Floyd Hill: The Road Builder's Ridge
Near Idaho Springs, Colorado
The ridge looming above Clear Creek Canyon west of Denver carries the name of Merril H. Floyd, who ran the Clear Creek Wagon Road Company in the eighteen sixties. Floyd owned a ranch on the hill and the surrounding land, and his company built the wagon road that was an early route into the mountain mining camps.
By eighteen seventy-three, a Colorado Central Railroad spur reached Floyd Hill. The railroad eventually pushed on to Idaho Springs and Georgetown, and Floyd's name stayed on the ridge. Today Interstate Seventy climbs the same terrain, millions of drivers per year tracing a path that a wagon-road entrepreneur first carved out of the granite.
