South Park

The bronze tells you what is spread before you, and Walt Whitman had already written it down. He crossed in 1879, the year the Denver, South Park and Pacific laid the first railroad over Kenosha Pass, and at the summit noted in Specimen Days that the park stretched fifty miles before him from ten thousand feet. The narrow-gauge track was torn up in the late 1930s, and much of the highway now runs on its grade. The pass's name is said to come from a stage driver, who named it for his hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

What the plaque says

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado Spread before you lies the famous South Park Entered by Kenosha Pass, elevation 10,000 feet The Bayou Salado of early trappers. Favorite Indian hunting ground and frequent battleground. Visited by Z.M. Pike in 1806. Crossed by J.C. Fremont in 1844. Permanent settlement inaugurated by gold discoveries in 1859. Erected by The State Historical Society of Colorado from The Mrs. J.N. Hall Foundation and by State Civil Service Employees of Colorado 1932

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Blue Sky — 14 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.
• South Park City Museum — 18 mi
  A mining town assembled in the 1950s from buildings hauled out of South Park's dying camps, by a Colorado Springs lawyer who wanted no imitation town.
• Georgetown Loop Railroad — 21 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 — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• Georgetown Mining Region — 21 mi
• Hotel de Paris — 21 mi
• McClellan Opera House — 21 mi