BGuthrie Photos: CO -- Colorado Natl Monument

CO -- Colorado Natl Monument:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. COLONM_710004_04.JPG: Balanced Rock
2. COLONM_710004_08.JPG: Monument Canyon
3. COLONM_710004_12.JPG: Monument Canyon
4. COLONM_710004_16.JPG: Box Canyon
5. COLONM_710004_20.JPG: Artist's Point
6. COLONM_710004_24.JPG: Coke Ovens
7. COLONM_710004_28.JPG: Monument Canyon Trail
8. COLONM_710004_32.JPG: Kissing Couple
9. COLONM_710004_36.JPG: Independence Monument
10. COLONM_710004_42.JPG: Window Rock and West
11. COLONM_710004_48.JPG: Window Rock and West
12. COLONM_710004_52.JPG: Window Rock and West
13. COLONM_710004_56.JPG: Window Rock
14. COLONM_710004_60.JPG: Window Rock
15. COLONM_710004_65.JPG: Painted Lizard
16. COLONM_710004_70.JPG: Painted Lizard
17. COLONM_710004_76.JPG: Monument Canyon
18. COLONM_710004_80.JPG: Artist Point and Coke Ovens
Multi Column: Number of columns of thumbnails to appear per page (normally defaults to 3): [1 col] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Colorado National Monument
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Colorado National Monument (often simply referred to as The Monument) is a part of the National Park Service near the city of Grand Junction, Colorado, in the western part of the state. It is a semi-desert land high on the Colorado Plateau. The area hosts a wide range of wildlife, including pinyon pines, juniper trees, ravens, jays, Desert Bighorn Sheep, and coyotes. Activities include hiking trails, horseback riding, mountain biking, and scenic drives through the park. There are magnificent views from trails and the Rim Rock Drive, which winds along the plateau. Nearby are the Book Cliffs, and the largest flat-topped mountain in the world, the Grand Mesa.

Its feature attraction is Monument Canyon, which runs the length of the park, and includes rock formations such as Independence Monument, Window Rock, and Coke Ovens. The monument includes 20,500 acres (32 square miles), much of which has been recommended to Congress for designation as wilderness.

Park History:

The area was first explored by John Otto, a drifter who settled in Grand Junction in the early 20th century. Prior to Otto's arrival, many area residents believed the canyons to be inaccessible to humans. Otto began building trails on the plateau and into the canyons. As word spread about his work, the Chamber of Commerce of Grand Junction sent a delegation to see what he was doing. The delegation returned praising both Otto's work and the scenic beauty of the wilderness area. The local newspaper began lobbying to make it a National Park.

The area was established as Colorado National Monument on May 24, 1911. Otto was hired as the first park ranger, drawing a salary of $1 per month. For the next 16 years, he continued building and maintaining trails while living in a tent in the park.

Trails:

The Monument contains many hiking trails, with lengths and difficulties to suit all tastes. Before hiking in the Colorado National Monument, be aware that summer storms can cause flash floods as well as dangerous trail conditions. Rattlesnakes are found on the Monument, and rough terrain exists everywhere. Most trails are well-maintained, but hiking alone is not recommended.

Serpent's Trail, perhaps the most popular, follows the route of the original road to the top of the Monument. This trail is accessible by parking lots at both ends, both located off of Rim Rock Drive. Serpent's Trail is well-maintained and provides stunning views of both the Monument itself and the Grand Valley below. One of the shortest trails, also popular, is Devil's Kitchen. The trailhead is located near the eastern entrance of the park on Rim Rock Drive. This trail is about 1 mile long, and ends in a sandstone grotto. Devil's Kitchen trail is well suited for families with smaller children, as the hike is short and the "kitchen" itself provides plenty of opportunity for child-sized exploration.

Liberty Cap trail starts from the valley floor and climbs to the rim of the Monument. Liberty Cap itself is an ancient sand dune, and provides a beautiful view of the Grand Valley. Corkscrew Trail, closed for many years but re-opened in mid-2006, branches off of the Liberty Cap and skirts a small canyon and cliffs that cannot be seen from the valley floor. This trail, the only loop trail on the Monument, is about 3 miles long and features a less rigorous climb than Liberty Cap.

Monument Canyon trail, also popular, follows Monument Canyon for about 5 miles. This trail is often hiked up-and-back, and provides close-up views of Independence Monument, the Colorado National Monument's most distinct feature. No Thoroughfare Trail starts at the bottom of No Thoroughfare Canyon. As the name implies, there is no official trail to the top of this canyon. The dead-end trail goes a few miles into the canyon, and up-and-back hiking is required. Some hikers have found a way to get through the entire canyon, but after a certain point the trail becomes difficult and unmarked. No Thoroughfare Canyon does have small waterfalls during the spring run-off, but is dry for most of the year.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (CO -- Colorado Natl Monument) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2006_CO_Colorado_Mon: CO -- Colorado Natl Monument (85 photos from 2006)
- 2003_CO_Colorado_Mon: CO -- Colorado Natl Monument (20 photos from 2003)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Family Slides] [Natural Beauty] [Park (National Park Service)]
1971 photos: From 1966 to 1975, our family lived in Franklin, Michigan while Dad worked for Kelly Services in Detroit. Family trips this year: I rebelled against family trips -- my bedwetting was causing continual trauma for me -- and the family took my cousin Brian Bell with them to Colorado and Utah for the family trip. From 1953 to 1976, the bulk of these pictures were taken by my Dad, Glenn Guthrie At the time, he was using a complicated, but normal for the day, manual Kodak with light meters and such. All of Dad's pictures from this time were slides. In 2020, I collected all of Dad's slides (some of which had been in Mom's possession after the divorce) and digitized them for the site. From 1966 (when I started taking pictures) to 1979, I was using a Kodak Instamatic for most of my photos. From 1966 to 1989, all of my pictures were slides which is what I had grown up on. From 1966 to 1997, I was taking at most a couple of hundred photos a year. Image quality for my pictures is variable because these are scans of slides and/or prints at varying quality/resolutions. The Great Pandemic Digitizing Project: When I was first setting up my website in August, 2000, I had decided to digitize some of my favorite pre-digital slides and prints. The scans were fairly low resolution but they were good enough. With COVID forcing me to stay indoors, I decided to rescan ALL of my pre-digital images from multiple sources (slides, prints, and negatives) at a much higher resolution and quality setting. (I digitized Dad's slides at the same time). Instead of replacing my original scans, I added the new scans to existing pages, figuring I'd select the best ones later. As a result, multiple versions of images appear on most of these early pages. At some point, I'll take the time to do a final review and get rid of the duplicates.
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Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].