The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail
Early white travelers dreaded the forbidding Continental Divide (the high mountains separating the Atlantic and Pacific watersheds). Later settlers viewed it as a challenge to be conquered: road builders surmounted it, railroaders tunneled through it, and engineers diverted Western Slope water underneath it to irrigate farms and to sustain cities in eastern Colorado. But the Continental Divide Trail, which Congress designated a National Scenic Trail in 1978, simply takes the landmark on its own terms. With 800 miles of Colorado wilderness the route often diverges from the Divide proper because some portions are simply too rugged for travel. And therein lies the Divide’s mystique: though mapped and breached, it remains somehow impenetrable, one of the nation’s last unspoiled places. It is truly the "King of Trails."
Early white travelers dreaded the forbidding Continental Divide (the high mountains separating the Atlantic and Pacific watersheds). Later settlers viewed it as a challenge to be conquered: road builders surmounted it, railroaders tunneled through it, and engineers diverted Western Slope water underneath it to irrigate farms and to sustain cities in eastern Colorado. But the Continental Divide Trail, which Congress designated a National Scenic Trail in 1978, simply takes the landmark on its own terms. With 800 miles of Colorado wilderness the route often diverges from the Divide proper because some portions are simply too rugged for travel. And therein lies the Divide’s mystique: though mapped and breached, it remains somehow impenetrable, one of the nation’s last unspoiled places. It is truly the "King of Trails."
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