1.
International Union for Conservation of Nature
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The International Union for Conservation of Nature is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It is involved in gathering and analysis, research, field projects, advocacy, lobbying. IUCNs mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of resources is equitable. Over the past decades, IUCN has widened its focus beyond conservation ecology and now incorporates issues related to equality, poverty alleviation. Unlike other international NGOs, IUCN does not itself aim to mobilize the public in support of nature conservation and it tries to influence the actions of governments, business and other stakeholders by providing information and advice, and through lobbying and partnerships. The organization is best known to the public for compiling and publishing the IUCN Red List. IUCN has a membership of over 1200 governmental and non-governmental organizations, some 11,000 scientists and experts participate in the work of IUCN commissions on a voluntary basis. It employs approximately 1000 full-time staff in more than 60 countries and its headquarters are in Gland, Switzerland. IUCN has observer and consultative status at the United Nations, and plays a role in the implementation of several conventions on nature conservation. It was involved in establishing the World Wide Fund for Nature, in the past, IUCN has been criticized for placing the interests of nature over those of indigenous peoples. In recent years, its relations with the business sector have caused controversy. It was previously called the International Union for Protection of Nature, establishment In 1947, the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature organised an international conference on the protection of nature in Brunnen. It is considered to be the first government-organized non-governmental organization, the initiative to set up the new organisation came from UNESCO and especially from its first Director General, the British biologist Julian Huxley. At the time of its founding IUPN was the international organisation focusing on the entire spectrum of nature conservation Early years. Its secretariat was located in Brussels and its first work program focused on saving species and habitats, increasing and applying knowledge, advancing education, promoting international agreements and promoting conservation. Providing a solid base for conservation action was the heart of all activities. IUPN and UNESCO were closely associated and they jointly organized the 1949 Conference on Protection of Nature. In preparation for this conference a list of endangered species was drawn up for the first time
2.
Mount Evans
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Mount Evans is the highest summit of the Chicago Peaks in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The peak is one of the characteristic Front Range peaks, dominating the skyline of the Great Plains along with Pikes Peak, Longs Peak. Mount Evans can be seen from over 100 miles away to the east, Mount Evans dominates the Denver Metropolitan Area skyline, rising over 9,000 feet above the area. Mount Evans can be seen from south of Castle Rock, up to and as far north as Fort Collins. In the early days of Colorado tourism, Mount Evans and Denver were often in competition with Pikes Peak, Mount Evans is the highest peak in a massif known historically as the Chicago Peaks. The peak is 35 miles west of Denver, as the crow flies, at least 7 deep glacial cirques cut into the Chicago Range. The cirques around Mount Evans are the deepest cirques in the Colorado Rockies, the bottoms of many of these contain tarns, the most notable being, Summit Lake at the head of Bear Creek,0. The latter has long been the highest paved road in North America and is open in the summer. The Guanella Pass Scenic Byway passes within 4 miles west of Mount Evans, linking Georgetown and I-70 with Grant, a marked hiking trail roughly parallels the highway from Echo Lake to the summit, and a second marked trail links Guanella Pass to Mount Bierstadt. A difficult side route of the climbs to the northeastern peak of The Sawtooth. Most of the Mount Evans massif is now part of the Mount Evans Wilderness area in Arapaho National Forest, the exception is a narrow corridor along the highway from Echo Lake that is excluded from the wilderness. Summit Lake Park and Echo Lake Park, are part of the historic Denver Mountain Parks system, Mount Evans was originally known as Mount Rosa or Mount Rosalie. Albert Bierstadt named it for the wife of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, the name is also a reference to Monte Rosa, the highest peak in Switzerland. Bierstadts sketch, Mountain Lake, accurately portrays the view of Mount Spalding over the Chicago Lakes and his painting, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie, is based on that and other sketches. A second claim to be the first to ascend is attributed to Judge Lunt, the Hayden survey reported that Mount Rosalie was 14,330 feet above sea level, measured by triangulation. The history of the Mount Evans Scenic Byway is part of a story of the Denver Mountain Parks system. It ultimately began when the City and County of Denver initiated the construction of a series of automobile “scenic loops” to allow Denverites to explore the mountains. One road circuit, Circle G, was to traverse the ridge to Squaw Pass on to Echo Lake, culminate in a climb up Mt. Evans, and loop down to Idaho Springs
3.
Summit Lake Park
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Summit Lake Park is a park located along Mount Evans Scenic Byway about 64 miles west of Denver, Colorado. The park is 160 acres in size and contains alpine tundra, land to the east of the lake is in a state of permafrost which helps to prevent drainage of the area. During the summer, the park is filled with wildflowers, some of which have not been anywhere else outside of the Arctic Circle. The park is named after Summit Lake, the headwaters of Bear Creek, Summit Lake is a tarn which sits at 12,836 feet altitude in a glacial cirque on the north face of Mount Evans and the east face of Mount Spalding. To the north, there is a col looking down into the chain of two cirques holding the Chicago Lakes at the headwaters of Chicago Creek, by one count that includes several unnamed lakes, Summit Lake is the 13th highest lake in the United States. In 1915, the USGS reported that Summit Lake was the highest lake in Colorado, later secondary sources occasionally report it as the highest lake in the United States. The land was acquired by Denver in 1924 and incorporated into the Denver Mountain Parks system and it was declared a National Natural Landmark in April,1965. National Register of Historic Places listings in Clear Creek County, Colorado Echo Lake Park National Natural Landmark - Summit Lake
4.
Clear Creek County, Colorado
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Clear Creek County is one of the 64 counties of the U. S. state of Colorado. As of the 2010 census, the population was 9,088, Clear Creek County is part of the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area. It was named after Clear Creek, which runs down from the divide through the county. Idaho Springs was originally designated the county seat, but the county government was moved to Georgetown in 1867. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 396 square miles. In the 2012 election Barack Obama won over Mitt Romney 54% to 42%, as of the census of 2000, there were 9,322 people,4,019 households, and 2,608 families residing in the county. The population density was 24 people per square mile, there were 5,128 housing units at an average density of 13 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 96. 37% White,0. 28% Black or African American,0. 73% Native American,0. 36% Asian,0. 03% Pacific Islander,1. 02% from other races, and 1. 20% from two or more races. 3. 87% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race,27. 20% of all households were made up of individuals and 4. 30% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.31 and the family size was 2.81. In the county, the population was out with 22. 60% under the age of 18,5. 60% from 18 to 24,32. 60% from 25 to 44,32. 20% from 45 to 64. The median age was 40 years, for every 100 females there were 108.80 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 110.20 males, the median income for a household in the county was $50,997, and the median income for a family was $61,400. Males had an income of $41,667 versus $30,757 for females. The per capita income for the county was $28,160, about 3. 00% of families and 5. 40% of the population were below the poverty line, including 6. 80% of those under age 18 and 5. 60% of those age 65 or over. Idaho Springs Empire Georgetown Silver Plume Downieville-Lawson-Dumont Floyd Hill St
5.
