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Oak Creek • Milepost 171.3. Elevation 7397. Telegraph operator usually handled passenger traffic and Icl freight. Hours were 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Oak Creek had a 27- car siding and another track with a 9-car capacity. Full stop for both passenger trains. Facilities included: Section house -- with equipment for section gangs. Station -- a small frame depot for passengers, baggage, and the telegraph operator. Oak Creek looks the part of acoal-mining town, under the leaden skies of early winter, gathering a mantle of snow spat from clouds into an air filled with the smoke of coal fires. The ghosts of old miners don't mind the cold. Fights, shootings, and stabbings were commonplace in old Oak Creek, a Town that got its reputation as a tough mine town during the time from 1915-1918 not to much from strike activity but from illicit activity of another nature. It was said that you could go any place you wanted to and get the seven toughest men and come into Oak Creek just before sundown; Oak Creek'd have seven to match 'em by sundown (Bonnifield 1979, • personal communication). This was coincident with R outt County going dry in 1916. Local interests quickly gained control of illicit alcohol distribution and, though Colorado and the rest of the nation later experienced prohibition, Oak Creek never really closed down, never For more than a day or so. Oak Creek's population was at one time 5,000 or 6,000, now it is about 1,000. Many buildings are gone -- removed, torn down, burned down, or fallen down. The old Negro part of town and Red Light District known as Hickory Flats have shrunk significantly from the glory years. "Hickory Flats is all torn down, where the gals hung out. There used to be quite a few people here. Just went downhill. It all closed up. Everybody moved out. Houses were empty and deteriorated. The town was about the way iT is now but the houses went to pot, weren't lived in and were torn down" (Leo Saindon 1979, personal communication). Pinnacle Milepost 171.6. Elevation not given. Spur Tracks to the tipple of the Victor- . American Coal Company, whose mines were at White City, southwest of Oak Creek. No passenger stop.