Palo Flechado
Pass
A sign that spring has come
to Denver used to be that a group of
Denver Bicycle Touring Club members packed
their bags to go cycling around Taos for
three days. A high point of this tour was
riding over this pass. This still happens
sometimes. But other things have changed.
The traffic up from Taos is fairly heavy
now, while the road is still as narrow and
shoulderless as it has always been.
Another high point of these bicycle club
tours would be a visit to the Taos Indian
pueblo. The last time I tried cycling
there I was stopped and told to turn
around since cycling to the pueblo has now
been made illegal by the tribe. Mind you -
driving there is still okay - especially
if you are going to the casino to gamble
away your money. But cycling, and having
an actual interest in the native
cultural sites by visiting them, is
apparently no longer okay.

But back to Palo Flechado
Pass. It's still a magnificent climb to a
green world above, and if you have an
interest in old Taos history, which after
all is older than most anything else
American, you are not likely to be
bothered by other things, at least during
a first time visit. As for repeated
training climbs, I think there are better
options.

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01.(mile00,6940ft)
START-END WEST: jct NM585-NM68, just
south of Taos.
02.(mile03,7190ft) START-END WEST
ALTERNATE: jct NM585-US64, just west
of Taos.
03.(mile13,8330ft) FR437 dirt road
branches right to Valle Escondido
04.(mile15,8670ft) trail to Apache
Pass branches on right
05.(mile18,9101ft) TOP: Palo
Flechado Pass
06.(mile21,8360ft) START-END EAST
ALTERNATE: Aqua Fria, paved NM434
branches on right
07.(mile31,8210ft) Eagles Nest,
profile continues straight down
Cimarron Canyon
08.(mile43,7400ft) Ute Park
09.(mile55,6430ft) START-END EAST:
town of Cimarron |
Approaches
From East. Coming from
points south like the US Hill summit,
the quickest way to the pass is by bypassing
downtown Taos itself and turn right onto Paseo
del Canyon, at a spot that looks like any
suburb in the USA, where the natives get their
fill of Taco Bell burritos and Kentucky Fried
chickens. The road climbs several hundred feet
before ever entering the canyon, and from the
top of this alluvial fan looking north, the
Sangre Cristo Rangs shows off one of their
more magnificent peaks, located behind the
pueblo and appropriately named "Pueblo Peak".
There is a short downhill where the road joins
a more direct route from the north part of
downtown Taos and then enters the canyon. As
mentioned, traffic can pretty much span the
gamut from the recent earthship immigrant, who
insists on giving you both lanes of the road,
to the low rider with a blinding paint job and
a decal of christ in thorns on the back - with
the usual wide variety of truck driver
behaviors thrown in. After passing Valle
Escondido traffic diminishes considerably
since most of the tourist establishments, art
galleries (like the sculpting business
pictured below) and businesses capitalizing on
the enchanted circle slogan are now behind.
The road remains in forest without far views
over one switch back to the top. Here an
official historical summit marker elucidates
the fact that the name "Palo Flechado"
originates either from the name of a similarly
sounding Apache band, or the habit of
"shooting the remaining arrows after a
successful buffalo hunt into a tree on a
pass". Should this be the case I would think
they have found a lot of arrow heads here. But
the sign doesn't go into that.
From West. (described
downwards) It is a short, fast descent with
many surprising tight turns into the Angel
Fire resort. In spite of the fact that the
valley is drier and barer, you can't see it
until you are down. The road continues barely
descending to Eagle Nest. The views of the
backside of Wheeler Peak, New Mexico's highest
mountain, are actually more interesting than
any views from the pass. Here Eagle Nest Lake
gathers the water run off from the east side
of the high Sangre de Cristo Mountains and
makes a getaway through Cimarron Canyon to the
plains below. The profile also includes the
short climb to the top of Cimarron Canyon,
followed by the scenic, shoulderless descend
to the town of Cimarron.
Tours
Dayrides.
(paved): A loop ride, starting
at Coyote Creek state park > Mora > Holman Hill
Summit > US Hill Summit
> Taos > Palo Flechado Pass > Angel
Fire > back to the starting point measured
105 miles with 6500 ft of climbing in 7:4
hours (r2:07.10.25).
History.
Spanish Colonial Times.
Even the date when history first records that
Palo Flechado has existed for countless
generations predates what is often called
North America's oldest city - that would be
Saint Augustine in Florida.
