Ute Pass

The bronze faces the road that replaced everything it names. The Nuuchiu trail climbed from the springs at Manitou toward South Park, and the first wagon road followed it up the hillside from Rainbow Falls, across the way, until crews cut a grade along Fountain Creek in the early 1870s. The Colorado Midland laid rails up the pass in 1886 and 1887, opened the resort towns above, and quit in 1918. Between 1916 and 1928 the state rebuilt the canyon road for automobiles as a link in a coast-to-coast route, and this plaque marked the finished work.

What the plaque says

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado Ute Pass Named from the old Ute trail which led from South Park through Manitou to the plains traversed by the Utes on hunting and war expeditions improved highway built 1916-28 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

• Manitou Cliff Dwellings — 0.9 mi
  A pueblo from McElmo Canyon, dismantled, shipped across the Rockies by rail and set in cement into a dynamited overhang as cliff dwellings it never was.
• Pikes Peak Cog Railway — 1.0 mi
  A mattress maker's answer to a two-day mule ride, running since 1891, shut in 2017 and rebuilt from the rails up with Swiss trains in 2021.
• Garden of the Gods — 3.0 mi
  Named in 1859 by a surveyor who wanted no beer garden there, and given to the city in 1909 on the condition it stay free, dry and unbuilt.
• Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument — 20 mi
  Redwood stumps buried by a volcanic mudflow 34 million years ago, sold off by the piece for a century, and saved in 1969 by scientists ready to lie down in front of bulldozers.

More markers nearby

• Old Fort and Stockade — 3.4 mi
• Log House — 3.8 mi
• Colorado City — 3.8 mi
• Old Stone Fort — 16 mi