Kenosha Pass - Park County, Colorado, USA - Colorado Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

This CDOT marker is located in the ample parking area atop Kenosha Pass. It covers the topics of Kenosha Pass; South Park; Cattle and Kilns.

"KENOSHA PASS SUMMIT

Colorado Historical Society informative kiosk located at Forest Service pulloff on US-285, installed 2001


PANEL 1: TRANSPORTATION

Gateway to South Park

Mountainous chains and peaks in every variety of perspective, every hue of vista, fringe the view . . . . the whole Western world is, in a sense, but an expansion of these mountains.
—Walt Whitman, at Kenosha Pass, 1879

As an important route from the east into Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Kenosha Pass has long served as a gateway to good fortune (and its share of hard luck). Through this portal the Utes gained access to the giant game herds of South Park. And, in the early nineteenth century, fur trappers came here in search of pelts. The gold strikes of the 1860s flung the door wide open; miners poured through by the thousands, bound for Fairplay and other diggings. As the rough trail from Denver widened into a wagon road, then joined by a railroad, Kenosha Pass became one of the Rockies’ main ports of entry, funneling traffic to Leadville, Breckenridge, Aspen, and beyond. From this summit, with the mountains parading across the horizon, travelers must have envisioned their destinies stretching out before them, as if they had reached the threshold of opportunity.

Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad

Though its tracks over Kenosha Pass were the world’s highest for a time, the Denver, South Park & Pacific was fundamentally a second-place railroad. The rival Colorado Central beat it to the gold fields of Central City and Black Hawk, while the Denver & Rio Grande Western won the race for silver-rich Leadville. But second place was good enough for the mining and ranching communities along the DSP&P; to them this narrow-gauge railroad was a mighty engine of economic growth, their link to the smelters and stockyards of Denver. Tourism also emerged as a key underpinning of the DSP&P’s operations. Despite building branches to Breckenridge, Leadville, and Gunnison, the DSP&P never quite overcame its runner-up status. Chronic financial problems, worsened by a series of brutal winters, sent it into bankruptcy, and much of the line was abandoned in the 1920s. The last segment through Park County closed in 1937.
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Images on this panel:

Photo: Ute Camp
Ute encampment in South Park, 1870s
Colorado Historical Society

Photo: People on Porch
Before the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s, stage lines provided passenger and freight service to and from South Park. Located on the east side of Kenosha Pass and built in the early 1860s, Kenosha House (seen here in the 1870s) served as a stage station and operated through the late 1890s.
Colorado Historical Society

Photo: Ranch panorama
Salt Works Ranch, 1988. Organized in 1862, the Colorado Salt Works processed this mineral from South Park’s natural salt springs. In 1869 Mary and Charles Hall shifted their focus from salt production to ranching. Today, part of the Salt Works plant (lower right) still stands on the property.
Colorado Historical Society

Photo: Train Engine and People
Denver, South Park & Pacific climbing Boreas Pass, 1880s. Today’s auto road from Como to Breckenridge basically follows DSP&P’s Highline Route, constructed to compete with the D&RGW for the lucrative Leadville market.
Colorado Historical Society

Photo: Train hauling ties
Hauling rail ties over Kenosha Pass, 1879. Though today not a single mile of active track serves Park County, this region owes much to the DSP&P and other railroads that once crisscrossed the landscape. Just across US 285 from this exhibit you can walk a trail along reconstructed railroad ties and learn more about this area’s history.
Colorado Historical Society

PANEL 2 TITLE: CATTLE AND KILNS

South Park Ranching

The whole of the plains and the parks in the mountains of Colorado are the finest of pastoral lands. . . . Stock fattens and thrives on them the year round.
—John Evans, 1867

Over time, South Park’s grasses proved more valuable than its gold mines. The bison and other game that for centuries had thrived in these pastures gave way after 1860 to sheep and cattle—some 60,000 head by 1885. Local ranchers found ready markets at nearby mining camps, and after 1879 they shipped their stock east on the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad. Nearly 150 outfits operated here, though the larger ones were usually more prosperous—Samuel Hartsel’s ranch alone occupied 12,000 acres. The harsh winters of the late 1880s thinned the herds, and ensuing years brought fluctuating prices, the railroad’s demise, and government grazing regulations. In the late twentieth century, thirsty Front Range cities began buying up South Park’s water draining the area of this precious resource. Yet, ranching holds on. It still remains an important part of the basin’s economy—a lasting piece of the area’s heritage.

