took: work began in June 1929 and the bridge opened that December. Nobody died or was seriously hurt building it.

What type of bridge is the Royal Gorge Bridge, the same basic design as San Francisco's Golden Gate?

Suspension is the design, with the deck hung from twin bundles of 2,100 steel wires slung between towers on each rim. It held the world height record for its type until 2003.

Lon Piper, who dreamed up and financed the Royal Gorge Bridge, came from which oil-rich state?

Texas was home: Piper ran his bridge-building business from San Antonio. He toured the gorge in 1928 and opened his span across it the very next year.

Which explorer, namesake of a famous Colorado peak, camped at the Royal Gorge in 1806?

Zebulon Pike reached the gorge while hunting for the river's source and wrongly decided he had found it. His men later circled back to the same spot by mistake.

The Royal Gorge's sheer walls are cut from which hard rock, which kept the gorge so narrow?

Granite resists erosion, so the river sawed almost straight down instead of widening its valley. The gorge is over 1,000 feet deep yet only a few dozen feet wide at the bottom.

What kind of ride is the Royal Rush Skycoaster, sending riders over the Royal Gorge at up to 50 mph?

A giant swing is the idea: riders are hoisted up a 100-foot tower, then pull a ripcord themselves and arc out beyond the rim. It opened in 2003.

Which dinosaur, Colorado's state fossil, was dug from quarries near Cañon City, the Royal Gorge Bridge's home town?

Stegosaurus bones came out of quarries near Cañon City during the 1880s. Schoolchildren later campaigned to make it Colorado's state fossil, and won in 1982.

Which crisis began just as the Royal Gorge Bridge opened, leaving its founder struggling for years?

The Great Depression arrived weeks before the bridge's December 1929 opening. Founder Lon Piper hung on through it and a world war before selling in 1947.

Sunshine Falls, Sledgehammer and Wallslammer are names of what, found deep inside the Royal Gorge?

Whitewater rapids, rated Class IV and tougher at high water, make the gorge a famous rafting run. Others on the same stretch are called Boateater and Soda Pop Rock.

What is the Cloudscraper, billed as America's highest of its kind, beside the Royal Gorge Bridge?

A zip line, the Cloudscraper carries harnessed riders from rim to rim about 1,200 feet up. Riders take a gondola across first, then fly back.

What type of railway was the Royal Gorge Incline, which carried riders down to the gorge floor?

A funicular hauls two counterbalanced cars on one rope, and this one ran 1,550 feet at a 45-degree angle. Opened in 1931, it was badly damaged in 2013 and left out of the rebuilt park.

Which Native American people wintered in the Royal Gorge, sheltered from harsh weather by its walls?

Ute bands chose the gorge for its mild climate, long before Europeans arrived. Plains peoples such as the Comanche and Lakota passed through on hunting trips.

Which silver boomtown were two railroads racing to reach when they clashed over the Royal Gorge?

Leadville's silver strike of the late 1870s made it the prize, and the gorge had room for only one track. The winner's rails reached the town in July 1880.

America's second-highest bridge, behind the Royal Gorge Bridge, was built to bypass which dam?

Hoover Dam's bypass bridge, opened in 2010, sits about 890 feet above the Colorado River. It took U.S. Route 93 off the top of the dam, where traffic used to cross.

Which US president stopped at the famous railroad bridge on the floor of the Royal Gorge in 1905?

Theodore Roosevelt paused there during a 1905 trip through Colorado. Trains of the era routinely halted at the spot so passengers could step out and take photographs.

What did Clint Murchison Sr. reportedly never do in 22 years as an owner of the Royal Gorge Bridge?

He never came to visit it, a longtime park employee recalled, even after becoming the sole owner. His sons inherited the bridge when he died in 1969.

The Royal Gorge's cliff-climbing course is a via ferrata, an Italian term that translates as what?

Iron path describes the metal rungs fixed into the rock, which let first-time climbers clip on and scale the wall safely. The idea spread from the Alps.

The river that carved the Royal Gorge flows on east across the plains to join which larger river?

The Mississippi takes it in after a run of some 1,469 miles from the Rockies. Only the Missouri is a longer tributary of that system.

What were athletes specially permitted to do from the Royal Gorge Bridge during the Go Fast Games?

BASE jump off it, which parachutists from around the world did each September in the mid-2000s. The sport is normally banned at the gorge.

What drives the unusual clock behind the Royal Gorge visitor center, tumbling from bucket to bucket?

Water cascades through the clock, which the park calls the only one of its kind in Colorado. It is a replica of an original that kept time for 30 years.

The Royal Gorge Bridge took the world height record from a bridge in which North African country?

Algeria's Sidi M'Cid Bridge stands 574 feet above the Rhumel River in the city of Constantine. The Colorado span beat that by almost 400 feet.

Which railroad won the Royal Gorge after a two-year feud with the Santa Fe, paying it $1.8 million?

Denver & Rio Grande won at the Supreme Court in 1879, because Congress had granted it the route back in 1872. The payment covered track the Santa Fe had already laid.

What name is given to the 1879 railroad span at the Royal Gorge's narrowest point?

The Hanging Bridge carries the track over the river on girders braced against both walls, where the gorge is just 30 feet wide. It is still in service.

What did a gravel dealer unknowingly gain over the Royal Gorge Bridge by buying the rail line below?

Air rights above the track came with the 1998 sale, and the buyer tried to raise the yearly fee from a few hundred dollars to $750,000. The dispute ended with a one-time payment of $99,000.

Which baseball team posed at the Royal Gorge's railroad bridge in 1910, bound for spring training?

Chicago White Sox players stopped there in February 1910, heading west to train in San Francisco. Owner Charles Comiskey is in the picture.

The railroad war over the Royal Gorge ended in 1880 with a deal nicknamed the Treaty of which city?

Boston was the Santa Fe's corporate home, hence the name. The pact ended every lawsuit between the two companies and handed the gorge line back to the Santa Fe's rival.

What was added under the Royal Gorge Bridge in the 1980s to steady a deck with no stiffening truss?

Wind cables were strung under the deck to reduce its swaying. The same 1980s overhaul rebuilt the anchorages and cost more than $2.8 million.

The Royal Gorge's Tommy Knocker Playland shares its name with folklore spirits said to live where?

In mines, where Cornish legend has the gnome-like Tommyknockers tapping on the walls to warn of a collapse. The playland lets children pan for gold.

Which Gilded Age financier bought a half share in a railroad fighting over the Royal Gorge in 1879?

Jay Gould lent the struggling line $400,000, took a 50% stake and announced a rival route of his own. The two sides settled out of court early the next year.

Which Jane Fonda western comedy was filmed at Buckskin Joe, the movie-set town by the Royal Gorge?

Cat Ballou, the 1965 comedy that won Lee Marvin an Oscar, was shot partly at the frontier theme park. Buckskin Joe hosted more than 20 films before its sale in 2010.

Which cross-country US highway passes the turnoff for the Royal Gorge Bridge, west of Cañon City?

U.S. Route 50 runs from Maryland's Atlantic shore to California and follows the river through much of Colorado. The bridge road leaves it about 10 miles from town.