Independence Pass

Independence Pass carries State Highway 82 over the Continental Divide at 12,095 feet between Twin Lakes and Aspen. It was Hunter Pass until July 4, 1879, when a party of prospectors, defying an order from Governor Frederick Pitkin, crossed it and found gold in a meadow at the head of the Roaring Fork, and named both the strike and the pass for the day. The town of Independence grew up on the west side, at about 10,900 feet, and by the early 1880s held several hundred people, perhaps more than a thousand.

Leadville miners spent the winter of 1879 and 1880 outfitting for the rush to the Roaring Fork and went over in February on long Norwegian skis and snowshoes. A toll company put some 250 men to work on a road, and on November 1, 1881, the Independence Pass toll road opened to through traffic, with sixty Aspen-bound wagons a day and scheduled stages from Leadville; within a week the snow had them on sleighs. The road and the town both faded once the railroads reached Aspen in 1887 and 1888. Independence was renamed several times in attempts to revive it and was empty within a few decades.

The state took over the road in the 1920s. Since then it has closed every winter, usually from late October or early November until late May, and vehicles longer than 35 feet are barred at all times because of the narrow curves on the Aspen side. Aspen Historical Society volunteers and the Forest Service began stabilizing the ghost town's cabins and mill in the 1970s and 1980s, and they stand beside the highway three miles west of the summit.