File:The Summit of Raton Pass at Dusk, Showing the Welcome to Colorado Sign.jpg

English: Reaching the summit of Raton Pass, at an elevation of 7,834 feet, one might easily assume that this is the crucial historical link crossing the Sangre de Cristos on the Santa Fe Trail, particularly since this spot has been designated a National Historic Landmark. But the original route sits about a half mile to the west, a winding, narrow dirt road. That original route is now blocked off on both sides and privately owned, so it’s not possible to traverse.

Like so many roadways in Colorado, the railroad followed once the route had been established as necessary. In 1908, the Belen Cutoff was completed, allowing freight traffic to use an easier route. Today only one passenger train per day crosses the pass, and no freight at all. This puts Raton Pass in position as an ever more important transportation route for vehicles, and ever less important for trains. One of the favorite stories of the pass is the fact that “Uncle Dick” Wooten, a frontiersman from Virginia who spent most of his life in Colorado, set it up as a toll road in 1865 or 1866. That certainly did happen, but it was far from unusual, with over forty roads in Colorado being approved as toll roads by the Colorado Territorial Government between 1861 and 1867.1 Prior to that, the Nebraska State Legislature even approved a very limited number of tolls for bridges and roads that later ended up being in Colorado.

What was perhaps a little more unusual was that Wooten hired Ute Indians to blaze the twenty-seven miles of roadway required to cut the travel time down to two or three days, from the weeks required to cross on the original Santa Fe Trail.2 His toll road lasted until 1879, when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad purchased the land from him, giving him and his wife a lifetime pension.