Boreas Pass and the Highest Railroad in the Country
Near Breckenridge, Colorado
High above Breckenridge to the southeast runs one of the most improbable feats of nineteenth century engineering, the railroad grade over Boreas Pass. In the early eighteen eighties, the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad pushed a slender three-foot narrow gauge line up and over this pass to reach the booming mines of Breckenridge, arriving in eighteen eighty-two or eighteen eighty-three. The pass tops out at about eleven thousand four hundred eighty-one feet, and a railroad official named it Boreas after the Greek god of the north wind, a fitting choice for a place lashed by ferocious winter storms.
At the windswept summit the railroad built an entire little settlement, called Boreas, complete with a depot, a section house, an engine house, and long wooden snow sheds to keep the tracks from vanishing under drifts. It stood as one of the highest railroad stations in the country. Crews battled the snow here year round, and telling stories of trains buried for days was practically a local sport.
The trains ran until the late nineteen thirties, when the last cars crossed and the rails were pulled up. Today the old railroad bed has become Boreas Pass Road, a gentle graded route you can drive or bike, following the exact path where straining little locomotives once climbed into the clouds.
