Ratón Pass is a 7,834 ft (2,388 m) elevation mountain pass on the Colorado–New Mexico border in the western United States. It is located on the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between Trinidad, Colorado and Raton, New Mexico, approximately 180 miles (290 km) northeast of Santa Fe. Ratón is Spanish for "mouse". The pass crosses the line of volcanic mesas that extends east from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains along the state line, and furnishes the most direct land route between the valley of the Arkansas River to the north and the upper valley of the Canadian River, leading toward Santa Fe, to the south. The pass now carries Interstate 25 and railroad tracks. The pass is a historically significant landmark on the Santa Fe Trail, a major 19th-century settlement route between Kansas City, Missouri and Santa Fe. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 for this association. History In 1821, Captain William Becknell laid the path of the Santa Fe Trail through the pass. In 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Stephen W. Kearny and his troops passed through the pass en route to New Mexico. During the Civil War, it was the primary path into New Mexico since it avoided Confederate raiders. It was later developed into a toll road by Richens Lacey Wootton. Railroad route In the late 19th century, Raton Pass was the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway's (AT&SF) primary route through the mountains. Along with Royal Gorge in Colorado, the pass was one of the focal points for the 1878–79 Railroad Wars between the AT&SF and the smaller Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. The route over the pass has gradients of up to 3.5% and a tunnel at its highest point, above sea level. The tunnel is in New Mexico, but just barely so, with its northern portal lying only a few feet south of the Colorado border. The route is now owned by BNSF, which absorbed the AT&SF in 1996. While it is still used by Amtrak's Chicago–Los Angeles Southwest Chief, freight traffic shifted from Raton Pass to the Belen Cutoff (1908), whose gradients do not exceed 1.25%. As a result, with Raton Pass having little to no freight traffic, BNSF said in 2012 that they could not justify maintenance of the route to Amtrak's standards between La Junta, Colorado, and Lamy, New Mexico, placing the future of rail