Trail Ridge Road: The Highway to the Sky
Near Grand Lake, Colorado
North of town, the pavement begins to climb toward one of the great drives in North America. Trail Ridge Road is the stretch of United States Highway Thirty Four that crosses Rocky Mountain National Park, connecting Grand Lake in the west with Estes Park in the east. At its high point it reaches twelve thousand one hundred eighty three feet above sea level, which makes it the highest continuous paved road in North America.
Eleven miles of it run above eleven thousand feet, and four of those miles climb past twelve thousand feet, up onto the bare, wind scoured alpine tundra where trees cannot grow. Construction began in nineteen twenty nine, and the road reached Fall River Pass by the summer of nineteen thirty two. It was finished all the way through the Kawuneeche Valley down to Grand Lake in nineteen thirty eight, with crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps doing much of the labor.
The road replaced an older, terrifying single track route with grades as steep as sixteen percent. Because it is so high, Trail Ridge Road is only open from late spring to autumn. When it is open, it draws millions of travelers a year up into a world above the trees, where the tundra plants at your feet may be older than the country itself.
