COBWEB CORNERS: The mystery portrait of 'Hoodoo 22'

COBWEB CORNERS: The mystery portrait of 'Hoodoo 22'

By Mel McFarland

Oct. 2, 2018
Years ago there was an interesting form of photography. Itinerant photographers traveled the country doing portraits that were low-cost (usually).
The end result was a picture that looked a lot like a charcoal drawing. I have seen hundreds of these, including a few that show my family members from about 120 years

back. Today I will share with you an interesting portrait that turned up a number of years ago.
One of my friends was a collector of railroad postcards - in fact, many of my friends do that! This fellow was also a collector of railroad artifacts and even had some model trains. On one of my visits to his house, he showed me the "portrait" he had just collected. Someone he had purchased other items from had found this picture nailed to a wall in a garage somewhere here in Old Colorado City. My friend was quite attracted to it. Once I saw it, I was too, but he did not want to sell it. So, who was this "subject"? Well, it was an “it,” not a who.
The Colorado Midland Railway had one "infamous" locomotive. It was involved in most of the railroad's most deadly disasters, including a couple of head-on collisions. It was also burned during a fire in the Colorado City shops in the 1890s. But every time the

This is a copy of the charcoal drawing-like photograph of "Hoodoo 22," a star-crossed locomotive for the Colorado Midland railway until 1920. The current whereabouts of the original photo, as well as the engine itself, are unknown.
Courtesy of Mel McFarland

engine was rebuilt and retained its original number. The Colorado Midland's "HooDoo" was number 22, and all of the prominent Colorado Midland authors have retold the stories about it, including me. I have collected a few pictures of CM 22 from the days it was used, but this "portrait" had escaped me! Another friend of mine who does railroad songs even sings a fun tune about HooDoo 22.
I do not have a clue which Old Colorado City garage my friend found the portrait in, nor where it is now, but the mysterious part of this story might be just why it was saved. Locomotives were assigned to a regular engineer and crew, but Engine 22 spent most of its life on the Western Slope. Maybe it was one of the shop men who had worked on it many of the times it needed repairs.
As for the locomotive itself, in 1920 when the Colorado Midland closed, HooDoo 22 was sold to some unknown railroad, never to be seen here again, except in pictures.

(Opinion: Cobweb Corners)

Editor's note: Local historian Mel McFarland has been writing his Cobweb Corners column in the Westside Pioneer since 2004. To see past columns, go to the Pioneer's Archives. Either look for desired articles under the Cobweb Corners category for any year, or search by keywords in the Find box.

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