Marshall Pass

Marshall Pass sits on the Continental Divide in Colorado, and historian Marshall Sprague counted it among the "great gates" through the Rocky Mountains. This book tells how it became the key to the Gunnison country.

The setting is the early 1880s. General William Jackson Palmer's Denver and Rio Grande and Governor John Evans's Denver, South Park and Pacific were racing each other to reach the booming Gunnison country. The prize was the mineral wealth of the San Juan Mountains and the chance to become a transcontinental route.

According to the book's description, Marshall Pass decided the race in the Rio Grande's favor. For seven years afterward the Rio Grande was the only transcontinental line through Colorado. Our catalogue lists the book as published in 2020 and files it under Gunnison.

Marshall Pass suits readers of Colorado railroad history, and in particular anyone curious about the narrow gauge competition between two railroads over one mountain crossing. It will also interest people who drive or hike the old railroad grade, and those who follow how the Gunnison country and the San Juan mines were connected to the outside world. We have no author or table of contents on file, so we can't describe its chapters.

The pass takes its name from Lt. William L. Marshall of the Wheeler Survey, who is credited with finding it and naming it in 1873. A toll road over it opened in 1880, with stagecoach service between Gunnison and the Arkansas River.

In 1881 the Denver and Rio Grande Western built its narrow gauge mainline across the pass. Wikipedia describes this as Colorado's first railroad crossing of the Continental Divide, completed before the Denver, South Park and Pacific finished the Alpine Tunnel. The Gunnison Division line closed in 1955 and the rails were removed that year. A gravel road now follows the old railroad route over the pass.

Source: Wikipedia, Marshall Pass