Colorado Mountains, Skiing, Ghost Towns, 4×4, and Vacations

On your next Colorado vacation, the 21 mile journey over Boreas Pass is well worth the trip. The Pass is a well maintained two-wheel drive road where you will have spectacular views of the Blue River Valley as you cross the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  The Aspen and Pine trees make beautiful photographs and the wildflowers are more than abundant throughout the summer.

You can tour the restored buildings at the summit of Boreas Pass during the summer months and read about the difficulties of life at 12,000 feet above sea-level.

Originally, known as Breckenridge Pass, the pass was actually a trail used by burro pack trains and foot travelers to carry supplies across the rugged Colorado Rocky Mountains.

In 1860, men from the Breckenridge and South Park sides of the pass carved out a wagon road.  At the top of the pass is Ken’s Cabin (originally known as Wagon Cabin) which is one of the oldest buildings in the Breckenridge area.

The railroad reached the summit of Boreas Pass in late 1881. Winters were so harsh that the Pass was renamed Boreas Pass, for the God of the North Wind.   The rails reached Breckenridge in September of 1882 and Leadville by December of 1884.

In 1882 during the height of Colorado’s railroading, the settlement of Boreas came into existence.  A small section house was built next to Ken’s Cabin for the men working on that section of the railroad and their families.

By 1886, a two-room telegraph office, a two story section house, and a storehouse were built.  There was also a stone engine house with a wrough-iron turntable, coal bin, and a wooden water tank inside.  Unfortunately, this engine house was destroyed by a fire in 1909.  A 997 foot snow shed was built to keep out drifting snows.  In January of 1896, a post office was built and was known as the highest post office in the United States until it closed in January of 1906.  In 1898 a depot was built onto the snow shed for the comfort of boarding passengers.

The settlement of Boreas was thriving and the winters were brutal.  The wind always blew and the snow never ended.  Trains and tracks were under 10 feet of snow during the winter of 1898-99.  The Pass was shut down from February 6 to April 24, 1899 until the snow could be removed.  Snow removal was a never-ending job for most of each year.

With the steep grades and sharp turns of Boreas Pass, train wrecks were a constant threat. To retrieve runaway trains that derailed, temporary spur tracks were built. Cables, ropes, pulleys and chains were the used to retrieve the trains. In January 1936, two locomotives descending from the Pass at about 20 mph hit a frozen snowdrift and plunged down the mountain. One of the engines slid 208 feet from the track; the other stopped 50 feet from the track.

Although Boreas Station was all but deserted by 1905, the railroad workers remained at the Pass to keep the tracks open and the trains running.   By the 1930’s the route over the Boreas Pass was abandoned and the buildings eventually fell into disrepair.  Between 1952 and 1956, the rails were removed and Boreas Pass was converted into a road.  The US Forest Service and the Colorado Historic Society brought the buildings on the summit of the Pass back to life again in 1993.

Directions: The Pass begins 10 miles northeast of Fairplay at the junction of Highway 285 and County Road 33.