Brief by Central Staff
Transportation – July 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorado’s economy is often characterized as “boom and bust,” and water seems to work the same way — “flood and drought,” perhaps.
Last year it was dry. This year, a high snowpack combined with warm weather in late May led to flooding along the Front Range. It also caused water to build up behind a culvert beneath Interstate 70 on Vail Pass.
One result was that a street in a nearby residential area turned into a small river. Another was that the water softened the ground beneath the highway, so that on June 1, part of the westbound lanes collapsed into a sinkhole about the size of a spewt.
Unsure about the extent of the damage, the Colorado Department of Transportation closed all 24 miles of highway to through traffic over Vail Pass between Wheeler Junction and Dowd Junction. Long-haul truckers were advised to cross the country via Wyoming or New Mexico instead of Colorado, and other traffic was set on a 51-mile detour.
That route involved some twisting two-lane roads, as well as crossing the Continental Divide twice — at Tennessee and Frémont passes. It also took them almost to Leadville; the junction is just a couple of miles north of town.
Since 10,554-foot Vail Pass carries about 30,000 vehicles a day in the summer, that meant a lot more traffic. But that didn’t translate into a business boom for Leadville.
Carolyn Popovich, director of the chamber of commerce, said there was “a slight increase for most businesses, but nothing spectacular.” Gasoline stations and restaurants did enjoy some major business, “but for everybody else, it wasn’t significant.”
One side of I-70 had been re-opened by June 4 to handle traffic in both directions while work continued to rebuild the side with the sinkhole. At last report, CDOT hoped to have the highway in full operation by mid-June.
Vail Pass is a relative newcomer among Colorado crossings. It was not a major Ute trail or wagon road, and it never had a railroad. A highway first crossed it in 1940, and it was chosen as the route for I-70 in the 1960s.
It was named for Charles D. Vail, chief engineer of the Colorado Department of Highways. His name had originally been affixed to today’s Monarch Pass in 1939 after the current route replaced the 1922 crossing at Old Monarch Pass. However, local vandals kept defacing the sign, and so the Monarch name remained and Vail’s name moved north.