Independence Pass, originally known as Hunter Pass, is a high mountain pass in central Colorado, United States. It is at elevation on the Continental Divide in the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains. The pass is midway between Aspen and Twin Lakes, on the border between Pitkin and Lake counties.
State Highway 82 traverses it, and after Cottonwood Pass to the south, is the second highest elevation of a paved Colorado state highway on a through road.State Highway 5, the highest paved road in North America, is a dead-end route reaching , just below the summit of Mount Blue Sky. The recently paved Pikes Peak Highway is another dead-end road and is only slightly lower, with an elevation of on the summit of the mountain. Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, part of U.S. Highway 34, reaches a maximum elevation of . It is also the second-highest pass with an improved road in the state, the fourth-highest paved road in the state and the second highest paved crossing of the Continental Divide in the U.S. Because of the heavy snowfall at its elevation, it is closed in wintertime, isolating Aspen from direct access from the east during the ski season.
When the pass is open in warmer weather, it is a popular destination. A scenic overlook near the pass allows visitors to take in the alpine tundra environment above treeline, and offers excellent views to the east of Mount Elbert, Colorado's highest peak and the second-highest mountain in the contiguous United States. Rock climbers are drawn to nearby bouldering opportunities, and informal paths lead to nearby mountain summits of even higher elevation. Backcountry skiers make use of the slopes during the late spring and early summer. Since 2011 the pass has been on the route of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge.
The pass was formed by glacial action and erosion in the region, and its first recorded sighting was by Zebulon Pike in 1806. Ferdinand Hayden surveyed it in 1873. As part of the Continental Divide, it was the limit of European settlement in the region at the time, with the land to the west reserved for the Ute people. Prospectors who defied governor Frederick Walker Pitkin's order crossed the pass on July 4, 1879, giving it its current name and setting up a similarly named village (now a ghost town) to its west. A toll road built across the pass was abandoned and neglected after a railroad connection was made to Aspen. A new road replaced it in the 1920s; portions of the old route can still be seen along the western approach. The Independence Pass Foundation, based in Aspen, works to repair damage to the pass's environment caused by both roads since 1984.
Geography At the pass, the main ridge of the Sawatch Range, and thus the Continental Divide, turns from running generally south to more southwesterly. North of the pass slopes rise to an unnamed peak a half-mile (1 km) away; a ridge of about the same length connects it to the nearest named summit, Twining Peak. To the south the ridge rises more gently around Mountain Boy Gulch to an unnamed summit distant. The first named summit in this direction is Grizzly Peak, Colorado's highest thirteener.
The terrain is level enough, and the ridge broad enough, to allow for a parking lot along the south side of Highway 82 at the height of land. The pass is split evenly between Pitkin and Lake counties, as well as White River and San Isabel national forests. Boundaries of the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness and the Mount Massive Wilderness are near the pass on the south and north respectively. The Hunter–Fryingpan Wilderness is also nearby.
West of the parking area is a small maintenance shed; on the east are toilet facilities. Both are maintained by the U.S. Forest Service. A paved walkway system extends to a pair of overlooks to the south allowing views in that direction over the Lake Creek valley to Mount Elbert, at the highest peak both in Colorado and the Rocky Mountains, and La Plata Peak, another fourteener and the state's fifth-highest peak. A wide dirt path continues southward along the ridge to an unnamed summit. Across the road a use path leads to the summits of the unnamed peak and Twining.
The pass comes roughly in the middle of a stretch of Highway 82 between the two winter gates, a corridor that is sometimes referred to in its entirety as Independence Pass. Aspen is to the west, with Twin Lakes to the east. Beyond Aspen the highway continues down the valley to the mouth of the Roaring Fork at Glenwood Springs. East of Twin Lakes Highway 82 continues a short distance to its eastern terminus at U.S. Highway 24, south of Leadville.
On both approaches, the dropoff is steep enough for Highway 82 to require a 6 percent grade and switchbacks: one on the west and three on the east. The former approach uses the narrow valley of the Roaring Fork River, a tributary of the Colorado, which rises from Independence Lake west of the pass. Its walls are steeper but shallower than those of the North Fork of Lake Creek, which drains into Twin Lakes Reservoir and the headwaters of the Arkansas River, on the east.
The pass is above tree line, so the surrounding terrain is alpine tundra. Open grassy expanses are occasionally broken by low shrubbery and bare patches of rock, particularly on the steep slope to the north. Snow lingers in some areas year-round. Adjacent to the road and parking area are small ephemeral pools on the southwest, with a larger, permanent one north of the road.
Climate Independence Pass has a subarctic climate (Köppen Dfc). Independence Pass experiences a large amount of snowfall, receiving an average of a year.
The weather station, Brumley, is situated on the eastern side of Independence Pass, at an elevation of .
