Most of Colorado is in the legendary Rocky Mountains, the tallest range in the continental United States. And mountains attract dreamers eager to match themselves against the craggy peaks, rushing rivers, or parks.
Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nowitz Photography/Apa Publications
Denver founder General William Larimer gambled that his new town in the foothills would emerge a thriving capital, and won the bet. Today, the Denver Metro Area monopolizes the Front Range, bringing its top attraction, Rocky Mountain National Park, ever closer to millions of urban dwellers.
In the eastern third of Colorado lie the Great Plains. Famed as a birding area, its rolling grasslands are grazed by cattle and bison herds all the way to the San Luis Valley. Here, in the shadow of the Spanish Peaks, Hispanic ranchers mingle with New Agers, and sandhill cranes overwinter near Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.
Skulls decorate Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park.
Nowitz Photography/Apa Publications
The country’s greatest concentration of Ancestral Pueblo Indian ruins is preserved in the Four Corners country near Durango in southwestern Colorado, at Mesa Verde National Park, and on adjoining federal and Indian lands.
Casino gambling has revived the fortunes of the Utes, and of played-out mining towns like Victor and Cripple Creek in the northern Rockies, where ritzy Aspen and Vail are now celebrity ski resorts. In contrast, ski resort towns in the Southern Rockies trade on authenticity and remoteness. Pretty Telluride and feisty Silverton, Creede, and other captivating former ghost towns are an independent bunch, attracting ranchers, artists, writers, scientists, and outdoor lovers.
Grand Mesa National Forest.
Nowitz Photography/Apa Publications
The Western Slope is farm and ranch country. Below lofty Grand Mesa, set in a valley carved by the Colorado River into the dramatic red rocks at Colorado National Monument, Grand Junction thrives as a fruit-growing area. Two billion years of geology are displayed at nearby Dinosaur National Monument. The Colorado, Green, and Yampa rivers thrill river runners, but the real sparks fly in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, where the Gunnison River has carved a precipitous canyon.
