Raton Pass was once crossed by a private toll road run by 'Uncle Dick' Wootton

Raton Pass, south of Trinidad, is where the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail crossed the mountains into New Mexico. Travelers used the pass long before any road was built over it. But for a stretch in the eighteen hundreds, getting over it was not free.

A frontiersman named Richens Wootton, known to almost everyone as “Uncle Dick,” built a toll road over the pass in the 1860s. He improved the rough trail enough for wagons and stagecoaches, then charged travelers to use it. For years his toll gate was a fixed point on the journey south, and his name stayed tied to the pass.

The toll road’s day ended when the railroad pushed through the pass and changed how people and goods moved. But the story is a good reminder that early roads here were often private ventures, not government highways, and that crossing the mountains was once a paid and difficult thing.

For a new resident, this is part of why Raton Pass carries so much history for a place most people now just drive over on the interstate. To confirm the dates and the details of Wootton’s road, lean on History Colorado and the official byway record rather than legend.