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View search results on mapCrushed rock from the Henderson Mine, ten miles east, exits at the west portal of the largest underground mine conveyor tunnel in the nation. The conveyor belt was installed in 2000, replacing an automated rail car system that had operated in the tunnel for a few decades. The conveyor runs for another five miles from the west portal to the mill.
The Henderson Molybdenum Mill process the rock that comes out of the Henderson Mine, 15 miles east, via a ten mile long underground tunnel. The mill crushes the rock into powder and uses flotation and other methods to produce concentrated forms of molybdenum. The material is shipped from here to a finishing plant in Iowa, and to other processors, who use it in lubricants and metals.
The nearby and currently active Henderson mine opened in 1976, expanding deeper into an underground ore body that had been mined for decades before that. The old mining area, referred to as the Urad mine site, closed in 1974, after 48 million pounds of molybdenum was produced by companies that were absorbed into Climax Molybdenum. Since then, Urad has become one of the largest mine reclamation and remediation projects in the state, addressing groundwater and other contamination issues.
Interstate 70 crosses the Continental Divide inside the Johnson and Eisenhower Tunnels. The Eisenhower Tunnel, now the westbound lane, was built first, opening in 1973. Six years later the Johnson Tunnel opened next to it, and the highway was divided. The tunnels are just under two miles long, and cross 1,470 feet underneath the Divide.
Next to Interstate 70, and above it, is the Loveland Ski Area, one of the closest ski areas to Denver, with chairlifts that approach the Continental Divide above the east portal of the highway tunnel. The ski area is accessed from the Highway 6 exit off the interstate. Before the tunnels were bored for the interstate, traffic on this busy route west of Denver had to cross the Divide on Highway 6, and go over Loveland Pass.
The ten-foot diameter Roberts Tunnel begins at its west portal, underwater in the reservoir, controlled and accessed by a valve facility on a peninsula. It then runs for 23.3 miles in a nearly straight line, passing 4,000 feet below the Continental Divide, to its east portal, near the town of Grant.
The Roberts Tunnel, one of the largest and longest water tunnels in the world, begins under the Dillon Reservoir, and flows for 23 miles, across the Continental Divide, to its eastern portal by gravity. At its east portal, 175 feet lower in elevation than its west portal, it emerges from underground just below the grade of the adjacent highway, with a small control building on top of it. It crosses under the highway, and spills into the North Fork of the South Platte River.
Hoosier Pass, on Route 9 south of Breckenridge, was the site of the Hoosier Ditch, which was the first recorded trans-divide water diversion in the state. It consisted of two ditches, collecting water from the west side of the Divide, and converging on the pass, where it drained into the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. The ditch was first recorded in 1860, to supply water for the placer mining operations downriver, and was further enhanced in 1929.
At the south portal of the Hoosier Tunnel, water captured on the western slope of the Continental Divide spills into the Montgomery Reservoir, on the eastern slope, headed to distant cities.
The Climax Mine was the largest molybdenum mine in the world, and was the origin of the company that is now called Climax Molybdenum. Climax Molybdenum operates this site as well as the Henderson underground mine, which has replaced this as the largest molybdenum mine in the nation, in output. The mine at Climax is bigger in surface area, and is directly on the Continental Divide. The main mine entrance is on Highway 91, at Fremont Pass, named after the explorer John Fremont.
Covering a wide area on the Continental Divide, the Climax Mine is at the headwaters of a few river drainages. However, most of the mine’s wastes have been placed in one of them, the Ten Mile Creek drainage, which flows directly into the Dillon Reservoir, Denver’s largest drinking water reservoir, ten miles downstream from the last of the mine’s tailings dams.
Tennessee Pass is mostly remembered as an important railway route over the Continental Divide. A narrow gauge railway was built over the pass from Leadville in 1881. At that time Leadville had a population of around 30,000, and was among the largest cities between St. Louis and San Francisco. A few years later a tunnel was bored through the mountain, and the rails were converted to standard gauge.
During World War Two, the Army’s 10th Mountain Division trained in the mountains around Tennessee Pass, as part of its preparations for alpine warfare in Europe. Based out of Camp Hale, five miles north of the pass, the area continued to be used for cold weather and high altitude military training after the war. From 1959 to 1965 the CIA trained Tibetan Freedom Fighting troops there.
Ten miles further down the Continental Divide from Tennessee Pass, the Divide is crossed by the Homestake Tunnel, another water tunnel taking water from the west, to the east. The tunnel is five miles long, and connects Homestake Reservoir to Turquoise Lake. The Homestake Reservoir is fed by the Missouri Tunnel, which is part of the Homestake Collection System, built by the front range cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora, in the 1960s.
The 9,300 foot long Busk-Ivanhoe Tunnel emerges at a remote site, after carrying water from one side of the Continental Divide to the other, underneath Hagerman Pass. It was built in 1893, as a railway tunnel by the Colorado Midland Railroad, replacing the nearby Hagerman Tunnel a 2,150-foot long railroad tunnel constructed in 1887, to serve local mining towns.
