CHS road marker program : Marker text

COTOPAXI

Colorado Historical Society signs located at pulloff on north side of US-50 between Texas Creek & Cotopaxi-Lone Pine pulloff, installed 2001

PANEL 1 TITLE: __________________________

Ranching
Cattle ranchers were among the earliest full-time settlers in this region. They arrived as early as 1870, growing hay along the fertile banks of the Arkansas River and often trailing their herds over the ridge to graze in wide-open South Park. In addition to raising livestock, these pioneering ranches often functioned as hotels, stagecoach stops, general stores, and hospitals. They didn’t have to go far to find markets for their beef; the mining towns that boomed nearby here were full of hungry customers; and railroad service began after 1880, providing access to far-off cities. It was a profitable business but hardly an easy one: Blizzards, droughts, predators, cattle thieves, and collapsing prices all loomed as potential hazards. But while the mines now stand empty and the rail tracks lie dormant, ranching remains the sturdy backbone of Fremont County.

Rainbow Route

The completion of this road opens up a scenic paradise unequalled in any other state of the Union and unsurpassed by the scenic gems of the Old World.
— Governor George A. Carlson, on the opening of the Rainbow Route, 1915

Conceived in 1911 to lure automobile tourists to this area, the Rainbow Route cost quite a pot of gold to build. The dirt-surfaced highway ran 280 miles from Pueblo to Montrose, following old stagecoach roads and railroad grades much of the way. The twenty-two-mile stretch through Bighorn Sheep Canyon, just east of here, was among the most difficult to build. Convict laborers from the state penitentiary in Canon City had to hack through hard-rock cliffs by hand and cart off the rubble one wheelbarrow-load at a time. The segment opened in 1915, but it was such a rough ride that prudent travelers carried ropes and shovels to dig themselves out of the ditch. Six years later the road would reach the Continental Divide atop 11,386-foot Old Monarch Pass; transcontinental U.S. 50 had incorporated most of the Rainbow Route by the 1950s.

Photographs found on this panel:

Photo of Car on Rainbow Route
(Caption) Prior to reconstruction and oiling of Highway 50 in 1935, many stretches of the Rainbow Route were on the north side of the Arkansas River. Moving the road across the river destroyed many fertile fields, having a significant impact on economic possibilities and growth in Pleasant Valley.
Courtesy Local History Center, Cañon City Public Library

Photo of Labor Camp
(Caption) Convict labor camp, on the banks of the Arkansas River, early twentieth century. Convicts from the nearby State Penitentiary in Cañon City were used as a source of cheap labor for road construction on the Rainbow Route and throughout Colorado.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection

Photo of Sangre de Cristos
(Caption) The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, around 1910, prior to the construction of the Rainbow Route. The Pleasant Valley Fault created many unique geological formations on or near the earth’s surface. Western Fremont County owes much of its history to the exploration of mineral wealth.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection

Photo of Charcoal Kilns
(Caption) Wagon teams near Nathrop, Colorado (northwest of here), late nineteenth century. Dense forests provided a seemingly endless supply of piñon pine, burned in these bee-hive shaped ovens, to produce charcoal—a major industry in the area until the 1920s.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection

Photo of Hole in the Rock
(Caption) In the heart of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, the Rainbow Route contained some of the most difficult roads for reconstruction along 3,073-mile US 50.
Courtesy Local History Center, Cañon City Public Library

PANEL B TITLE: SALAD BOWL

Cotopaxi Jewish Colony
Forced from their homes by tsarist oppression, sixty- three Russian Jews arrived in Cotopaxi (about three miles west of here) in April 1882. Their sponsor, local mine magnate Emanuel Saltiel, had promised each a house, good farmland, and enough seed and equipment to plant crops. But the homes (only twelve in all) were scanty eight-by-eight-foot shacks, and the land was several miles distant, poorly watered, and littered with stone. After a disastrous harvest, many of the colonists spent the winter working for Saltiel, who needed cheap mine laborers (and may have intended all along to use the immigrants for that purpose). Eventually they found work with the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, and compassionate neighbors helped the colonists through the freezing winter. A failed crop the following year doomed the Cotopaxi Jewish colony. However, most of the twenty-two original families remained in Colorado, founding vibrant Jewish communities throughout the state.