Park County, Colorado
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Park County is one of the 64 counties in the U. S. state of Colorado. As of the 2010 census, the population was 16,206, the county was named after the large geographic region known as South Park, which was named by early fur traders and trappers in the area. Park County is included in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area, a majority of the county lies within the boundaries of the South Park National Heritage Area. The geographic center of the State of Colorado is located in Park County, Park County has been and is the location of several important mines, including the defunct Orphan Boy, which was discovered near Alma in 1861 and produced gold, silver, lead, and zinc. The historic Sweet Home Mine, also near Alma, is a silver mine now known for its rhodochrosite mineral specimens. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 2,211 square miles. The headwaters of the South Platte River are in Park County, the population density was 7 people per square mile. There were 10,697 housing units at a density of 5 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 95. 07% White,0. 50% Black or African American,0. 92% Native American,0. 41% Asian,0. 03% Pacific Islander,1. 23% from other races, and 1. 84% from two or more races. 4. 32% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race,21. 10% of all households were made up of individuals and 3. 20% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.45 and the family size was 2.86. In the county, the population was out with 23. 50% under the age of 18,5. 10% from 18 to 24,33. 40% from 25 to 44,30. 60% from 45 to 64. The median age was 40 years, for every 100 females there were 107.10 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 107.60 males, the median income for a household in the county was $51,899, and the median income for a family was $57,025. Males had an income of $41,480 versus $27,807 for females. The per capita income for the county was $25,019, about 3. 40% of families and 5. 60% of the population were below the poverty line, including 5. 60% of those under age 18 and 5. 70% of those age 65 or over. Alma Fairplay Guffey Antero Junction Buckskin Joe Garo Howbert Tarryall Trump In the animated television series South Park, the police in South Park were a one-man South Park Police force at first, but it has since been phased out in favor of the Park County police. In 1955, part of the film The Looters, co-starring Rory Calhoun, subsequently of the CBS western television series, The Texan, the Looters is the story of a plane crash in the Rocky Mountains
6.
Colorado
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Colorado is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,540,545 on July 1,2016, the state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28,1861, Colorado is nicknamed the Centennial State because it became a state in the same year as the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado, residents of the state are properly known as Coloradans, although the term Coloradoan has been used archaically and lives on in the title of Fort Collins newspaper, the Coloradoan. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado, Colorado is the only U. S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County, Colorado and this point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state, is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. A little less than one half of the area of Colorado is flat, East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet. The Colorado plains were mostly prairies, but they have many patches of forests, buttes. Eastern Colorado is presently covered in farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches annually, corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. Irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, however, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as agriculture, eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches. Roughly 70% of Colorados population resides along the edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The Front Range includes Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley and other townships, on the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado are the cities of Grand Junction, Durango, and Montrose
7.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
8.
Idaho Springs, Colorado
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The City of Idaho Springs is a Statutory City which is the most populous municipality in Clear Creek County, Colorado, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 1,717, Idaho Springs is located in Clear Creek Canyon, in the mountains upstream from Golden, some 30 miles west of Denver. Founded in 1859 by prospectors during the days of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush. The Argo Tunnel drained and provided access to many lodes of ore between Idaho Springs and Central City. During the late century, the town evolved into a tourist center along U. S. Highway 6 and U. S. Highway 40. It also serves as a community for workers at the Loveland Ski Area farther up the canyon. The town today is the largest community in Clear Creek County, but, for historical reasons, the county seat has remained at Georgetown. On January 5,1859, during the Colorado gold rush, prospector George A. Jackson discovered placer gold at the present site of Idaho Springs and it was the first substantial gold discovery in Colorado. Jackson, a Missouri native with experience in the California gold fields, was drawn to the area by clouds of steam rising from some nearby hot springs. Jackson kept his secret for several months, but after he paid for some supplies with gold dust. The location was known as Jacksons Diggings. Once the location became a permanent settlement, it was variously called Sacramento City, Idahoe, Idaho City, the first placer discoveries were soon followed by discoveries of gold veins in the rocks of the canyon walls on both sides of Clear Creek. Hard rock mining became the mainstay of the town long after the gold-bearing gravels were exhausted, a strike by Idaho Springs miners demanding the eight-hour day in May 1903 erupted into violence. This was a struggle in a much broader fight called the Colorado Labor Wars. The 1969 film Downhill Racer portrayed an alpine ski racer from Idaho Springs, played by Robert Redford, several scenes from the comedy film The Overbrook Brothers were filmed here in the spring of 2008. Idaho Springs is located in northeastern Clear Creek County at 39°44′33″N 105°30′52″W, along Clear Creek near the confluence of its tributary, Chicago Creek. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 2.2 square miles, of which 0.03 square miles. As of the census of 2010, there were 1,717 people and 934 housing units, as of the census of 2000, there were 485 families residing in the city
9.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
10.
United States Forest Service
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The United States Forest Service is an agency of the U. S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nations 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass 193 million acres. Major divisions of the include the National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Business Operations. Managing approximately 25% of federal lands, it is the major national land agency that is outside the U. S. Department of the Interior. The concept of the National Forests was born from Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation group, Boone and Crockett Club, in 1876, Congress created the office of Special Agent in the Department of Agriculture to assess the quality and conditions of forests in the United States. Hough was appointed the head of the office, in 1881, the office was expanded into the newly formed Division of Forestry. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 authorized withdrawing land from the domain as forest reserves. In 1901, the Division of Forestry was renamed the Bureau of Forestry, gifford Pinchot was the first United States Chief Forester in the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. As of 2009, the Forest Service has a budget authority of $5.5 billion. The Forest Service employs 34,250 employees in 750 locations, including 10,050 firefighters,737 law enforcement personnel, and 500 scientists. The mission of the Forest Service is To sustain the health, diversity and its motto is Caring for the land and serving people. As the lead agency in natural resource conservation, the US Forest Service provides leadership in the protection, management, and use of the nations forest, rangeland. The agencys ecosystem approach to management integrates ecological, economic, and social factors to maintain and enhance the quality of the environment to meet current, the everyday work of the Forest Service balances resource extraction, resource protection, and providing recreation.5 billion trees per year. Further, the Forest Service fought fires on 2,996,000 acres of land in 2007, the Forest Service organization includes ranger districts, national forests, regions, research stations and research work units and the Northeastern Area Office for State and Private Forestry. Each level has responsibility for a variety of functions, the Chief of the Forest Service is a career federal employee who oversees the entire agency. The Chief reports to the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the U. S. Department of Agriculture, there are five deputy chiefs for the following areas, National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Research and Development, Business Operations, and Finance. The Forest Service Research and Development deputy area includes five stations, the Forest Products Laboratory. Station directors, like regional foresters, report to the Chief, Research stations include Northern, Pacific Northwest, Pacific Southwest, Rocky Mountain, and Southern. There are 92 research work units located at 67 sites throughout the United States, there are 80 Experimental Forests and Ranges that have been established progressively since 1908, many sites are more than 50 years old
11.
National Wilderness Preservation System
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The National Wilderness Preservation System of the United States protects federally managed wilderness areas designated for preservation in their natural condition. Activity on formally designated wilderness areas is coordinated by the National Wilderness Preservation System. Wilderness areas are managed by four federal land management agencies, the National Park Service, the U. S. Forest Service, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. As of 2015, there are 765 designated wilderness areas, totaling 109,129,657 acres, during the 1950s and 1960s, as the American transportation system was on the rise, concern for clean air and water quality began to grow. A conservation movement began to place with the intent of establishing designated wilderness areas. Howard Zahniser created the first draft of the Wilderness Act in 1956 and it took nine years and 65 rewrites before the Wilderness Act was finally passed in 1964. The Wilderness Act of 1964, which established the NWPS, was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3,1964, the first national forest wilderness areas were established by the Wilderness Act itself. The Great Swamp in New Jersey became the first National Wildlife Refuge with formally designated wilderness in 1968, Wilderness areas in national parks followed, beginning with the designation of wilderness in part of Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho in 1970. A smaller spike in 1984 came with the passage of many bills establishing national forest wilderness areas identified by the Forest Services Roadless Area Review and Evaluation process. Over 200 wilderness areas have been created within Bureau of Land Management administered lands since then, as of August 2008, a total of 704 separate wilderness areas, encompassing 107,514,938 acres, had become part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. With the passage of the Omnibus Public Lands Act in March 2009, as of September 2015, the system includes 765 wilderness areas totaling 109,129,657 acres. On federal lands in the United States, Congress may designate an area as wilderness under the provisions of the Wilderness Act of 1964. Congress then reviews these cases on a state by state basis and determines which areas, there have been multiple occasions in which congress designated more federal land than had been recommended by the nominating agency. The Wilderness Act provides criteria for lands being considered for wilderness designation, Wilderness areas are subject to specific management restrictions, human activities are limited to non-motorized recreation, scientific research, and other non-invasive activities. During these activities, patrons are asked to abide by the Leave No Trace policy and this policy sets guidelines for using the wilderness responsibly, and leaving the area as it was before usage. When closely observed, the Leave No Trace ethos ensures that wilderness areas remain untainted by human interaction, Wilderness areas fall into IUCN protected area management category Ia or Ib. Wilderness areas are parts of parks, wildlife refuges, national forests. Initially, the NWPS included 34 areas protecting 9.1 million acres in the national forests, today, there are 762 wilderness areas in the NWPS, preserving 108,916,684 acres
12.
