Rollins Pass, elevation , is a mountain pass and active archaeological siteLaBelle, Jason M. & Pelton, Spencer R. "Communal hunting along the Continental Divide of Northern Colorado: Results from the Olson game drive (5BL147)", 2013 in the Southern Rocky Mountains of north-central Colorado in the United States. The pass is located on and traverses the Continental Divide of the Americas at the crest of the Front Range southwest of Boulder, and is approximately east and opposite the resort in Winter Park, in the general area between Winter Park and Rollinsville. Rollins Pass is at the boundaries of Boulder, Gilpin, and Grand counties. Over the past 10,000 years, the pass provided a route over the Continental Divide between the Atlantic Ocean watershed of South Boulder Creek (in the basin of the South Platte River) with the Pacific Ocean watershed of the Fraser River, a tributary of the Colorado River.
The abandoned rail route over Rollins Pass was nominated for and accepted into the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 for its significant events and engineering feats achieved through early-20th-century railroading. In 1997, additional areas on the pass were added to the National Register of Historic Places to include achievements made by John Q.A. Rollins and his toll wagon road that traversed the pass.
In 2012, Rollins Pass was listed as one of the most endangered sites in Colorado.
Naming Rollins Pass is the sole, official name recognized by both the United States Geological Survey and the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN); a decision card was issued on Wednesday, December 7, 1904. The pass was first known as Boulder Pass—one of two variant names accepted by the BGN—the other being Rogers Pass. The pass was also known infrequently as Rollinsville Pass."Steamboat Pilot July 26, 1929 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org."Steamboat Pilot November 1, 1929 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org."Steamboat Pilot July 30, 1981 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org."Steamboat Pilot July 29, 1896 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org."Steamboat Pilot June 25, 1913 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org."Steamboat Pilot September 29, 1915 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org."Walsenburg World July 18, 1912 Edition 02 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org."Clear Creek Topics March 29, 1902 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org.
In Grand County, Rollins Pass is sometimes given the sobriquet of Corona Pass, named for the apex station at the summit, Corona. This nomenclature dispute provoked the ire of former railroaders; in fact, Frederick Bauer remarked, "[Rollins Pass is] incorrectly called Corona Pass by neophytes and some locals." It is inconsistent, as well as atypical, to refer to mountain passes by the names of their apex stations. Fremont Pass, for example, is not named Climax Pass; nor is La Veta Pass referred to as Fir Pass.
Elevation The elevation of commonly attributed to Rollins Pass (note the McClure sketch later in this article) "reflects what might have been an original survey value obtained during either the late wagon road era or early railroad construction. ... The actual benchmarked survey elevation value of the summit of Rollins Pass is 11,671 feet (NGVD29), obtained during a 1952 second-order level line run from State Bridge to Denver by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (predecessor to the National Geodetic Survey). When adjusted to NAVD88, the elevation is, without doubt, 11,676.79 feet."
Description Rollins Pass has been in continuous use for millennia: first as a sprawling and internationally significant game drive complex that was hand-constructed and used by Paleoindians more than 10,000 years ago through the mid-19th century; followed by nearly two decades as a wagon road from 1862 to 1880; as a rail route (under survey, construction, and later operational) from 1880 to 1928; as a primitive automobile road from 1936 to 1956; and since September 1, 1956, as a seasonal, unpaved motor vehicle road.
The pass is traversed by Paleo-Indian and Native American game-drive complexes, hiking trails (including the Continental Divide Trail), an airway radial (V8), a Xcel Energy high-pressure natural gas pipeline, and two roads:
The first dirt road is the Rollinsville and Middle Park Wagon Road, created in the early 1860s; this route predates the rail line. This road employed much of what would later become Rollins Pass, particularly above timberline. This original wagon route, now called the Boulder Wagon Road, took a steep counterclockwise route up Guinn Mountain, encircling Yankee Doodle Lake before continuing to head west/northwest to proceed over the summit and down into the Middle Park valley near present-day Winter Park and Fraser. The second dirt road is mostly the former roadbed of the Denver, Northwestern, and Pacific Railway, which later became the Denver and Salt Lake Railway. This high-altitude railroad grade was part of the Moffat Road, and this route was replaced (and later abandoned) by the opening of the Moffat Tunnel in 1928; the rails and ties were removed from Rollins Pass in 1936; however, some rail segments as well as ties, made of pine, oak, and walnut, can still be seen, along with planking used for snowsheds.Griswold, P.R. "The Moffat Road"Bollinger, Rev. Edward T., "Rails that climb"
Geology The Front Range was created by the Laramide Orogeny, a major mountain-building event, which occurred between 70 and 40 million years ago. Tectonic activity during the Cenozoic Era changed the Ancestral Rocky Mountains via block uplift, eventually forming the Rocky Mountains as they exist today. The geologic make-up of Rollins Pass and the surrounding areas was also affected by deformation and erosion during the Cenozoic Era. Many sedimentary rocks from the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras exist in the basins surrounding the pass.
