Mount Evans: The Highest Paved Road in North America

The road to the summit of Mount Evans in the Arapaho National Forest opens each summer when the snow clears and closes each autumn when it returns. At fourteen thousand one hundred thirty feet, it ends at the highest paved road terminus in North America, a distinction the road has held since its completion in nineteen thirty.

The Lariat Loop and the Mount Evans Scenic Byway were built as a New Deal project, employing workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration during the Depression years. The engineering challenge was not just altitude but ice and frost heave, which destroy conventional road surfaces at elevation. The road surfaces have been rehabilitated multiple times over its history; the specific paving materials and methods have changed as understanding of high-altitude road engineering has improved.

At the summit parking area, anyone who gets out and walks will notice two things quickly. The first is that normal exertion requires more effort than it did at the trailhead, because the air at fourteen thousand feet carries roughly forty percent less oxygen than at sea level. The second is that mountain goats often stand near the parking lot, apparently unimpressed by the altitude or by the humans.

Mountain goats were introduced to Colorado in the twentieth century; they are not native to these mountains. They have adapted so successfully that they are now a management concern in some areas, where their grazing degrades alpine soil and plant communities that evolved without them.

The road is located within the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, the two forests combined under a single administration since nineteen forty-eight.