The Top of the Rockies Scenic and Historic Byway passes through spectacular scenery surrounded by some of Colorado’s highest peaks, mountains that in the nineteenth century yielded some of the state’s biggest mining fortunes. The Healy House and Dexter Cabin show two extremes of nineteenth-century architecture, yet both contain fine furnishings and lavish appointments that reflect the mining wealth that built Leadville. The Continental Divide, the backbone of the Rocky Mountains, separates water flowing to the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. St. Elmo, listed on the National Register of Historic Sites, served as a transportation and supply hub for hundreds of surrounding mining camps and is now a well-preserved ghost town inhabited mainly by summer residents. About six miles northeast of Pitkin, the Alpine Tunnel carried trains beneath the Continental Divide from 1882 to 1910. During the silver boom of the 1880s, Bonanza became the center of the Kerber Creek Mining District, and today the Rio Grande National Forest offers an off-highway interpretive loop through this rugged country. In 1874, Alfred Packer was sent to Saguache while awaiting trial on murder charges involving cannibalism; he escaped, was caught, tried twice, sentenced to forty years in prison, and later pardoned, and the Saguache County Jail, though not his place of incarceration, now houses a regional museum. The world’s highest suspension bridge spans the Arkansas River over the Royal Gorge, a 1,053 foot deep chasm that stopped Lt. Zebulon Pike in 1806, and the bridge was built in 1929.