The Boustead Tunnel opened in 1972, carrying water for 5.5 miles, under the Continental Divide at Hagerman Pass, from the Fryingpan River to Turquoise Lake, where it emerges through the tunnel’s east portal. The tunnel is part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, a large-scale water capture and storage project, under construction from 1964 to 1981, by the Bureau of Reclamation.
Highway 82 climbs up to Independence Pass, which at 12,095 feet, is the second highest paved crossing of the Continental Divide. The pass is a busy seasonal road crossing of the Divide, linking Leadville and Aspen, and is active with biking and tourists. In 1882, a toll road was built over the pass, though traffic dropped off when the railroads got to Aspen a few years later. In the 1920s, the state of Colorado started maintaining the road as State Highway 82.
Two miles south of Independence Pass, another water tunnel sneaks invisibly under the Continental Divide. This is the Twin Lakes Tunnel, which begins on the west side of the Divide at the Grizzly Reservoir and dam. The caretakers live in a remote home next to the reservoir, and drive through the narrow four-mile long tunnel, when it has low water, to get to Leadville.
The four-mile long Twin Lakes Tunnel emerges from the other side of the Continental Divide at its eastern portal. It is said to be as straight as a rifle barrel, and that you can see one end all the way to the other—a pinprick of light 4 miles away. The tunnel was built in the 1930s, and around 40,000 acre-feet per year flow through the tunnel as measured by the Parshall Flume at the east portal.
Highway 50, a major highway that runs across the southern half of the state, goes over Monarch Pass, one of only two sites directly on the Continental Divide with retail opportunities. The Monarch Crest gift shop and visitor center has operated here since 1954, though the old log cabin style building burned down in 1988, and was replaced with a larger and more hardy 8,000-square foot structure.
Above the parking lot at Monarch Pass is Monarch Ridge, a point on the Continental Divide 700 feet higher than the pass. The concession company that owns the store, built an aerial tram up to the ridge in 1966. Though there are other trams and lifts at ski hills on the Divide, this is the only purely scenic tram on the Divide, and operates in the summer, instead of the winter.
On the western side of Spring Creek Pass is the scenic valley of the Lake Fork River, which flows into the Gunnison north of Lake City. A few miles before the pass, the Slumgullion Earthflow Overlook reminds travelers of the fluidity of even these massive Rocky Mountains. 850 years ago a massive slide, the Slumgullion Earthflow, dammed the Lake Fork River and created Lake San Cristobal, forming the second largest natural lake in the state.
Highway 160, which runs across the bottom of Colorado from one end to the other, crosses the Continental Divide at Wolf Creek Pass. A turnout at the pass has one of the grandest interpretive panels on the Divide.
The Oso Diversion Dam is two and a half miles west of the Continental Divide, and two and a half miles north of the New Mexico state line. It is the origin of the Azotea Tunnel, which takes water from the western slope in Colorado, and delivers it to the eastern slope in New Mexico. The Oso Dam is the collection point for 15 miles of tunnels which collect water from streams on the western side of the Divide and bring it to Oso. It is part of the U.S.
The Azotea Tunnel leaves the Ojo Diverson Dam in Colorado, charged full of water from the Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, on the western side of the Continental Divide, and crosses into New Mexico. A mile after crossing the state line, it crosses the Divide, invisibly, underground. At its southern end, after 13 miles underground, it becomes an open channel, on land controlled by the Jicarilla Apache.
El Vado Dam, which holds back El Vado Lake, is unusual as it uses steel plates to reduce seepage across the 175-foot long face of the dam. The lake was constructed in 1935, as part of a Bureau of Reclamation Project. It is on the Chama River, and also holds water coming from the western slope of Colorado, as part of the Bureau of Reclamation’s San Juan-Chama Project.
The Abiquiu Reservoir was built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1963, primarily for flood control, originally. In the 1970s, with the new water coming into the system from the other side of the Continental Divide through the San Juan-Chama Project, downstream cities, including Albuquerque, successfully petitioned to have more water stored in the reservoir. In the 1980s, the dam was raised another 13 feet.
On either side of Highway 509, south of Whitehorse, is the El Segundo Coal Mine, operated by Peabody Energy. The mine is located directly on the Continental Divide. A haul road over the highway unites the two halves of the mine, and adds another layer to this undercutting and surmounting of the Divide. This mine covers 5,344 acres, and has around 270 employees.
The Continental Divide crosses a road at Borrego Pass, a community centered around the Borrego Pass Trading Post, a typical Navajo Trading Post, established in 1927, and run by white missionaries—in this case, Mormons. There once were around 400 such trading posts in the region, though few operate anymore, and this one was for sale in 2019.
The Continental Divide is crossed by Interstate 40 at a community called Continental Divide. Nowhere is the Continental Divide more celebrated, signified, and visited (intentionally or not), then here. The town of Continental Divide is located at exit 47 of Interstate 40, 47 miles from Arizona, 108 miles from Albuquerque, and between exit 44 (Coolidge) and exit 53 (Thoreau). Signs in the middle of the interstate mark the Divide at 7,275 feet.