Arapaho National Forest
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Arapaho National Forest is a National Forest located in north-central Colorado, United States. The facility is managed jointly with the Roosevelt National Forest and the Pawnee National Grassland from the United States Forest Service office in Fort Collins and it has a wildlife refuge which manages a protection for all birds and mammals. The combined facility of 1,730,603 acres is denoted as ARP by the Forest Service, separately, Arapaho National Forest consists of 723,744 acres. The forest is located in the Rocky Mountains, straddling the divide in the Front Range west of Denver. It was established on July 1,1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt, the forest includes part of the high Rockies and river valleys in the upper watershed of the Colorado River and South Platte River. The forest is largely in Grand and Clear Creek counties, but spills over into neighboring Gilpin, Park, Routt, Jackson, there are local ranger district offices located in Granby and Idaho Springs. The ponds also produce many insects and other invertebrates needed by most female waterfowl for successful egg laying and these insects also serve as an essential food item for the growth of ducklings and goslings during the summer months. The first waterfowl arrive in the spring when the ice vanishes in April, the peak migration occurs in late May when 5,000 or more ducks may be present. Canada geese have been reestablished in North Park and begin nesting during April, duck nesting usually starts in early June and peaks in late June. The forest produces about 9,000 ducklings and 150 to 200 goslings each year, the Fish and Wildlife Service expects that when refuge lands are fully acquired and developed, waterfowl production should increase significantly. There have been 198 bird species recorded in the forest, primary upland nesting species include the mallard, pintail, gadwall, and American wigeon. A number of diving ducks, including the lesser scaup and redhead, nest on the larger ponds, most species may be observed during the entire summer season. Fall migration reaches its height in late September or early October when up to 8,000 waterfowl may be present, the wetlands also attract numerous marsh, shore, and water birds. Sora and Virginia rails are numerous but seldom seen, if they are present, Wilsons phalarope, American avocet, willet, sandpipers, Greater yellowlegs, and dowitchers will be easy to observe. Other less common species include great blue heron, black-crowned night heron, American bittern, the upland hills harbor sage grouse year around with a winter population of more than 200 birds. Golden eagles, several species of hawks, and a prairie falcon circle the skies above in search of food. Their prey includes Richardsons ground squirrel, white-tailed prairie dog, badger, muskrat, beaver, coyote, and pronghorn are commonly observed. It is also possible to see a raccoon, red fox, mink, long-tailed weasel, as many as 400 mule deer have wintered here and up to 200 elk are frequently seen during the winter months
13.
Pike National Forest
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The Pike National Forest is located in the Front Range of Colorado, United States, west of Colorado Springs and including Pikes Peak. The forest encompasses 1,106,604 acres within Clear Creek, Teller, Park, Jefferson, Douglas, the major rivers draining the forest are the South Platte and Fountain Creek. Rampart Reservoir, an artificial body of water, is located within the forest. The forest is named after American explorer Zebulon Pike, much of the bedrock within Pike National Forest is made up of the coarse, pink to orange Pikes Peak granite. There are local district offices located in Colorado Springs, Fairplay. The dry climate of Pike National Forest makes it prime wildfire territory, the first recorded fires occurred in the 19th century, and the forest was recently the location of the Hayman Fire of 2002 and the Waldo Canyon Fire of 2012. The former burned 138, 114-acre and 133 homes while the latter burned 18, the Pike and San Isabel National Forest was recently awarded a major reclamation project to fix the damage from the Hayman wildfire. The project was sponsored by The National Arbor Day Foundation, in conjunction with several university bookstores, Pike and San Isabel was voted the winner from a group of three separate forests. The vote took place at www. buildaforest. com, there are three officially designated wilderness areas lying within Pike National Forest that are part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. Two of them extend into neighboring National Forests, even in the summer, nights are cool due to the forests high elevation. Temperatures and precipitation vary widely throughout the forest, depending on elevation, most of the forest receives more than 100 inches of snow a year. United States Army Pike’s Peak Research Laboratory Devils Head Lookout Culturally modified trees Pike and San Isabel National Forests and Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands
14.
Denver
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Denver, officially the City and County of Denver, is the capital and most populous municipality of the U. S. state of Colorado. Denver is in the South Platte River Valley on the edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Denver downtown district is immediately east of the confluence of Cherry Creek with the South Platte River, Denver is nicknamed the Mile-High City because its official elevation is exactly one mile above sea level, making it the highest major city in the United States. The 105th meridian west of Greenwich, the reference for the Mountain Time Zone. Denver is ranked as a Beta- world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. With a 2015 estimated population of 682,545, Denver ranks as the 19th-most populous U. S. city, and with a 2. 8% increase in 2015, the city is also the fastest-growing major city in the United States. The 10-county Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated 2015 population of 2,814,330 and ranked as the 19th most populous U. S. metropolitan statistical area. The 12-city Denver-Aurora, CO Combined Statistical Area had an estimated 2015 population of 3,418,876, which ranks as the 16th most populous U. S. metropolitan area. Denver is the most populous city of the 18-county Front Range Urban Corridor, Denver is the most populous city within a 500-mile radius and the second-most populous city in the Mountain West after Phoenix, Arizona. In 2016, Denver was named the best place to live in the USA by U. S. News & World Report and this was the first historical settlement in what was later to become the city of Denver. The site faded quickly, however, and by the summer of 1859 it was abandoned in favor of Auraria, Larimer named the townsite Denver City to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. Larimer hoped the name would help make it the county seat of Arapaho County but, unbeknownst to him. The location was accessible to existing trails and was across the South Platte River from the site of seasonal encampments of the Cheyenne, the site of these first towns is now the site of Confluence Park near downtown Denver. Larimer, along with associates in the St. Charles City Land Company, sold parcels in the town to merchants and miners, Denver City was a frontier town, with an economy based on servicing local miners with gambling, saloons, livestock and goods trading. In the early years, land parcels were often traded for grubstakes or gambled away by miners in Auraria, in May 1859, Denver City residents donated 53 lots to the Leavenworth & Pikes Peak Express in order to secure the regions first overland wagon route. Offering daily service for passengers, mail, freight, and gold, in 1863, Western Union furthered Denvers dominance of the region by choosing the city for its regional terminus. The Colorado Territory was created on February 28,1861, Arapahoe County was formed on November 1,1861, Denver City served as the Arapahoe County Seat from 1861 until consolidation in 1902. In 1867, Denver City became the territorial capital, with its newfound importance, Denver City shortened its name to Denver
15.
