9,019-Foot Rocky Mountain Pass on US Highway 285
US Highway 285, Poncha Springs, CO 81242
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public highway. Use Rocky Mountain pass-driving caution in winter.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved two-lane highway over a 9,019-foot pass.
Equipment
Photos OK
Poncha Pass crosses the Sangre de Cristo Range at 9,019 feet, connecting the upper Arkansas River drainage near Salida with the San Luis Valley to the south. The pass is distinctive among Colorado's major Rocky Mountain crossings for its north-south orientation rather than the more common east-west crossing of the Continental Divide.
The pass has been in use as a travel corridor for thousands of years and was an important route for Ute peoples and later for Spanish, Mexican, and American settlement. In April 1855, during the U.S. Army's Punitive Expedition against the Ute people, a military column crossed Poncha Pass on April 28, with approximately 40 Ute people killed in subsequent engagements; one U.S. soldier was buried with honors along the pass.
During the American Civil War, Colorado Territory was a Union-aligned territory but contained pockets of Confederate sympathy, particularly in mining areas. Confederate partisan groups operated in Fairplay, Leadville, Denver, and Mace's Hole (modern Beulah), conducting raids and recruitment from 1861 to 1865. Specific documented engagements at Poncha Pass during the Civil War are limited in surviving records.
The pass cemetery on the south side, locally referred to as Little Round Top, holds Civil War-era graves and remains in occasional use. The pass itself today carries paved US 285 and is one of the more lightly trafficked north-south Colorado mountain crossings.
Sources
Poncha Pass has been a magnet for treasure-hunting folklore for more than a century. The older layer involves Spanish-era gold attributed in regional storytelling to 17th-century expeditions through the San Luis Valley, including stories tied to the explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. A common version describes a miner who found old Spanish gold and was driven away by lights and voices warning him to leave the area.
The Civil War-era legend places a small Confederate force fleeing through the pass after a stolen gold shipment was retaken near Fort Garland. Two wounded Confederate soldiers are said to have carried one of four wooden gold crates up Little Pemmican Creek and disappeared, leaving the Union patrol unable to recover the bullion. The three Confederate soldiers killed in the skirmish are said by the legend to be buried in the Little Round Top Cemetery at Poncha Springs. Independent documentation in surviving Union Army records is thin, and the specific incident as described is best treated as a folk-history embellishment of broader Civil War-era partisan activity in Colorado.
Motorists driving US 285 over the pass have reported seeing an elderly figure in tattered grey clothing along the highway. In some reports the figure appears to salute as cars pass; in others he raises a hand in supplication, but he is never present when motorists return on foot. Scouts and adults at a youth camp along Pemmican Creek have reported seeing a similar figure in the early evening.
Hauntbound treats both the Spanish and Civil War gold legends as folklore. The Confederate-soldier apparition is a regionally distinctive variant of the ghost-soldier folklore type and reflects the way Colorado's Civil War history has been culturally remembered.
Notable Entities
Drive US 285 over Poncha Pass, an unusual north-south Rocky Mountain crossing at 9,019 feet between the Arkansas River drainage and the San Luis Valley. The pass is the focal point of regional Civil War-era and Spanish gold legends.
Visit the historic Poncha Springs cemetery on the south side of the pass, where Civil War-era graves are documented. The cemetery is small, rural, and easily reached from US 285.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Gatlinburg, TN
Great Smoky Mountains National Park preserves 522,427 acres of southern Appalachian terrain across Tennessee and North Carolina. The land was the heart of the Cherokee Nation before forced removal in 1838 along what became the Trail of Tears, and home to Appalachian Scots-Irish and English settler communities through the early twentieth century. Congress authorized the park in 1926; it was formally dedicated by Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 2, 1940.
Estes Park, CO
Rocky Mountain National Park, established by President Woodrow Wilson on January 26, 1915, preserves 415 square miles of Front Range Colorado including Trail Ridge Road, Longs Peak, and the headwaters of the Colorado River. The park's Ute and Arapaho heritage is documented in oral tradition and in early settler accounts including the Legend of Grand Lake.
Grand Canyon Village, AZ
Grand Canyon National Park encompasses 1,217,262 acres of canyon, plateau, and Colorado River corridor in northern Arizona. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Grand Canyon a national monument in 1908; Congress established the national park on February 26, 1919. The park's South Rim Grand Canyon Village Historic District and North Rim Grand Canyon Lodge are landmarks of early National Park Service architecture.