The Utes
The Utes, Colorado’s oldest inhabitants, have lived here at least a thousand years, perhaps forever. Certainly they have been here since the state’s recorded history began; the earliest Spanish explorers found them in possession of the Central Rockies in the seventeenth century. They were one of the first tribes to acquire horses, and they used this advantage to broaden their territory and strengthen their claim upon it. By the early eighteenth century the Utes held everything from the Utah deserts to the plains of eastern Colorado. Skilled warriors and formidable defenders, they repelled all intruders until the late 1800s, when the lure of gold and silver brought American settlers in force. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Utes saw their vast domain reduced to two small reservations in Colorado and one in Utah.

Photographs found on this panel:

Photo of Kerr Stone Quarry
(Caption) Miners take a break at the Kerr Stone Quarry, early twentieth century. Rather than explosives, workers used special tools like wire saws to remove large slabs of rhyolite (a fine-grained form of granite) for large-scale construction.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection

Photo of Wellsville Hotsprings
(Caption) Trainloads of city folk traveled to the Wellsville Hot Springs to relax in its tranquil waters in the early 1900s. Before them, Ute Indians claimed just about every spring in Colorado; hot springs are an intrinsic part of Ute health and well being.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection

Photo of Cotopaxi Train Station
(Caption) As the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad inched up the Arkansas River, western Fremont County was already bustling. By 1880, farms and ranches were well established throughout the area.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection

Photo of Ute territory
(Caption) The Utes are a confederation of seven bands—the Mouache, Capote, Weenuche, Tabeguache, Grand River, Yampa, and Uintah. Generally speaking, today the Mouache and Capote comprise the Southern Utes, the Weenuche the Ute Mountain Utes, and the other four bands are considered the Northern Utes.
Colorado Historical Society

PANEL 3 TITLE: ARKANSAS RIVER COUNTRY

Regional map with the following text:

The Alpine Tunnel, about six miles northeast of Pitkin, provided train passage beneath the Continental Divide from 1882 to 1910.

As the backbone of the Rocky Mountains, the Continental Divide separates the waters flowing to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

The Cañon City Municipal Museum explores the lifestyles of pioneers who chose to make this area their home, while the Museum of Colorado Prisons offers visitors a peek at the living conditions of those incarcerated in Cañon City at the turn of the twentieth century.

Situated along the Arkansas River, Pueblo is one of Colorado's oldest settlements. Today, the city offers such varied attractions as the Union Avenue Historic District, the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center, the historic Rosemount Mansion, and the Colorado State Fair that is held every August.

The Pioneer Museum in Florence highlights the town’s industrial past. Ample coal and water made the town an optimal site for processing ore shipped via the Florence and Cripple Creek Railroad. At the turn of the twentieth century, the town had no less than nine reduction mills to handle the volume

Built in 1929, the world's highest suspension bridge allows visitors to cross the Royal Gorge—a 1,053-foot-deep chasm carved by the Arkansas River.

Measuring 14, 433 feet above sea level, Mount Elbert is Colorado’s highest peak. Of the sixty-eight "fourteeners"—14,000-foot-high mountains—in the continental United States, fifty-four are in Colorado, and fifteen stand in the Sawatch Range between Poncha Springs and Leadville.

In it's first 125 miles, the Arkansas River tumbles 5,000 vertical feet through open valleys, boulder-strewn canyons and the depths of the Royal Gorge. The Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area provides visitors with outstanding recreational opportunities while working to preserve the wealth of natural resources within the Arkansas River Valley.