Southeastern Colorado is packed with significant ancient, Indian and pioneer history and dozens of ways to experience it. This week is a big one for archaeoastronomy, but if you would rather see Indian rock art at a more humane hour, sign up for the U.S. Forest Service’s Picketwire Canyonlands high-clearance auto tour, Saturdays through Oct. 22. For reservations, call 719-384-2181. The tour runs eight hours and gives you a guided look at the Dolores Mission and Cemetery, the nation’s largest dinosaur track site, ancient Indian pictographs and the historic Rourke Ranch. Make it a weekend, and make sure you visit the Koshare Indian Museum and Bent’s Old Fort, and maybe wander around Picture and Carrizo canyons in the daylight or head for the Santa Fe Trail wagon ruts south of John Martin Reservoir.
Big loop through the southeast begins at La Junta:
210 miles along U.S. 50, U.S. 287, U.S. 160 and Colorado 109.
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ANCIENTLIGHT
Twice a year the National Forest Service folks who mind the Comanche National Grasslands southwest of Springfield open the gate on Crack Cave in Picture Canyon for a modern-day view of carvings plains Indians created maybe 700 years ago to mark the equinoxes.
“It really is breathtaking,” says Yvonne Taylor, who’ll lead a group to the cave before dawn Thursday morning. “You’re sitting there looking at it, and there’s a little light, and then BAM! It’s just brilliantly lit up.”
The notches are illuminated for 10 minutes and then fall back into the shadows until the next equinox, which comes on March 20. “We get there right before sunrise, so it’s still a little dark. You can just sit and imagine what it felt like to be in a wagon train or to be a plains Indian,” she says. “It’s pretty humbling.”
Go: Meet Yvonne Taylor at the Forest Service Office in Springfield, 27204 U.S. 287, south of the old drive-in theater, at 5:15 a.m. Thursday. Caravan about 34 miles southwest to Picture Canyon. Info: 719-523-6591.
