Rotary Snowplow Park
Current Hours of Operation: Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.- 4 p.m.
The Rotary Snowplow Park is open from late-May through mid-September, weather permitting.
Cost: Free admission, $5 suggested donation
Directions: From Blue River Plaza in the center of Breckenridge, go south on Main Street to Boreas Pass Road. Take a left. The Rotary Snowplow Park will be on your right, next to the ice rink. Parking is available on site.
Bus route: From the transit station, take the Boreas Pass route and get off at the Ice Rink stop. Ride time is four minutes.
In the years before there were snowplows as we know them, there were rotary snowplows. These huge machines had giant, snow-blowing blades which cleared narrow gauge railroad tracks. The blades threw snow 30 feet away on either side of the tracks. Four to six steam-driven locomotives were needed to push these behemoths up Boreas Pass on the way to Breckenridge. Visitors to the Rotary Snowplow Park can see one of these machines on display and learn about transportation and the railroad in early-day Breckenridge.
The rotary snowplow you see in the Breckenridge Rotary Snowplow Park is not the one used by the Colorado & Southern Railway to get from Como to Breckenridge via Boreas Pass; the track, however, runs on the original right-of-way. This 108-ton snowplow was built in 1901 for the White Pass and Yukon Route in Alaska. It was moved to Denver in 1988, where in underwent repairs. Six months later, the restored rotary arrived in Breckenridge. It is one of only five known narrow-gauge rotaries still in existence.
Rail service over Boreas Pass came to Breckenridge in 1882. The line operated until 1937 and the tracks were dismantled in 1938.