Otto Mears built the roads and rails that shaped Ouray County

If you wonder why Ouray County’s roads and old rail grades go where they do, one name comes up again and again: Otto Mears. In the late 1800s he built toll roads and railroads through some of the steepest terrain in the San Juan Mountains, earning the nickname “Pathfinder of the San Juans.”

His best-known road climbs south out of Ouray up the Uncompahgre Canyon toward the Red Mountain mining district and on to Silverton. That route is the backbone of today’s Million Dollar Highway. Mears also founded the Rio Grande Southern Railroad, a narrow-gauge line whose northern end gave rise to the town of Ridgway. For a few decades, his roads and rails carried the ore, mail, and people that kept the mining economy moving.

There is a fuller story underneath the engineering. These routes were built across lands that had been Ute homeland, after treaties and government actions removed Ute bands from the region. Mears himself played a part in that removal. The roads are impressive, and the history that made them possible deserves to be told honestly alongside them.

To read sourced accounts of Mears, his routes, and the larger history they sit within, start with the Colorado Encyclopedia and History Colorado.