History Like the surrounding mountains, the pass was created by glaciation and erosion over thousands of years. Before European-American settlers arrived, it was in the territory of the Ute Native American tribe. One of the earliest sightings by a European-American was in 1806, when Zebulon Pike, mapping the southern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, spotted the gap in what would later be named the Sawatch Range from the upper Arkansas River valley. It was not explored until Ferdinand Hayden and his team surveyed it in 1873. At the time it was known as Hunter Pass.
Three years later, in 1876, Colorado became a state. At the time settlement had pushed as far west from its capital, Denver, as Leadville. There was a variety of metals and minerals in the surrounding mountains, and some miners had become rich from their claims there. Those who had not been so successful heard about reports from prospectors of abundant silver deposits farther west, over the Divide.
Governor Frederick Walker Pitkin had ordered all settlers to stay to the east of the Divide, as the state and federal governments had not made peace with the Utes. Nevertheless, some defied the order, drawn by the prospect of mining fortunes. Settlers sometimes used Hunter Pass to get to Ashcroft, an early camp on Castle Creek above the Roaring Fork. However, they preferred to take the southern route over the slightly higher Cottonwood Pass through Taylor Park and then back over Taylor Pass to get there, even though this made for a journey, more than the direct route offered by Hunter Pass.
On July 4, 1879, a group from Leadville struck gold in the uppermost Roaring Fork valley below the pass. to the west, they established a settlement in the upper Roaring Fork Valley that eventually took the name Independence from the holiday on which it was established. The pass, the lake from which the Roaring Fork rises and another nearby mountain all took that name as well. The Twin Lakes and Roaring Fork Toll Company, established to build a road through to the camps in the lower Roaring Fork Valley, improved the original path over the pass sufficiently enough by 1880 that horses could be used for the trip.
Independence grew quickly when more gold was found in the nearby mountains. Within two years of its settlement permanent buildings had replaced the original tents, and a mining concern from Leadville had bought up all the claims. In two years they produced gold worth $190,000 ($ in modern dollars), funding the construction of a stamping mill and sawmill. In Aspen, farther down the valley, silver was found in even greater abundance than Independence's gold. B. Clark Wheeler, an early investor in those mines, funded the construction of a stage road to Leadville, the first road to cross the pass. It opened in November 1881, with winter already in full swing at the pass.
The road charged 25 cents ($ in modern dollars) for saddle horses and twice that for two-axle stagecoaches. The tolls, collected at three separate gates, primarily reflected the cost of retaining a large crew of men with snow shovels to keep the road open in wintertime; they were able to keep the road open through its first five winters. When the snow was too deep, sleighs were used instead. During the summer the stages were able to take the switchbacks at full speed, with dogs running in advance to warn other traffic. A typical voyage over the pass required 10–25 hours and five changes of horses.Gregory (1996), 150.
The road improved Independence's economy, since coaches often stopped there on the multi-day journey. However, the year of its construction would turn out to be the settlement's economic peak year. Gold production dropped off after 1884. Independence's decline in population, remote location and severe high-altitude winters cost it the opportunity to be seat of newly formed Pitkin County to Aspen, located on a larger plain farther down the river and growing much more rapidly due to the Colorado Silver Boom. When a rail connection was made to that city in 1888, the stage road fell into disuse, further hurting Independence's economy. All but one of the remaining residents decamped as a group to Aspen on improvised cross-country skis during the severe winter of 1899. The holdout, J.R. Williams, remained until 1920. The nearby Williams Mountains were named for him.
By then Aspen's prosperity had receded as well. Congress repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in response to the Panic of 1893, which took the largest buyer of the city's silver out of the market. Aspen began a period of steady decline known today as "the quiet years" as mines gradually closed down. The route over the pass remained useful, however. In 1895 a telephone line was routed over it.
Although its population had dropped below a thousand by the late 1920s, in 1927 the state replaced the stage road with what eventually became Highway 82. Unlike the stage road, it was closed during the winter months. While most of the old route was used for the new road, a portion of the original grade remains three miles below the pass on the east side. It includes the foundation of the gatekeeper's house and the remains of the gate.
During the Great Depression, another large public works project involved the pass. The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) oversaw the construction of the Twin Lakes Tunnel, which diverted water from Grizzly Reservoir, on Lincoln Creek, a southern tributary of the Roaring Fork, to Twin Lakes, where it was used for irrigation purposes by beet and watermelon farmers in the Rocky Ford and Ordway areas. Starting in 1935, a volume of were made available this way.
Another WPA effort recognized the pass as a scenic attraction. A travel guidebook for automobile touring produced by the Federal Writers' Project gave as one route the trip along Highway 82 from Twin Lakes. It noted the distinctive landscape of the pass: