SAGUACHE COUNTY — Long before a turnpike connected Boulder and Denver in 1952 or express lanes started opening up and down the Front Range and into the mountains, Otto Mears was crafting ways to charge for easier travel in Colorado in the late 1800s.
Otto Mears (Image courtesy History Colorado-Denver, 2022.57.3492)I stumbled on his name when my wife and I — children of the TV generation — went on a Sunday drive in search of Bonanza, Colorado. We didn’t find the Cartwrights, but we did get our first introduction to Otto Mears and his toll road empire, which started in the 1870s to connect commerce in the San Luis and Arkansas River valleys.
After doing a bit of reading about Mears, it’s no wonder this 11-mile stretch between Bonanza and the town of Shirley later earned him the moniker “Pathfinder of the San Juans.” The Otto Mears Toll Road west of Poncha Pass tops out around 11,230 feet and was the first of more than 450 miles of roads he built across southern Colorado.
Before he was 11, Mears had been orphaned, taken from Russia to England (he was born to a Jewish Russian woman and a Jewish Englishman), then shipped to New York City. From there he went to live with an uncle in San Francisco and took the arduous trip from New York to San Francisco via Panama (yes, before the canal). He later fought the Confederacy as part of the California Volunteers and landed in New Mexico before making his way into southern Colorado.
The times I’ve traveled the Otto Mears Toll Road (and all of our high country passes and dirt roads), I think about not only building the road, but those hardy enough to travel it. This time, we were bouncing around in my 2000 Jeep Wrangler, which has off-road tires and a lifted suspension, and I thought about wagons or people on horseback getting that high in the hills.
The last of the snow is tucked in the trees above 11,200 feet along the Otto Mears Toll Road on June 8. When the 11-mile road was opened in the 1880s by Otto Mears, it served as a major route for transporting goods between the San Luis and Arkansas River valleys. (David Krause, The Colorado Sun)The rugged road between the mining towns started to become obsolete when a 7.5-mile Rawley-Shirley aerial tramway was built between Bonanza and Shirley in the 1920s. What a ride that must have been.
As with many frontiersmen of the time, Mears also had a role in removing Native Americans from Colorado, and his Colorado empire struggled during the Panic of 1893. But his business fortunes rebounded and he made his way to both coasts after leaving Colorado. He died in California in 1931.
Mount Ouray and the Silver Creek valley as seen from the top of the Otto Mears Toll Road in southern Colorado on Oct. 8, 2023. The 11-mile road was built by Mears, who also worked with Chief Ouray, in the 1880s to connect the San Luis and Arkansas River valleys. (David Krause, The Colorado Sun)You can certainly go into a rabbithole researching Mears, (hey, it’s better than doomscrolling), and I’ve ordered a book about his work (“Otto Mears, Pathfinder of the San Juans” by Ruby G. Williamson).
Here is perhaps one of the more encompassing writings on Mears, but certainly other historical groups — the Jewish Museum of the American West, History Colorado, Colorado Railroad Museum, San Juan County Historical Society — have stories to tell of the man who lived to be 91, spent time in Colorado politics and helped design the Colorado Capitol. And, as our Jason Blevins wrote this past ski season, the Mears family’s pioneer spirit still drives Wolf Creek ski area.
The stories of Colorado and Otto Mears have so many twists and turns, much like the wagon road that started a turnpike phenomenon.
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