Echo Lake Park
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Echo Lake Park is a park located along the Mount Evans Scenic Byway about 33.5 mi west of Denver, Colorado. The park provides a shelter with picnic tables and barbecue grills on one end of the lake, and the 1926 Echo Lake Lodge. Access to backpacking trails, including the Chicago Lakes trail and Lincoln Lakes trail, the park is part of the Denver Mountain Parks system. Echo Lake is a shallow, oligotrophic lake situated at 10,600 ft above sea level near Mount Evans in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and it formed during the latest period of glaciation roughly 10,000 years ago. As glaciers retreated in the Chicago Creek valley, lateral moraines formed a dam to drainage. The ecosystem around the lake is dominated by Engelmann Spruce and Subalpine Fir, with some Limber Pine on exposed sites
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Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
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Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. was an American landscape architect and city planner known for his wildlife conservation efforts. He had a commitment to national parks, and worked on projects in Acadia. Olmsted Point in Yosemite and Olmsted Island at Great Falls of the Potomac River in Maryland are named after him and he was the son of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. and he and his brother John C. Olmsted created Olmsted Brothers as a firm to their fathers. Olmsted was born on Staten Island, New York, the son of Frederick Law Olmsted and Mary Cleveland Perkins, after graduating from the Roxbury Latin School in 1890, he began his career as his famous fathers apprentice. He entered Harvard College where he earned his bachelors degree in 1894 and he then became a partner in his fathers Brookline, Massachusetts landscape architecture firm in 1895. Olmsted and his half brother quickly took over leadership of the firm, for the next half-century, the Olmsted brothers firm completed thousands of landscape projects nationwide. In 1900 Olmsted returned to Harvard to teach, and he established the schools first formal training program in landscape architecture. In 1901, he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as a member of the Senate Park Improvement Commission for the District of Columbia, in 1910, he was approached by the American Civic Association for advice on the creation of a new bureau of national parks. I have made at different times two suggestions, one of which was, a definition of the purposes for which the national parks and monuments are to be administered by the Bureau. Olmsted and his wife, Sarah Hall Sharples, whom he married on March 30,1911, had one child, by 1920, his better-known projects included plans for metropolitan park systems and greenways across the country. And was a member and later president of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Under the leadership of John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. the Olmsted Brothers firm employed nearly 60 staff at its peak in the early 1930s, as the last surviving family member in the firm, Olmsted retired in 1949. The Caracas Country Club is today the place in the city were one can actually see how the valleys original natural landscape was before the city was built. In his later years, Olmsted worked for the protection of Californias coastal redwoods, redwood National Parks Olmsted Grove was dedicated to him in 1953, the same year in which he received the Pugsley Gold Medal. He was responsible for the original master plan layout of Cornell University. He also worked on the Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida, Olmsted died while visiting friends in Malibu, California and is buried at Old North Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut. Landscape design at Waveny Park, New Canaan, Connecticut,1912, shelter at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument,1932 St
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Denver Mountain Parks
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The Denver Mountain Parks system currently consists of 22 developed parks and other undeveloped parklands that serve as open space, scenic viewsheds, and wildlife habitat. It ranges in elevation from 5,800 to 13,000 ft above sea level, many of the parks have picnic areas and some have trails. Benedict designed many of the pavilions and shelters in these parks, using native stone, two shelters, one in Genesee Park and one in Dedisse Park, were built in the late 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Denver Mountain Park properties encompass a variety of habitats, including prairie, mountain meadow, riparian forests, montane and subalpine forests, and alpine tundra. Bison herds were established in wildlife preserves at Genesee Park in 1914, beginning in about 1909-10, the idea of a mountain park in the foothills west of Denver was promoted by John Brisben Walker and Denver’s Mayor Robert W. Speer. Walker approached the Denver Real Estate Exchange, the Denver Chamber of Commerce, and the Denver Motor Club, later these were formed into a Joint Committee of the Commercial Bodies. A city election in May 1912 gave voter approval to a levy to support the project. In 1912, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was hired to plan the park system, Olmsted identified 41,310 acres of land that Denver should acquire for parks, mountain roads, and to protect scenic vistas. Acquisition of Genesee Park began in 1912, it was the first park established and, the last new parks were Red Rocks Park, purchased in 1927-28, OFallon Park and Newton Park, donated in 1939, and Winter Park, purchased in 1939. Daniels Park was also expanded at that time, the major parks in the system were designated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 and 1995 as a result of multiple-property submissions that ultimately included sixteen parks. Two of the highways built by Denver in 1912-1914, the Bear Creek Canyon Scenic Mountain Drive. These drives today are part of the Lariat Loop Scenic & Historic Byway, the designated parks are listed at National Register of Historic Places listings in Jefferson County, Colorado. Despite their historical significance, dedicated funding for the parks was eliminated in 1955 when they part of the Denver Parks. After that time, the parks were relatively neglected, a situation led to the formation of the Denver Mountain Parks Foundation as an advocacy group in 2004. In 2008, the Foundation and the Department joined forces to create a Master Plan for the system, for the plan, a new logo was commissioned from artist Michael Schwab to help create an identity for the park system. Denver Mountain Parks,100 Years of the Magnificent Dream was released August 1,2013, properties owned by the City & County of Denver as Mountain Parks vary in degree of development and use. Some familiar parks are known and regularly visited, others are remote or small parcels that receive less use. Most parks have picnic areas and restrooms, but in cases in this list, developed may refer only to accessibility, e. g. Bear Creek Canyon
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National park
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A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns, although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea, the conservation of wild nature for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, although Yellowstone was not officially termed a national park in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use national park in its legislation was the USs Mackinac Island. Australias Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park, as a result, Australias Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence. The largest national park in the meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park. According to the IUCN,6,555 national parks worldwide met its criteria in 2006, IUCN is still discussing the parameters of defining a national park. National parks are almost always open to visitors, in 1971, these criteria were further expanded upon leading to more clear and defined benchmarks to evaluate a national park. In 1810, the English poet William Wordsworth described the Lake District as a sort of property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive. It was known as Hot Springs Reservation, but no authority was established. Federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877, John Muir is today referred to as the Father of the National Parks due to his work in Yosemite. He published two articles in The Century Magazine, which formed the base for the subsequent legislation. President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on July 1,1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley, according to this bill, private ownership of the land in this area was no longer possible. The state of California was designated to manage the park for use, resort. Leases were permitted for up to ten years and the proceeds were to be used for conservation, a public discussion followed this first legislation of its kind and there was a heated debate over whether the government had the right to create parks. The perceived mismanagement of Yosemite by the Californian state was the reason why Yellowstone at its establishment six years later was put under national control, in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the United States first national park, being also the worlds first national park. In some European countries, however, national protection and nature reserves already existed, such as Drachenfels, Yellowstone was part of a federally governed territory
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Geneva Creek (Colorado)
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Geneva Creek is a short tributary of the North Fork South Platte River, approximately 14.7 miles long, in central Colorado in the United States. It drains part of the Rocky Mountains southwest of Denver in northern Park County and it rises at the continental divide west of Mount Bierstadt and descends through a canyon to the southeast. It joins the North Fork South Platte from the north at Grant along U. S. Highway 285, the valley of the river provides the route of the Guanella Pass Scenic Byway between Georgetown and Grant. The upper part of Geneva Creek is a fen, where iron oxide is deposited by mineral-rich groundwater coming to the surface. The area is within the Colorado Mineral Belt, and gold, natural springs add high dissolved concentrations of copper and zinc to the stream. List of rivers of Colorado Clear Creek County Open Space, Geneva Creek Iron Fen, Colorado State Parks, Geneva Basin Iron Fens
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Geographic Names Information System