250 Spanish horsemen, 70 footmen
and several hundred friendly Indians had come
over Glorietta
Pass in search for more gold to rob. The
winter of 1540 was closing in on them as they
made preparations to winter along the pleasant
winter climate of the Rio Grande. But there
was still time to reconnoiter the area north,
and so Coronado's captain Hernandez de
Alvarado brought back news not of gold, but as
a matter of not very great importance - news
of the existence of Palo Flechado Pass and two
others close by to the north, Apache Pass and
Osha Pass. The
Taos pueblo Indians used all these tracks to
trade with and escape from nomadic Apaches who
would visit the area from the east.
More than 150 more years go by
until history records a actual crossing by
Spaniards of Palo Flechado Pass. Santa Fe had
already been established as the capital of New
Galicia province for a hundred years. But the
colonialists were too busy feuding and putting
down revolts to do much exploration for its
own sake. We are told that the pueblo revolt
of 1680 was sparked by a number of Indians
running off to the Arkansas River rather than
to continue building Christian churches for
the Spaniards. Don Juan Archuleta
pursued these Indians over Palo Flechado Pass,
down the bare valley on the backside of
Wheeler Peak and through the gap of the
Cimarron River ( then called Taos Gap ) to the
plains below, northwards into Colorado.
Two years later, 1682, the
Spaniards felt threatened that they were not
the only colonialists on the continent. After
all, a French party had descended the
Mississippi to its mouth the same year. Could
a French invasion be far behind ? The Spanish
answer was a "shock and awe strategy". Awe the
Apaches, shock the Frenchmen if there were
any, and bring back some runaway Picuris
Indians on the side. Of course there weren't
any Frenchmen to awe. But Captain Juan de
Ulibarri did get a chance to cross Palo
Flechado Pass. Subsequently the party headed
for Raton Pass
in Colorado, but was diverted 15 miles to the
north by hostile Comanches to Long's Pass.
In 1719, concern about Frenchmen
descending the Rio Grande like they had the
Mississippi prompted action again to ride
towards the plains, avoiding any exploration
of their western boundaries at all costs, or
so it seems. The area west of the Rio Grande
remained a mystery, and would be until de Anza
founded San Francisco in the 1770s, when the
Spanish would have reason to seek a path west.
And so the objective behind
crossing Palo Flechado Pass again, was looking
for Frenchmen and revolting Indians. This time
a contingent of over a hundred colonialists
and supporters, headed by Pedor de Villasur,
headed all the way into what is now eastern
Nebraska. Still there was no sign of the 6000
French men poised to descend the Arkansas to
the Rio Grande. In Arkansas 33 soldiers were
killed, not by Frenchmen, but by Pawnee
Indians. The news brought back by the
survivors managed to curb Spanish anxiety
about the French.
In 1763 the whole French-Spanish
colonial dispute was settled, at least on
paper, when France handed over today's French
Canada to England and the west side of
Mississippi drainage -wherever that was-
to Spain. Nobody really knew just what the
west side of the Mississippi drainage
encompassed. In any case, efforts to
strengthen the Spanish colonial position was
no longer directed solely at the French.
Palo Flechado Pass remained the
principal highway to the east until de Anza
rediscovered La Veta Pass (a variation of
today's North
La Veta Pass), naming it Sange de Cristo
Pass, while returning home from yet another
Indian chase. The new route to the east went
up the Rio Grande and crossed only one pass,
rather than Palo Flechado and Raton Pass.
By 1818 the Spanish empire in
New Mexico had become a shadow of its former
self. The main concern now was invading Anglo
Americans, not Frenchmen. On paper the land
north of the Arkansas River was sold to the
Americans by the French with the Louisiana
Purchase. That boundary was still north of
Taos, but still took much of what the Spanish
saw as their territory. The situation was
exasperated. when news of a report in French,
detailing various pass routes to New Galicia
for the enemy, reached the Spanish minister
Luis de Onis. Again the Spaniards crossed Palo
Fleachado Pass to defend the homeland. Acting
governor of Santa Fe, Facundo Melgares knew
that the real danger to Spanish power was from
within. But he still hauled two rusty
canons onto Palo Flechado Pass, and built a
mud fort on what is now Pass Creek Pass.
But before the Spanish got a chance to fire
the two rusty canyons in defense of the
empire, the Mexican revolution came from
within. The governor of New Mexico smoothly
shifted from one king to another, stayed in
power, but hauled the two canons off the pass
and let the mud fort dissolve in the rain.
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to New Mexico's Summits and Passes by
Bicycle
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