Dake Charcoal Kilns
Leadville’s silver kings would not have reigned without the labors of humble Dake. This short-lived community, founded two miles northeast of here in 1883, produced charcoal to fuel the smelters of Denver and Leadville. Nearly all three hundred residents were thus employed—most in chopping down trees, others in tending the twenty-seven kilns that cooked the timber to produce charcoal. The sooty fuel had a lowly reputation, but since the preferred alternative, coke, was expensive and difficult to keep in supply, Dake never wanted for customers. The charcoal operation churned out fuel by the ton, almost completely stripping Kenosha Pass of trees in the process. But when the silver kings fell, so did Dake; the Panic of 1893 shuttered the smelters, and by the end of that year the charcoal town lay abandoned.
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Images on this panel:

Drawing of ranch
Samuel Hartsel is credited with introducing high-quality, purebred shorthorn cattle to Colorado. His ranch, pictured here in 1888, became a nucleus for settlement, boasting bunkhouses, a blacksmith shop, a trading post, and hotel.
Colorado Historical Society

Photo: cattle
Southwest of Jefferson, 1929
Colorado Historical Society

Photo: color postcard of sheep
Unstable cattle prices in the 1920s gave rise to another industry that capitalized on South Park’s wide-open spaces—sheep ranching. By 1929 sheep outnumbered cattle in the valley by nearly three and a half to one, and the industry flourished until the 1960s.
Colorado Historical Society

Photo: Kilns
Charcoal kilns line the DSP&P tracks at Webster (about three miles east of Dake), 1898. Twelve kilns operated here compared to twenty-seven at Dake. (No photos exist of Dake’s kilns.)
Denver Public Library, Western History Collection


PANEL 3 TITLE: KENOSHA PASS COUNTRY
Regional map with the following text identifying places of historical interest, in no particular order:

Fairplay’s South Park City Museum is an outdoor museum containing thirty-two authentic buildings and a variety of artifacts relating to Colorado’s gold-fever days of the 1860s. Seven of the buildings are on their original sites; the others have been moved from other South Park locations.

Though Colorado’s first and perhaps only salt works did not operate for long, Charles and Mary Hall’s Salt Works Ranch became a center of activity in late nineteenth-century South Park. Still partially standing, the salt processing building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Today, this working ranch is recognized as a Colorado Centennial Farm, having remained in the same family for more than 100 years.

Named for the original home of many Italian coal miners and stonemasons who lived in the area, Como was a busy division point on the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad funneling people and goods to Denver, Leadville, and Gunnison. During the 1880s and 1890s up to five hundred people lived here.

As the backbone of the Rocky Mountains, the Continental Divide separates the waters flowing to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Completed in 1963, Dillon Dam created a five-square-mile reservoir with a capacity of 254,036 acre-feet. Today, Dillon Reservoir plays a major role in supplying Denver and its suburbs with more than 20 percent of their water. Much of this water flows through the Roberts Tunnel discharging near Grant on the east side of Kenosha Pass.

Founded in 1859, Breckenridge experienced its share of boom and bust—including the discovery of Colorado’s largest gold nugget in 1887, the end of dredge mining in 1942, and its success as a ski resort and year-round destination. Come walk its National Register Historic District (strict building codes have preserved many Victorian-era buildings) or visit the Summit County Historical Society museum or one of its regional properties.

Winding through old logging and mining areas, the Guanella Pass Scenic and Historic Byway takes travelers through a variety of Colorado scenery. The lower elevations are thick with pine, spruce, fir, and aspen trees. Higher up the road runs through broad meadows, until it crests well above timberline.

The Georgetown–Silver Plume National Landmark Historic District has four major components—Georgetown, the Georgetown Loop, Silver Plume, and the surrounding landscape dotted with mine dumps and old structures. In Georgetown visit the Hamill House, the Hotel de Paris, and the Georgetown Energy Museum. Visit the Lebanon Mine Complex as part of a Loop tour, or stop by the George Rowe Museum in Silver Plume.

Millions of years ago, volcanic activity trapped this region’s ancient plant and animal life. Today, the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is internationally recognized for its variety and number of fossils."

Group or Groups Responsible for Placement: Colorado Department of Transportation; Federal Highway Administration; Colorado Department of Wildlife; Colorado Historical Society County or City: Park Date Dedicated: 2001 Check here for Web link(s) for additional information: [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log User Rating   10/02/2020 mr.volkswagen visited it