Raton Pass

The pass went to whoever dug first. In March 1878 the Santa Fe and the Denver & Rio Grande were racing for Raton, and the Santa Fe's locating engineer, William Ray Morley, reached Uncle Dick Wootton's house on the toll road at midnight to find a dance under way. Warned that a Rio Grande crew was coming, he handed out picks and shovels, and Wootton and his guests were grading when the rivals arrived. Wootton gave up the road he had run since 1865 for a lifetime pass and a pension the railroad kept paying his widow.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fishers Peak State Park — 8.3 mi
  The flat-topped landmark over Trinidad and Raton Pass, a trophy-hunting ranch until 2019 and Colorado's second-largest state park since 2020, with a summit trail since 2023.
• Ludlow Tent Colony Site — 24 mi
  The coal miners' union bought the ground, raised a granite monument over the pit in 1918, and restored it after someone knocked the heads off its figures in 2003.

More markers nearby

• The Santa Fe Trail — 12 mi