Colorado State Highway 12
state highway in Huerfano and Las Animas counites in Colorado, United States

State Highway 12 (SH 12), also known as the Highway of Legends National Scenic Byway, in the U.S. state of Colorado is a mountainous state highway through the Rocky Mountains in southern Colorado. The route travels from La Veta through the mountains to Trinidad. It is included in the Colorado Scenic and Historic Byways system and runs through the San Isabel National Forest. In 2021, the highway was designated a National Scenic Byway.
Route description
SH 12 begins at the junction with U.S. Route 160 (US 160) north of La Veta. It heads southward through that town before entering the San Isabel National Forest and passing through Cuchara, near the Spanish Peaks Wilderness. It then crosses Cucharas Pass into Las Animas County.
SH 12 heads through Monument Park and turns eastward near Stonewall Gap. It then passes eastward along the Purgatoire River through Weston, Segundo, Valdez, Cokedale, and Jansen. It then ends in Trinidad at an intersection with Interstate 25, US 85, and US 87.
“Colorado State Highway 12” enters the record as state highway in Huerfano and Las Animas counites in Colorado, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Colorado, State and Highway can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1111421. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “Colorado State Highway 12” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.