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| Grand Canyon National Park |
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The Grand Canyon is more than a great chasm carved over millennia through the rocks of the Colorado Plateau. It is more than an awe-inspiring view. It is more than a pleasuring ground for those who explore the roads, hike the trails, or float the currents of the turbulent Colorado River.
This canyon is a gift that transcends what we experience. Its beauty and size humble us. Its timelessness provokes a comparison to our short existence. In its vast spaces we may find solace from our hectic lives. The Grand Canyon we visit today is a gift from past generations.
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| Mesa Verde National Park |
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Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 to preserve sites built by "Pre-Columbian Indians" on mesa tops and in canyon alcoves. The park, contains 52,073 acres of Federal land and is a unit of the National Park System. Mesa Verde, Spanish for "green table", rises high above the surrounding country. For 750 years, the Ancestral Puebloans occupied the area within the park. From the hundreds of dwellings that remain, archeologists have compiled one of the most significant chapters in the story of prehistoric America.
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| Durango, CO |
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Durango is located in southwest corner of Colorado along the banks of the Animas River. The name Durango means "well watered place" in Spanish and the massive San Juan mountains provide lots of water to the Animas River next to Durango. Most of that water comes from melting snow trickling out of 14,000 feet high mountains. Durango is today one of the last great cowboy towns left in America and that is due in large part to the continued operation of the railroad along the Animas River gorge to Silverton. You can still ride that train today and take a 100 year step back in time.
Durango is located in Southwest Colorado at an elevation of 6,512 feet.
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| Great Sand Dunes National Park |
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There is plenty of sandy desert in Arizona and California, but nothing quite like the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado. Seeming totally out of place at the edge of the snow-covered Rocky Mountains, these dunes of pure golden sand cover an area about 7 by 5 miles and reach heights of 700 feet above the floor of the flat San Luis Valley, making them the tallest in the US. The valley, which is over 7,500 feet in elevation at this point, extends for over 100 miles south into New Mexico and is bordered by the San Juan Mountains to the west and the lower Sangre de Cristo range to the east - these hills mark the edge of the Rockies and continue southwards towards Santa Fe.
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| Colorado Springs, CO |
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Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike wandered into the region now known as Colorado Springs on a cool November day in 1806. Dressed only in summer uniforms, he and his exploring party turned away from what is now called Pikes Peak claiming that no man would ever ascend this great mountain. To reinforce this proclamation, he named it Grand Peak. Though he never made it to its summit, Grand Peak was renamed Pikes Peak in honor of his discovery. Colorado Springs is often known as the American the Beautiful city, for it was in a room at the Antlers Hotel that Katharine Lee Bates, a visiting professor at the Colorado College, wrote the words to America the Beautiful after an inspiring wagon trip to the 14,110 foot summit of Pikes Peak.
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| Tarryall River Ranch, CO |
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The ranch was settled in the 1880’s when “Gold Fever” was running rampant in the region. Numerous remnants of that period, such as abandoned cabins and mine shafts, can still be seen.
After the turn of the century, mining gave way to ranching as the economic mainstay. By 1920 the area caught the interest of a Colorado Springs family who were impressed with its sculptured mountains and pristine beauty. The Taylor family purchased the ranch as a summer retreat. In 1930 the ranch was acquired by Leon Snyder, a prominent Colorado Springs attorney who developed it into a unique guest ranch. Thus began the tradition.
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