In Saguache in 1874, Alfred Packer was arrested on murder charges involving cannibalism, escaped, was later caught, tried twice, sentenced to forty years in prison, and later pardoned. Bonanza became the center of the Kerber Creek Mining District during the silver boom of the 1880s. The region includes the Great Sand Dunes National Park at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Silver Thread Scenic and Historic Byway through the Upper Rio Grande River Valley and across the Continental Divide twice, Creede’s 17-mile Bachelor Historic Tour through silver mines and ghost towns from the 1890s to the 1980s, Wagon Wheel Gap between Del Norte and the mining camps of the San Juans, Los Caminos Antiguos Scenic and Historic Byway through land once under the rule of the Spanish Empire, San Luis as Colorado’s oldest community, Fort Garland as one of the territory’s first military posts, and exhibits in Del Norte on the natural wonders and cultures of the San Luis Valley. Pike’s Stockade was originally erected in the winter of 1806-7 by Lt. Zebulon M. Pike and eleven men, and Spanish soldiers captured Pike there and escorted him to Chihuahua, Mexico, on charges of trespassing on Spanish Territory.