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It is a type of gazetteer. GNIS was developed by the United States Geological Survey in cooperation with the United States Board on Geographic Names to promote the standardization of feature names, the database is part of a system that includes topographic map names and bibliographic references. The names of books and historic maps that confirm the feature or place name are cited, variant names, alternatives to official federal names for a feature, are also recorded. Each feature receives a permanent, unique feature record identifier, sometimes called the GNIS identifier, the database never removes an entry, except in cases of obvious duplication. The GNIS accepts proposals for new or changed names for U. S. geographical features, the general public can make proposals at the GNIS web site and can review the justifications and supporters of the proposals. The Bureau of the Census defines Census Designated Places as a subset of locations in the National Geographic Names Database, U. S. Postal Service Publication 28 gives standards for addressing mail. In this publication, the postal service defines two-letter state abbreviations, street identifiers such as boulevard and street, department of the Interior, U. S. Geological Survey, National Mapping Division, Digital Gazeteer, Users Manual. Least Heat Moon, William, Blue Highways, A Journey Into America, standard was withdrawn in September 2008, See Federal Register Notice, Vol.73, No. 170, page 51276 Report, Principles, Policies, and Procedures, Domestic Geographic Names, U. S. Postal Service Publication 28, November 2000. Board on Geographic Names website Geographic Names Information System Proposals from the general public Meeting minutes
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United States Geological Survey
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The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its resources. The organization has four science disciplines, concerning biology, geography, geology. The USGS is a research organization with no regulatory responsibility. The USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior, the USGS employs approximately 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The USGS also has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, the current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is science for a changing world. The agencys previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its anniversary, was Earth Science in the Public Service. Prompted by a report from the National Academy of Sciences, the USGS was created, by a last-minute amendment and it was charged with the classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain. This task was driven by the need to inventory the vast lands added to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the legislation also provided that the Hayden, Powell, and Wheeler surveys be discontinued as of June 30,1879. Clarence King, the first director of USGS, assembled the new organization from disparate regional survey agencies, after a short tenure, King was succeeded in the directors chair by John Wesley Powell. Administratively, it is divided into a Headquarters unit and six Regional Units, Other specific programs include, Earthquake Hazards Program monitors earthquake activity worldwide. The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines detects the location, the USGS also runs or supports several regional monitoring networks in the United States under the umbrella of the Advanced National Seismic System. The USGS informs authorities, emergency responders, the media, and it also maintains long-term archives of earthquake data for scientific and engineering research. It also conducts and supports research on long-term seismic hazards, USGS has released the UCERF California earthquake forecast. The USGS National Geomagnetism Program monitors the magnetic field at magnetic observatories and distributes magnetometer data in real time, the USGS operates the streamgaging network for the United States, with over 7400 streamgages. Real-time streamflow data are available online, since 1962, the Astrogeology Research Program has been involved in global, lunar, and planetary exploration and mapping. USGS operates a number of related programs, notably the National Streamflow Information Program. USGS Water data is available from their National Water Information System database
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Yale University Press
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Yale University Press is a university press associated with Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961. As of 2009, Yale University Press published approximately 300 new hardcover and 150 new paperback books annually and has more than 6,000 books in print and its books have won five National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards and eight Pulitzer Prizes. Since its inception in 1919, the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition has published the first collection of poetry by new poets, the first winner was Howard Buck, the 2011 winner was Katherine Larson. Yale University Press and Yale Repertory Theatre jointly sponsor the Yale Drama Series, the winner of the annual competition is awarded the David C. Horn Prize of $10,000, publication of his/her manuscript by Yale University Press, the Yale Drama Series and David C. Horn Prize are funded by the David Charles Horn Foundation, in 2007, Yale University Press acquired the Anchor Bible Series, a collection of more than 115 volumes of biblical scholarship, from the Doubleday Publishing Group. New and backlist titles are now published under the Anchor Yale Bible Series name, the Dwight H. Terry Lectureship was established in 1905 to encourage the consideration of religion in the context of modern science, psychology, and philosophy. Many of the lectures, which are hosted by Yale University, have been edited into book form by the Yale University Press, the Yale Publishing Course was founded in 2010 by former Publishing Director of the Yale University Press, Tina C. It filled the gap created by the closing of the legendary Stanford Publishing Course and it operates under the aegis of the Office of International Affairs of Yale University. The Course trains mid to senior-level publishing professionals to tackle the most compelling issues facing the publishing industry, the curriculum focuses on in-depth analyses of global trends, innovative business models, management strategies, and new advances in technology. Its immersive week-long programs, one devoted to publishing and the other to magazine and digital publishing, combine lectures, discussion groups. The faculty is made up of leading experts and members of the Yale School of Management, the Yale Library. Participants come from all over the world and represent all areas of publishing within organizations of all sizes and types of publications, in 1963, the Press published a revised edition of Ludwig von Misess Human Action. Official website, including a mission statement Yale University Press, London Yale Publishing Course, New Haven, Connecticut
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Protected areas of the United States
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The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation, as of 2015, the 25,800 protected areas covered 1,294,476 km2, or 14 percent of the land area of the United States. This is also one-tenth of the land area of the world. The U. S. also had a total of 787 National Marine Protected Areas, covering an additional 1,271,408 km2, some areas are managed in concert between levels of government. The Father Marquette National Memorial is an example of a park operated by a state park system. As of 2007, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, federal level protected areas are managed by a variety of agencies, most of which are a part of the National Park Service, a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior. They are often considered the jewels of the protected areas. Other areas are managed by the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Army Corps of Engineers is claimed to provide 30 percent of the recreational opportunities on federal lands, mainly through lakes and waterways that they manage. The highest levels of protection, as described by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, are Level I, the United States maintains 12 percent of the Level I and II lands in the world. These lands had an area of 210,000 sq mi. A confusing system for naming protected areas results in some types being used by more than one agency, for instance, both the National Park Service and the U. S. Forest Service operate areas designated National Preserves and National Recreation Areas. The National Park Service, the U. S. Forest Service, National Wilderness Areas are designated within other protected areas, managed by various agencies and sometimes wilderness areas span areas managed by multiple agencies. States and local zoning bodies may or may not choose to protect these, the state of Colorado, for example, is very clear that it does not set any limits on owners of NRHP properties. State parks vary widely from urban parks to large parks that are on a par with national parks. Some state parks, like Adirondack Park, are similar to the National parks of England and Wales, about half the area of the park, some 3,000,000 acres, is state-owned and preserved as forever wild by the Forest Preserve of New York. Wood-Tikchik State Park in Alaska claims to be the largest state park by the amount of protected land, it is larger than many U. S. National Parks. Many states also operate game and recreation areas. S, State and tribal wilderness areas Various counties, cities, metropolitan authorities, regional parks, townships, soil conservation districts and other units manage a variety of local level parks. Some of these are more than picnic areas or playgrounds, however
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Federal government of the United States
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The Federal Government of the United States is the national government of the United States, a republic in North America, composed of 50 states, one district, Washington, D. C. and several territories. The federal government is composed of three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U. S. Constitution in the Congress, the President, and the courts, including the Supreme Court. The powers and duties of these branches are defined by acts of Congress. The full name of the republic is United States of America, no other name appears in the Constitution, and this is the name that appears on money, in treaties, and in legal cases to which it is a party. The terms Government of the United States of America or United States Government are often used in documents to represent the federal government as distinct from the states collectively. In casual conversation or writing, the term Federal Government is often used, the terms Federal and National in government agency or program names generally indicate affiliation with the federal government. Because the seat of government is in Washington, D. C, Washington is commonly used as a metonym for the federal government. The outline of the government of the United States is laid out in the Constitution, the government was formed in 1789, making the United States one of the worlds first, if not the first, modern national constitutional republics. The United States government is based on the principles of federalism and republicanism, some make the case for expansive federal powers while others argue for a more limited role for the central government in relation to individuals, the states or other recognized entities. For example, while the legislative has the power to create law, the President nominates judges to the nations highest judiciary authority, but those nominees must be approved by Congress. The Supreme Court, in its turn, has the power to invalidate as unconstitutional any law passed by the Congress and these and other examples are examined in more detail in the text below. The United States Congress is the branch of the federal government. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate, the House currently consists of 435 voting members, each of whom represents a congressional district. The number of each state has in the House is based on each states population as determined in the most recent United States Census. All 435 representatives serve a two-year term, each state receives a minimum of one representative in the House. There is no limit on the number of terms a representative may serve, in addition to the 435 voting members, there are six non-voting members, consisting of five delegates and one resident commissioner. In contrast, the Senate is made up of two senators from each state, regardless of population, there are currently 100 senators, who each serve six-year terms