History Prehistoric and Native American use
For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples used Rollins Pass as a route across the Continental Divide and as an alpine hunting landscape. Archaeological research has documented an extensive complex of stone walls, cairns, and hunting blinds that were constructed and reused over long periods to help guide large game, including elk and bighorn sheep, toward waiting hunters. The complex is an important example of high-altitude communal hunting in the Southern Rocky Mountains, and continuing archaeological research is refining understanding of its age, extent, and cultural significance.
Rollins Pass as a late-prehistoric and historic Native American route Rollins Pass has a documented history as a migratory route, hunting trail, and battlefield among the late prehistoric and contact-period Indians of Colorado.
Rollins Pass as an historic wagon road The first recorded use of the pass (then known as Boulder Pass or Rollinsville Pass) by a wagon train was in 1862, nearly 14 years before Colorado became a state. Directions for wagons traveling from Rollinsville to Winter Park were published in newspapers."Out West September 19, 1872 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org. John Quincy Adams Rollins, a Colorado pioneer from a family of pioneers, constructed a toll wagon road over the pass in the 1873,"Rocky Mountain News Weekly August 6, 1873 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org. providing a route between the Colorado Front Range and Middle Park; subsequently, Rollins Pass was named after John Q.A. Rollins.
John Quincy Adams Rollins John Q.A. Rollins was born on Sunday, June 16, 1816, in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, and was the son of a New England minister. Rollins is described as being a strong man and an extensive character, popular with almost everybody whom he did not owe, and his one predominating fault was his failure to pay his debts. Newspapers cited that he was so careless about his credit that he could not keep track of all his creditors; in turn, they had trouble keeping track of him. Rollins died on Wednesday, June 20, 1894, and is buried in Colorado's oldest operating cemetery, Riverside, in block 5, lot 12. His simple tombstone reads, "John Q.A. Rollins | Colorado Pioneer of Rollinsville and Rollins Pass." Colonel Rollins' newspaper obituary mentions, "No man in Northern Colorado was better known nor counted more warm friends than John Q.A. Rollins."
Middle Park and South Boulder Wagon Road Company
John Rollins capitalized on this and received approval for his toll wagon road on Tuesday, February 6, 1866. The Council and House of Representatives of Colorado Territory passed an act signed by the governor approving the wagon road as the "Middle Park and South Boulder Wagon Road Company". Records reflect the incorporators as "John Q.A. Rollins, Perley Dodge, Frederic C. Weir." Yet, the "Rollins road" through Boulder Pass was not completed until the first half of August 1873."Craig Empire June 30, 1926 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org."Colorado Miner (Weekly) November 21, 1874 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org. While the newspaper articles stated that "wagons can now be taken over this route without the slightest trouble," other articles countered, "the trail ... is splendid for horses but fearful for wagons" and "the rocks, mud-holes, bogs, creeks, boulders and sidling ledges of that road, can only be appreciated by being seen, the only wonder is that a wagon can be taken over at all." Other articles were a bit more grim, referring to the wagon road as a "little more than the rocky ridge of a precipice along which lurked death and disaster." Newspaper records reflect on Friday, June 12, 1874, that James Harvey Crawford along with his wife, Margaret Emerine Bourn Crawford,"Steamboat Pilot May 26, 1915 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org. made pioneer history as the first (nonindigenous) couple to cross Rollins Pass by wagon, and Mrs. Crawford is credited as the first woman to cross the pass."Steamboat Pilot June 15, 1939 — Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection". Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org. That day held many challenges, including a two-hour blizzard, "which was of terrific violence", and she remarked in a newspaper article, "the bumping was so hard I thought I was nearly dead." As there was no formal road constructed from "Yankee Doodle Camp on up, only an Indian trail, she and the children had been left behind while her husband took the wagon pulled by a pair of mules, a team of horses and a yoke of oxen on up and camped. Then he came back for her with the team and the running gear only of the wagon, and she had to hold the children on someway, despite the dreadful bumping" with the "wagon almost standing on end."
The pass was used heavily in the latter half of the 19th century by settlers, and at one time as many as 12,000 cattle at a time were driven over the pass. The wagon road had one tollgate and the following rate structure: "For each vehicle drawn by two animals, two dollars and fifty cents; for each additional two animals, twenty-five cents; each vehicle drawn by one animal, one dollar and fifty cents; horse and rider and pack animals, twenty-five cents; loose stock, five cents per head ... horse with rider, or pack animal with pack, ten cents." The cost for nonpayment of a toll was the same as causing intentional damage to the road: $25.