Kenosha Pass - Description

Description

The pass is easily traversable by most vehicles, never reaching above the treeline and featuring easily-negotiable curves along an amply wide highway. The approach on the eastern side is fairly gentle, ascending from near Grant up a gulch at the headwaters of the North Fork. The western side of the pass has a steeper ascent, winding up the flank of a mountainside east of the town of Jefferson. An overlook on the west side of the pass offers a panoramic view of South Park. The top of the pass is nearly flat and surrounded by the Pike National Forest, with a National Forest Service campground on the summit.

The pass was used by Ute bands to reach the hunting grounds of South Park. In the 19th century the pass was used by white trappers to traverse the Front Range. During the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of the 1860s the pass was heavily used by prospectors eager to reach the placer gold fields at the headwaters of the South Platte near Fairplay and other South Park mining communities. The increase in traffic led to the widening of the trail into a wagon road; during the Colorado Silver Boom the pass became one of the main routes of entry for eager immigrants to Leadville, Breckenridge, and Aspen.

The Colorado Trail crosses the summit of Kenosha Pass. The trail portion near the campground and heading northwest is popular with mountain bike enthusiasts and hikers.

In 1879 the pass was traversed by the narrow gauge Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad, providing the first rail link between Denver and the South Park mining communities such as Fairplay (the tracks were removed by 1937, but the modern highway essentially follows the railroad route over the pass). During this same year of 1879, the poet Walt Whitman crossed the pass and described its summit with these words, later published in Specimen Days:

I jot these lines literally at Kenosha summit, where we return, afternoon, and take a long rest, 10,000 feet above sea-level. At this immense height the South Park stretches fifty miles before me. Mountainous chains and peaks in every variety of perspective, every hue of vista, fringe the view...so the whole Western world is, in a sense, but an expansion of these mountains.