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Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
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Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is a United States National Park located in western Colorado and managed by the National Park Service. There are two entrances to the park, the south rim entrance is located 15 miles east of Montrose. The park contains 12 miles of the 48-mile long Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, the canyons name owes itself to the fact that parts of the gorge only receive 33 minutes of sunlight a day, according to Images of America, The Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The Gunnison River drops an average of 34 feet per mile through the entire canyon, by comparison, the Colorado River drops an average of 7.5 feet per mile through the Grand Canyon. The greatest descent of the Gunnison River occurs within the park at Chasm View dropping 240 feet per mile, the Black Canyon is so named because its steepness makes it difficult for sunlight to penetrate into its depths. As a result, the canyon is often shrouded in shadow, at its narrowest point the canyon is only 40 ft wide at the river. The extreme steepness and depth of the Black Canyon formed as the result of geologic processes acting together. The Gunnison River is primarily responsible for carving the canyon, though several other events had to occur in order to form the canyon as it is seen today. The lighter-colored pegmatite dikes that can be seen crosscutting the basement rocks formed later during this same period, the entire area underwent uplift during the Laramide orogeny between 70 and 40 million years ago which was also part of the Gunnison Uplift. This raised the Precambrian gneiss and schist that makes up the canyon walls, during the Tertiary from 26 to 35 million years ago large episodes of volcanism occurred in the area immediately surrounding the present day Black Canyon. The West Elk Mountains, La Sal Mountains, Henry Mountains, with the Gunnison River’s course set, a broad uplift in the area 2 to 3 million years ago caused the river to cut through the softer volcanic deposits. Eventually the river reached the Precambrian rocks of the Gunnison Uplift, since the river was unable to change its course, it began scouring through the extremely hard metamorphic rocks of the Gunnison Uplift. The river’s flow was much larger than currently, with higher levels of turbidity. As a result, the river dug down through the Precambrian gneiss, the extreme hardness of the metamorphic rock along with the relative quickness with which the river carved through them created the steep walls that can be seen today. A number of canyons running into the Black Canyon slope in the wrong direction for water to flow into the canyon. It is believed that streams in the region shifted to a more north-flowing drainage pattern in response to a change in the tilt of the surrounding terrain. The west-flowing Gunnison, however, was trapped in the hard Precambrian rock of the Black Canyon. The Ute Indians had known the canyon to exist for a time before the first Europeans saw it
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Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
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Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is a United States National Park located in the San Luis Valley, in the easternmost parts of Alamosa County and Saguache County, Colorado, United States. Originally created as Great Sand Dunes National Monument on March 17,1932, Great Sand Dunes National Park, the park includes 44,246 acres, and the preserve protects an additional 41,686 acres. Researchers say that the dunes started forming less than 440,000 years ago, the dunes were formed from sand and soil deposits of the Rio Grande and its tributaries, flowing through the San Luis Valley. Over the ages, glaciers feeding the river and the vast lake that existed upon the valley melted, westerly winds picked up sand particles from the lake and river flood plain. As the wind lost power before crossing the Sangre de Cristo Range and this process continues, and the dunes are slowly growing. The wind changes the shape of the dunes daily, there are several streams flowing on the perimeter of the dunes. The streams erode the edge of the field, and sand is carried downstream. The water disappears into the ground, depositing sand on the surface, winds pick up the deposits of sand, and blow them up onto the dune field once again. Digging a couple inches into the even at their peaks reveals wet sand. Part of the motivation of turning the Monument into a National Park was the protection of the water. It is very easy to experience the dune-building process and this is a very windy region, as hikers on the Sand Dunes will attest, as on many days they will be pelted by sand and even small rocks when hiking on the dunes. The wind carries sand and rocks from many miles away, while the dunes dont change location or size that often, there are still parabolic dunes that start in the sand sheet, the outer area around the dunes, and migrate towards the main dune field. Sometimes they join the main field, and sometimes they will get covered with grass and vegetation. The dunes are relatively stable, however, their morphology changes slightly with the seasons, the direction of the wind greatly affects the dune type. The winds normally go from southwest to northeast, however, during the summer months. This wind regime is part of the reason why the dunes are so tall, the dunes contain areas of black sand which are deposits of magnetite, a crystalline black oxide of iron. The Great Sand Dunes sit on an area of High Desert land in the San Luis Valley. The summer temperatures of this area are not typical of high desert lands although temperatures above 95 °F are not uncommon in July
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Mesa Verde National Park
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Mesa Verde National Park is a National Park and World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. It protects some of the best preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States, created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 4,300 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, Mesa Verde is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. Starting c. 7500 BCE, Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rockshelters in and around the mesa, by 1000 BCE, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 CE the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture. The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesas first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, the first occupants of the Mesa Verde region, which spans from southeastern Utah to northwestern New Mexico, were nomadic Paleo-Indians who arrived in the area c. 9500 BCE. They followed herds of big game and camped near rivers and streams, the earliest Paleo-Indians were the Clovis culture and Folsom tradition, defined largely by the way in which they fashioned projectile points. Although they left evidence of their presence throughout the region, there is indication that they lived in central Mesa Verde during this time. After 9600 BCE, the environment grew warmer and drier, a change that brought to central Mesa Verde pine forests. Paleo-Indians began inhabiting the mesa in increasing numbers c. 7500, development of the atlatl during this period made it easier for them to hunt smaller game, a crucial advance at a time when most of the regions big game had disappeared from the landscape. 6000 BCE marks the beginning of the Archaic period in North America, the Archaic people probably developed locally, but were also influenced by contact, trade, and intermarriage with immigrants from these outlying areas. The early Archaic people living near Mesa Verde utilized the atlatl and harvested a variety of plants and animals than the Paleo-Indians had. Environmental stability during the period drove population expansion and migration, by the late Archaic, more people were living in semi-permanent rockshelters that preserved perishable goods such as baskets, sandals, and mats. They started to make a variety of figurines that usually resembled sheep or deer. The late Archaic is marked by increased trade in materials such as obsidian. Marine shells and abalone from the Pacific coast made their way to Mesa Verde from Arizona, Rock art flourished, and people lived in rudimentary houses made of mud and wood
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Rocky Mountain National Park
