In southeast Colorado, surprise canyons offer stunning trip through time
Apr. 11—Laneha Everett knows how the rest of Colorado views her generational homeland out on the southeast prairie.
"A lot of people aren't that inspired," she says. "But when you dig down a little bit, and you learn about some of the stuff that happened here, it becomes really fascinating. The beauty of the landscape is brought out by the stories."
The relics tell those stories.
The graves recall distant ancestors — those Spanish explorers who perished along the way, inspiring the name of the river, el Rio de Las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio, or River of Lost Souls. French trappers came to call it Purgatoire. They followed the river along with people still represented today. They were people at the crossroads of the Sante Fe Trail, at what might be called the crossroads of where the West was won and lost.
The ruts from pioneer wagons. The scars left by outlaws in gunbattles. The stone walls left by sheepherders who came earlier. The crumbled walls of homesteaders who came later. It appears they left their marks, their brands, on the canyon walls beside marks that seem to have come from another time and people: Native American petroglyphs.
It's all scattered across this rocky terrain that Everett also knows doesn't occur to outsider minds envisioning southeast Colorado.
The canyons "provide evidence that people thrived on the Comanche National Grassland for thousands of years," reports the U.S. Forest Service.
The canyons are called Picket Wire, Vogel, Picture and Carrizo, all spanning the country beyond La Junta. Their relics span a far greater, deeper time.
The Forest Service considers the dinosaur tracks in Picket Wire Canyon the largest of their kind in North America. They march across the bedrock of an ancient sea, not far from more petroglyphs and an old Catholic mission and cemetery.
Of all of Colorado's rock wonderlands — its mountains and gorges and sandstone gardens — this is a favorite of the state geologist. Matthew Morgan likes mountain biking into the site.
"I like going to see stuff I can actually put my hands on, and that's Picket Wire Canyon," he says from Colorado Geological Survey's base in Golden.
Morgan also likes going where others don't. When he tells fellow Front Range enthusiasts of his love for southeast Colorado, "most people kinda go, 'I don't wanna go out there. It's flat!'" he says. "But I know there's cool stuff down there."
As does Jennifer Peterson. She's the former executive director of Rocky Mountain Field Institute, the Colorado Springs environmental and trail-building nonprofit that had her working jobs in the high alpine. Peterson's love of Colorado was deepened by that world above treeline.
Then she took up the suggestion of a colleague.
"Initially, I'm not gonna lie, I was like, 'Grasslands? How lame is that?'" Peterson recalls. "And then I went out there and saw all the stuff, and I'm obsessed. I've become obsessed."
Everett has seen the spell cast on others. She has long operated a slim outfit, Canyon Journeys, leading foot and horseback tours into the surprising wilds for curious people who ask. Not many ask, Everett says. Those who do tend to come back.
"When you drop off the prairie into the canyonlands ... you see that look of awe," Everett says. "Their eyes get a little bigger."
Picket Wire is the biggest of the canyons and the hardest to reach. If not on the Forest Service's auto tours on Saturdays starting in May — the only authorized motorized access — the agency points to an 11-mile round trip from the Withers Canyon trailhead and warns of "extreme heat."
You're wise to visit before late summer, says Vincent Gearhart, a La Junta native who is partial to Vogel Canyon. It's more accessible — a designated parking area with picnic tables and trail options. It's an ideal subject for Gearhart, an avid photographer.
"It's the rugged beauty," he says. "It's very desolate and bleak and everything, but there's so much natural beauty."
There's more in Carrizo Canyon, where the Forest Service also has established a picnic area. The agency notes the creek that "flows through this small canyon graced by juniper and cottonwood trees." You might spot turtles and lizards around the water. And similar to Picture Canyon, you might spot a colorful array of birds — the black-chinned hummingbird, Eastern phoebe, Cassin's kingbird, Western screech owl and various wrens and sparrows.
Wherever you go, the Forest Service asks you to go as "a guardian." Oils from your hands can deteriorate the rock art, the agency reminds on its website, adding of all remnants: "These cultural resources are ancient, fragile and irreplaceable. If destroyed or removed, the information they reveal is lost forever. And so is a legacy that belongs to us all."
Not long ago, Gearhart was sad to find graffiti invading one of his frames. When he posts his photography on social media, he's aware of the risks, aware of dastardly eyes out there. He's also aware of the benefits. There are people who should learn the lessons of these lands, he says — people who might in turn help preserve it.
"I feel that it's something that needs to be experienced," Gearhart says.
Everett feels the same way. She feels a certain way when she's exploring the canyons alone. She's alone, but she doesn't feel alone. The silence can be "overwhelming," she says. She can almost hear the lost souls.
"There's a sense of those who came before," Everett says. "You're constantly walking past homesteads or sheepherder rock walls or petroglyphs or little springs. You know people were all over this country, even though they're not there now. I definitely feel like you get a deep sense of history and presence."
She wants others to feel that. She especially wants kids to feel that. Requests from schools are her favorite requests for tours.
"Being able to instill that sense of place and history and culture in them," she says, "to show them that this is your land, and we all need to protect this together — that's important."
