Berthoud Pass

The bronze gives Edward Berthoud two dates, and they were two errands. In May 1861 the Golden engineer found the pass while looking for a railroad route, and judged it fit only for wagons. In July the Central Overland company sent him back with Jim Bridger to lay out a stage road to Salt Lake; the mail went by South Pass in Wyoming instead. The first wagon crossed on November 18, 1874, over a toll road later sold at a sheriff's sale. The ski area that ran Colorado's first rope tow here in 1937 has gone the same way.

What the plaque says

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado Berthoud Pass Across Continental Divide between South Platte and Colorado River drainages Altitude 11,314 feet Discovered by Capt. E.L. Berthoud Colorado pioneer May 12, 1861. Surveyed by Berthoud and Jim Bridger July, 1861. Toll road opened 1874. Improved highway opened 1923. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the State Highway Department and the U.S Forest Service 1929

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Georgetown Loop Railroad — 7.7 mi
  Scrapped in 1939 for $450, rebuilt a century after it first opened, and running again over the bridge that crosses its own track.
• Hotel de Paris — 7.7 mi
  A French cook's hotel in a silver town, kept for twenty-five years by a man whose name turned out not to be his own.
• Central City Opera House — 14 mi
  Built by a mining town for itself in 1878, outshone by Tabor within four years, and reopened in 1932 with Lillian Gish.
• Mount Blue Sky — 16 mi
  Rosalie for a painter, Evans for a governor, and since 2023 a name the Cheyenne and Arapaho asked for, at the top of North America's highest paved road.

More markers nearby

• Georgetown Mining Region — 7.6 mi
• McClellan Opera House — 7.7 mi
• Hotel de Paris — 7.7 mi