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The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The eastern and westerns slopes of the Continental Divide run directly through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the northwestern region. The main features of the park include mountains, alpine lakes, the Rocky Mountain National Park Act was signed by then–President Woodrow Wilson on January 26,1915, establishing the park boundaries and protecting the area for future generations. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the main route, named Trail Ridge Road. In 1976, UNESCO designated the park as one of the first World Biosphere Reserves, in 2016, more than four and a half million recreational visitors entered the park, which is an increase of about nine percent from the prior year. The history of Rocky Mountain National Park began when Paleo-Indians traveled along what is now Trail Ridge Road to hunt, Ute and Arapaho people subsequently hunted and camped in the area. In 1820, the Long Expedition, led by Stephen H. Long for whom Longs Peak was named, approached the Rockies via the Platte River. Settlers began arriving in the mid-1800s, displacing the Native Americans who mostly left the area voluntarily by 1860, lulu City, Dutchtown, and Gaskill in the Never Summer Mountains were established in the 1870s when prospectors came in search of gold and silver. The boom ended by 1883 with miners deserting their claims, the railroad reached Lyons, Colorado in 1881 and the Big Thompson Canyon Road—a section of U. S. Route 34 from Loveland to Estes Park—was completed in 1904. The 1920s saw a boom in building lodges and roads in the park, prominent individuals in the effort to create a national park included Enos Mills from the Estes Park area, James Grafton Rogers from Denver, and J. Horace McFarland of Pennsylvania. The national park was established on January 26,1915, Precambrian metamorphic rock formed the core of the North American continent during the Precambrian eon 4. 5–1 billion years ago. During the Paleozoic era, western North America was submerged beneath a sea, with a seabed composed of limestone. Concurrently, in the period from 500–300 million years ago, the region began to sink while lime, eroded granite produced sand particles that formed strata—layers of sediment—in the sinking basin. About 300 million years ago, the land was uplifted creating the ancestral Rocky Mountains, fountain Formation was deposited during the Pennsylvanian period of the Paleozoic era, 290–296 million years ago. Over the next 150 million years, the uplifted, continued to erode. Wind, gravity, rainwater, snow, and glacial ice eroded the mountains over geologic time scales. The Ancestral Rockies were eventually buried under subsequent strata, the Pierre Shale formation was deposited during the Paleogene and Cretaceous periods about 70 million years ago. The region was covered by a deep sea—the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway—which deposited massive amounts of shale on the seabed
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National Monument (United States)
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Historically, some national monuments were managed by the War Department. National monuments can be so designated through the power of the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt used the act to declare Devils Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument. The Antiquities Act of 1906 resulted from concerns about protecting mostly prehistoric Native American ruins, the Act authorized permits for legitimate archaeological investigations and penalties for taking or destroying antiquities without permission. Among the next three monuments he proclaimed in 1906 was Petrified Forest in Arizona, another natural feature, in 1908, Roosevelt used the act to proclaim more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon as a national monument. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Katmai National Monument in Alaska, Katmai was later enlarged to nearly 2,800,000 acres by subsequent Antiquities Act proclamations and for many years was the largest national park system unit. Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, and Katmai were among the national monuments later converted to national parks by Congress. Substantial opposition did not materialize until 1943, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Jackson Hole National Monument in Wyoming. He did this to accept a donation of lands acquired by John D. Rockefeller, roosevelts proclamation unleashed a storm of criticism about use of the Antiquities Act to circumvent Congress. A bill abolishing Jackson Hole National Monument passed Congress but was vetoed by Roosevelt, the proclamation authority was not used again anywhere until 1996, when President Bill Clinton proclaimed the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. This action was unpopular in Utah, and bills were introduced to further restrict the presidents authority. To date, none of them have been enacted, presidents have used the Antiquities Acts proclamation authority not only to create new national monuments but to enlarge existing ones. For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt significantly enlarged Dinosaur National Monument in 1938, lyndon B. Johnson added Ellis Island to Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965, and Jimmy Carter made major additions to Glacier Bay and Katmai National Monuments in 1978. Marine National Monument List of U. S. National Forests List of areas in the National Park System of the United States List of U. S
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Browns Canyon National Monument
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Browns Canyon National Monument is a 21,586 acres national monument in Chaffee County, Colorado that was designated as such by President Barack Obama under the Antiquities Act on February 19,2015. The site will be centered along the Arkansas River between Buena Vista and Salida, Browns Canyon is the most popular destination for whitewater rafting in the country, and is also known for its fishing and hiking. The monument will provide protection for bighorn sheep, peregrine falcons, elk. Designation of the monument was requested by numerous Colorado lawmakers, including Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall, Representative Joel Hefley and it was opposed by Representatives Ken Buck and Doug Lamborn, who objected to the presidents use of executive action in declaring the monument. The monument will be run jointly by the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Land Management initially designated the region around Browns Canyon as a wilderness study area after it had been named as a potential site for consideration as such in 1979. In 2005, Joel Hefley and six other Colorado lawmakers introduced the Browns Canyon Wilderness Act, the legislation failed due to the influence of the National Rifle Association, which claimed that a wilderness designation would limit hunting in Browns Canyon. An attempt to reintroduce the Act by Senator Ken Salazar once again failed to clear its committee, Mark Udall and Michael Bennet attempted to introduce legislation designating the canyon as a national monument in 2013, but it, too, failed. Udalls bill also contained over 10,000 acres of wilderness protections, the monument as designated otherwise substantially follows the acreage designated in the bill
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Bureau of Land Management
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President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies, the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The mission of the BLM is to sustain the health, diversity, originally BLM holdings were described as land nobody wanted because homesteaders had passed them by. All the same, ranchers hold nearly 18,000 permits, the agency manages 221 wilderness areas,23 national monuments and some 636 other protected areas as part of the National Landscape Conservation System totaling about 30 million acres. There are more than 63,000 oil and gas wells on BLM public lands, total energy leases generated approximately $5.4 billion in 2013, an amount divided among the Treasury, the states, and Native American groups. The BLMs roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and these laws provided for the survey and settlement of the lands that the original 13 colonies ceded to the federal government after the American Revolution. As additional lands were acquired by the United States from Spain, France and other countries, the United States Congress directed that they be explored, surveyed, during the Revolutionary War, military bounty land was promised to soldiers who fought for the colonies. After the war, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, signed by the United States, England, France, in the 1780s, other states relinquished their own claims to land in modern-day Ohio. By this time, the United States needed revenue to function, Land was sold so that the government would have money to survive. In order to sell the land, surveys needed to be conducted, the Land Ordinance of 1785 instructed a geographer to oversee this work as undertaken by a group of surveyors. The first years of surveying were completed by trial and error, once the territory of Ohio had been surveyed, in 1812, Congress established the General Land Office as part of the Department of the Treasury to oversee the disposition of these federal lands. By the early 1800s, promised bounty land claims were finally fulfilled, over the years, other bounty land and homestead laws were enacted to dispose of federal land. Several different types of patents existed and these include cash entry, credit, homestead, Indian, military warrants, mineral certificates, private land claims, railroads, state selections, swamps, town sites, and town lots. A system of land offices spread throughout the territories, patenting land that was surveyed via the corresponding Office of the Surveyor General of a particular territory. This pattern gradually spread across the entire United States, the laws that spurred this system with the exception of the General Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 have since been repealed or superseded. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 allowed leasing, exploration, and production of selected commodities, such as coal, oil, gas, the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established the United States Grazing Service to manage the public rangelands by establishment of advisory boards that set grazing fees. The Oregon and California Revested Lands Sustained Yield Management Act of 1937, commonly referred as the O&C Act, in 1946, the Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Office to form the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior. It took several years for new agency to integrate and reorganize
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Canyons of the Ancients National Monument
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Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically-significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U. S. state of Colorado. The monuments 176,056 acres are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of sites in the United States. As of 2005, over 6,000 individual archeological sites had been identified within the monument, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is located 9 miles west of Pleasant View, Colorado in southwestern Colorado. The monuments northern and eastern boundaries are canyons and its western boundary is the Colorado-Utah state border. Lands south are bordered by the Ute Mountain Reservation and McElmo Creek, Ancient Pueblo people lived in the Canyons of the Ancients in the 10th century, Lowry Pueblo, built during the Great Pueblo period, was built atop pit-house built in the 10th century. For a fuller understanding of the architecture and life style during this period, pueblo buildings in the Mesa Verde region were built with stone, windows facing south, the buildings were located more closely together and reflected deepening religious celebration. Towers were built near kivas and likely used for look-outs, pottery became more versatile, including pitchers, ladles, bowls, jars and tableware for food and drink. White pottery with black designs emerged, the coming from plants. Water management and conservation techniques, including the use of reservoirs, as refinements in construction techniques increased, the Puebloans built larger pueblos, or villages, on top of the pit-houses starting about AD1090. Lowry Pueblo had just a few rooms and 2 kivas in 1090, like their ancient neighbors at Hovenweep National Monument and Mesa Verde National Park, the Lowry Pueblo dwellers were farmers and hunters. They grew beans, corn and squash and raised turkeys and they also made and decorated pottery. At least 6,000 distinct structures have been identified in the monument, the vast majority of stone structures in the national monument are from the Ancient Puebloans era. More than 20,000 sites have been identified, in places more than 100 sites per square mile. After building basic pit style structures at first, the Puebloans later built villages with cliff dwellings, Archaeological ruins also include Sweat lodges, kivas, shrines and petroglyphs. Reservoirs with stone and earthen dams, including spillways and also numerous check dams, stone towers which may have been lookout or sentry posts, are found scattered throughout the monument. Unlike other Ancient Pueblo site abandonment, it appears that the people of the Canyons of the Ancients left the much earlier than their neighbors
