HISTORY

The Jarilla Junction, once a station on the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad, was renamed Orogrande when a gold nugget the size of a man's finger was discovered in 1905. Prospecting had started as early as 1879 in the Jarilla Mountains, but the 1905 discovery started a gold rush and gave birth to the town of Orogrande. For several years thereafter, the town was the hub of intense mining activity and the population grew to several thousand people. A fifty-five mile long water pipe was laid from the Sacramento River to the town site. Almost overnight, a hundred homes were built to house only a fraction of the influx of people. Some were forced to live in hastily erected shacks and tents. As happened so many times before, there was less gold than had been anticipated and mining activity began to wane. Today Orogrande is reduced to a post office, a few businesses and about fifteen families.

In 1899 a branch line was built into the Jarilla Mountains to the town of Jarilla in order to bring out iron ore.  This was a Colorado Fuel & Iron (CF&I) Company mine that produced a high level of iron ore and resulted in one to two cars of ore a day.

Modeling Orogrande in 1955

Orogrande is modeled as the small town that it was in the mid-1950’s.  A station track and stock pen siding are present on the layout.  Another siding, which has a couple of ore filled hoppers, also exists to represent the branch line to Jarilla.