One Colorado mountain loop connects ancient cliff homes, silver towns, and a working steam train

One drive through Colorado’s wildest peaks

You can put one road on your map and hit ancient cliff homes, the tallest waterfall in the state, an old steam train, and a string of Victorian mining towns.

It all sits along one loop through southwestern Colorado, where the San Juan Mountains rise sharp and steep on every side. The drive runs 236 miles and circles back to where you start.

What you find between the turns is the reason people keep coming back.

Why this drive earned a rare national honor

The loop runs 236 miles through the San Juan Mountains, and it carries a title most roads never get. In 1996, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation named it an All-American Road, the top honor a scenic route can earn.

It was one of the first roads in the country to make that list. You’ll wind past old mining towns, ancient ruins, falling water, and thick alpine forest.

The mountains stay rugged the whole way around.

Gold and silver built these towns

Prospectors hit gold and silver up here in the late 1800s, and whole towns grew up around the strikes. Telluride, Silverton, and Ouray all started this way.

You can still see the Victorian buildings they put up, many of them standing right where the miners left them. Crews laid railroads to haul the ore out through hard country.

Old mines and ghost towns dot the hills, leftovers from the rush that built the place.

Telluride sits boxed in by cliffs

Telluride sits at the dead end of a box canyon, with steep mountain walls climbing on three sides. You drive in, and the road simply stops where the rock takes over.

Colorful Victorian homes and brick storefronts line the streets, and the whole historic core carries the rank of National Historic Landmark District.

Photographers show up year-round for the setting, walls of stone framing the town from above. Few places in Colorado pin you in quite like this one.

Glide above the valley for free

You can ride high above Telluride and pay nothing for the trip.

A free public gondola links the town to Mountain Village, and it’s one of the few free transit systems of its kind anywhere in the country.

The cabins carry you over the valley, where the mountains spread out wide on both sides. Stop at San Sophia for a long look down the canyon.

It runs through summer and winter, so the season won’t keep you off it.

The tallest waterfall in the state

Bridal Veil Falls drops 365 feet above Telluride’s box canyon, the tallest free-falling waterfall in Colorado. The water splits in two on the way down, breaking into a pair of cascades against the cliff.

At the top sits a power plant from the early 1900s, still perched there above the drop. Come back in winter and the whole thing turns to a wall of ice, and climbers strap on crampons to scale it.

The seasons change the falls completely.

Climb past 14,000-foot peaks

The Skyway climbs over several high passes, and Lizard Head Pass tops out around 10,200 feet. From up here you sit near a cluster of peaks that break 14,000 feet.

The views run clear across the heart of the San Juans, ridge after ridge of stone. An interpretive site and overlook wait at the summit, so you can pull off and read the country in front of you.

This is the kind of high ground the rest of the loop builds toward.

They call Ouray the Switzerland of America

Ouray sits in a bowl ringed by tall alpine peaks, and the likeness to the Swiss Alps earned it the nickname Switzerland of America. The town keeps its Victorian buildings in good shape, block after block of them.

Each winter the Ouray Ice Park pulls in climbers from around the world, who come to scale frozen routes. Natural hot springs have drawn people here for generations.

You can soak in the same water that’s lured visitors for over a century.

Drive the road with no guardrails

Between Ouray and Silverton, US 550 turns into the Million Dollar Highway, and the name carries some weight.

The road climbs over Red Mountain Pass at more than 11,000 feet, twisting through sharp curves with steep drop-offs and few guardrails to catch you.

You’ll pass old mining buildings and rock stained deep red by the minerals. Jagged peaks fill the windshield and the valleys fall away below.

Check current conditions before you commit to this stretch.

Ride a steam train through the gorge

The Durango & Silverton railroad has run since 1882, pulling passengers behind historic steam and diesel engines. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

The route covers about 45 miles each way, following the Animas River through the San Juan National Forest. The wildest part hugs a narrow ledge high above the river gorge, with the water far below your window.

You ride the same rails crews laid back when the mines were still booming.

Stone homes built into the cliffs

The loop runs past Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, where Ancestral Puebloan people built stone homes right into the canyon cliffs. They lived here more than 700 years ago.

Cliff Palace stands as the largest cliff dwelling in North America, tucked under the rock overhang. The park guards thousands of archaeological sites across its canyons.

You can stand below these walls and look up at homes people carved into the cliff face seven centuries back.

Gold aspens light up the hills in fall

People call the Skyway one of the finest drives in the country for fall color, and autumn proves them right. Whole hillsides of aspen turn gold, and the leaves stand out bright against dark evergreens and red rock.

From the high passes you look out over miles of changing forest, the color rolling across the slopes. Fall ranks among the busiest times to make the drive.

You’ll want to plan ahead if you come for the gold.

Two forests packed with things to do

The route threads through the San Juan and Uncompahgre National Forests, and you don’t have to stay in the car. You can hike, bike, fish, and camp all along the way.

Pull-offs and overlooks let you stop wherever the view grabs you.

Old roads branch off toward ghost towns and high mountain basins, if you’ve got the time to chase them. Waterfalls, wildflowers, and wildlife fill the high country between the towns.

Drive the San Juan Skyway in Colorado

You’ll find the full loop covering about 236 miles through southwestern Colorado, linking Durango, Silverton, Ouray, Telluride, Ridgway, Rico, Dolores, Mancos, and Cortez.

The drive runs six to seven hours without stops, so give yourself one to two days to take in the towns and sights. You’ll follow US 550, CO 145, CO 62, and US 160, all paved and kept up year-round.

Check road conditions with the Colorado Department of Transportation before winter trips, and book Mesa Verde tours, generally offered May through October, through the park’s official website.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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