Crossing Cochetopa
Between 1848 and 1853, four different expeditions explored Cochetopa Pass which crosses the Continental Divide at more than 10,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. These expeditions were examining the pass and its approaches as a possible route for a transcontinental railroad along the 38th parallel. A total of 21 men perished on three of those expeditions from a combination of starvation, exposure and attacks by hostile Indians, marking this “natural Central Route” and Cochetopa itself the costliest in human terms of any reconnaissance of the Pacific Railroad project.
I too have been drawn to Cochetopa. In the spring of 2022, I retraced a portion of one of those expeditions, the 1853 Pacific Railroad Survey expedition led by Captain John W. Gunnison.
The Paper
Crossing Cochetopa, Time Travel, Exploration and Discovery Across the Continental Divide describes my topographic and cartographic examination of Gunnison’s track and explores how modern GIS and visualization tools can bring 165-year-old maps, journals and images alive as an immersive and engaging experience. I presented this research in the form of a poster at the 12th International Chartography Association Mountain Mapping Workshop in April of 2023. You can read the entire paper, published in the ICA Conference Proceedings, here.
The Poster
I presented a summary of Crossing Cochetopa as a poster at the 12th International Cartography Association (ICA) Mountain Cartography Workshop held in Snow Mountain Ranch, Colorado, April 11 -14, 2023. You can see the poster here.