Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems).
I don’t remember the first time I noticed the perfect way in which the Genesee Bridge perfectly frames the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains as you head west on Interstate 70.
Maybe it was as a kid when my family would head out of Denver, up Floyd Hill and into the mountains to take advantage of the newly opened Eisenhower Tunnel in the mid-1970s. Or maybe it was as a teenager on my way to go skiing at Winter Park. But I certainly knew about that split-second, picture-postcard view by the time I graduated from college and took a job as a gondola operator at Keystone Resort. After all, the bridge is pretty hard to miss.
Built in 1970 by the Colorado Department of Highways (now the Colorado Department of Transportation), the “continuous steel box girder bridge … carries U.S. Route 40 over I-70” at the Genesee bison herd overlook (exit 254), according to a historic account from CDOT. At the time, designer Frank B. Lundberg wanted to create something that wouldn’t block the view of the mountains for motorists. So he engineered the bridge without a “central pier,” instead creating a continuous, 180-foot span – the first of its kind in Colorado, and an architectural award-winner.
Perhaps Lundberg’s highway department colleague, Paul Chuvarsky, expressed it best: “If we hadn’t done this one right, all the mountain beauty lovers in Colorado would have been on our necks,” he reportedly said at the time, according to a history of Jefferson County landmarks written by Richard Gardner and posted online at Colorado Community Media.
Known as the Genesee Bridge or the Picture Frame Bridge – because of the way it frames the often snow-capped mountains that make up part of the Continental Divide – it’s also a popular spot for photographers who want to capture the painting-like image of the mountains from the top. And while that view is obviously stunning, I think the best way to see it is from your car.
Vehicles, after all, are the primary way that we get to the mountains (for better or for worse).
When it comes to the mountains themselves, here’s a short primer: The peaks that are visible from the bridge – about 10 of them – extend from the area near Empire north to the James Peak Wilderness near Winter Park. Most are 12,000 and 13,000 feet high, and they include Stanley Mountain, Colorado Mines Peak, Cone Mountain, Mount Flora, Mount Eva, Parry Peak, Mount Bancroft and James Peak. Most of them have popular climbing trails in the summer months.
History note: James Peak, which is the one farthest to the right, was named for Edwin P. James, a 19th-century botanist and explorer who accompanied Stephen Harriman Long, the famed explorer who mapped out the territory in the Louisiana Purchase (which included a good portion of Colorado), in 1820. Longs Peak, of course, is named for Long.
As for the view heading back down? Well, it depends on how hard the semis are braking in front of you and how much traffic you are stuck in. Not quite as pretty of a picture.
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