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Chimney Rock National Monument
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Chimney Rock National Monument is a 4, 726-acre U. S. National Monument in San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado which includes an archaeological site. This area is located in Archuleta County, Colorado between Durango and Pagosa Springs and is managed for archaeological protection, public interpretation, and education, the Chimney Rock Archaeological Site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970. U. S. President Barack Obama created Chimney Rock National Monument by proclamation on September 21,2012 under authority of the Antiquities Act, Chimney Rock lies on 4,726 acres of San Juan National Forest land surrounded by the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. Chimney Rock itself occupies 1,000 acres of the site, next to Chimney Rock is Companion Rock, which is a popular nesting spot for the Peregrine Falcon. The primary settlements that have been excavated lie on the ridge that eventually terminates at Chimney Rock, the ridge is mostly bedrock made of sandstone. The rock itself is over 535 million years old, and offers 75-mile panoramic views of the local area. The Ancestral Puebloan site, designated on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, was a community inhabited between Durango and Pagosa Springs about 1,000 years ago with about 200 rooms, rooms in the buildings were used for living, work areas and ceremonial purposes. The site is located within the San Juan National Forest Archaeological Area on 4,100 acres of land, between May 15 and September 30 the Visitor Center is open and guided walking tours are conducted daily. Housing approximately 2,000 ancient Pueblo Indians between A. D.925 and 1125, the settlement included a Great House Pueblo with round ceremonial rooms, known as kivas, and 36 ground-floor rooms. A grizzly bear jaw found in one of the rooms when excavated suggested a reverence for the animal, the Chaco culture which inhabited the Chimney Rock area was hierarchical, with a priest class overseeing the areas inhabitants. The construction of the Great House Pueblo at the top of the ridge, close to Chimney Rock and its neighbor Companion Rock, had a large ceremonial role in the later years of Chaco presence. As the moon makes its lunar cycle across the sky over a period of 18.6 years, evidence suggests that Great House Pueblo was first built in 1076 during a lunar standstill and expanded and finished in 1093 during another. It consists of 36 rooms and two kivas, archaeologists believe that Great House Pueblo was mainly ceremonial in nature, with only one or two families living in its rooms. During certain key ceremonies, it functioned as a hotel for visiting notables, some of whom came from as far away as Chaco Canyon, material to build the Great House Pueblo came from downhill and was hauled by hand up the ridge line from further below. Five pithouses, titled Room A through E, probably housed the workers who built Great House Pueblo, the pottery was preserved and is now stored in boxes in the basement of the Anasazi Center in Durango. Halfway between the houses and the Great House Pueblo was a ruin that archaeologists named the Guardhouse. It Stretched from one side of the ridge to the other, rather than serving as a defensive post against invaders, it more likely performed crowd control, keeping undesirables out of the Great House Pueblo, and letting the elites through. After excavation this ruin became extremely unstable and was removed by the Forest Service for fear of visitors safety
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Colorado National Monument
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Colorado National Monument is a National Park Service unit near the city of Grand Junction, Colorado. Spectacular canyons cut deep into sandstone, and even granite–gneiss–schist, rock formations and this is an area of desert land high on the Colorado Plateau, with pinion and juniper forests on the plateau. The park hosts a range of wildlife, including red-tailed hawks, golden eagles, ravens, jays, desert bighorn sheep. Activities include hiking, horseback riding, road bicycling, and scenic drives, there are magnificent views from trails and the Rim Rock Drive, which winds along the plateau - as well as from the campground. Nearby are the Book Cliffs and the largest flat-topped mountain in the world and its feature attraction is Monument Canyon, which runs the width of the park and includes rock formations such as Independence Monument, the Kissing Couple, and Coke Ovens. The monument includes 20,500 acres, much of which has recommended to Congress for designation as wilderness. The area was first explored by John Otto, a spirit who settled in Grand Junction in the early 20th century. Prior to Ottos arrival, many 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 investigate. The delegation returned praising both Ottos work and the beauty of the wilderness area, and the local newspaper began lobbying to make it a National Park. A bill was introduced and carried by the local Representatives to the U. S. Congress and Senate, 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. The park became well known in the 1980s partly due to its inclusion as a stage of the major international bicycle race. The race through the park known as The Tour of the Moon. The issue of national park status has arisen time and again, usually during bust cycles brought on by the Uranium industry and later oil and gas. As of June,2014 Congressman Scott Tipton and Senator Mark Udall have carried the process closer to fruition than any other representatives since the effort in 1907. The two Representatives appointed an 18-member committee of locals to study the issue and learn the facts in 2011, after a ground swell of support from local residents and business owners, the Representatives then appointed a committee of five local residents to write draft legislation. The draft legislation was announced and released in early 2014, a public comment period on the draft legislation began soon after with an end date of June 29
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Dinosaur National Monument
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Dinosaur National Monument is a U. S. National Monument located on the southeast flank of the Uinta Mountains on the border between Colorado and Utah at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers. Although most of the monument area is in Moffat County, Colorado, the nearest communities are Jensen, Utah and Dinosaur, Colorado. This park contains over 800 paleontological sites and has fossils of dinosaurs including Allosaurus, Deinonychus, Abydosaurus and various long-neck and it was declared a National Monument on October 4,1915. The rock layer enclosing the fossils is a sandstone and conglomerate bed of alluvial or river bed known as the Morrison Formation from the Jurassic Period some 150 million years old. The dinosaurs and other ancient animals were carried by the system which eventually entombed their remains. The pile of sediments were buried and lithified into solid rock. The layers of rock were later uplifted and tilted to their present angle by the mountain building forces that formed the Uintas during the Laramide orogeny, the relentless forces of erosion exposed the layers at the surface to be found by paleontologists. The dinosaur fossil beds were discovered in 1909 by Earl Douglass and he and his crews excavated thousands of fossils and shipped them back to the museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for study and display. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the dinosaur beds as Dinosaur National Monument in 1915, though lesser-known than the fossil beds, the petroglyphs in Dinosaur National Monument are another treasure the monument holds. Due to problems with vandals, many of the sites are not listed on area maps, the controversy assumed major proportions, dominating conservation politics for years. They argued that, if a national monument was not safe from development, after much debate, Congress settled on a compromise that eliminated Echo Park Dam and authorized the rest of the project. The Colorado River Storage Project Act became law on April 11,1956. It stated, “that no dam or reservoir constructed under the authorization of the Act shall be within any National Park or Monument. ”Historians view the Echo Park Dam controversy as signaling the start of an era that includes major conservationist political successes such as the Wilderness Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Mantles Cave is a prehistoric Fremont culture residential site from 499 BC - AD1749, typical of high deserts, summer temperatures can be exceedingly hot, while winter temperatures can be very cold. Snowfall is common, but the snow melts rapidly in the arid, rainfall is very low, and the evaporation rate classifies the area as desert, even though the rainfall just barely exceeds 10 inches. The Wall of Bones located within the Dinosaur Quarry building in the consists of a steeply tilted rock layer which contains hundreds of dinosaur fossils. The enclosing rock has been chipped away to reveal the fossil bones intact for public viewing, in July 2006, the Quarry Visitor Center was closed due to structural problems that since 1957 had plagued the building because it was built on unstable clay. It was announced in April 2009 that Dinosaur National Monument would receive $13.1 million to refurbish, the Park Service successfully rebuilt the Quarry Exhibit Hall, supporting its weight on 70-foot steel micropile columns that extend to the bedrock below the unstable clay
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Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
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The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is a national monument located in Teller County, Colorado. The location is famous for the abundant and exceptionally preserved insect, based on argon radiometric dating, the formation is Eocene in age and has been interpreted as a lake environment. The fossils have been preserved because of the interaction of the ash from the nearby Thirtynine Mile volcanic field with diatoms in the lake. As the diatoms fell to the bottom of the lake, any plants or animals that had died were preserved by the diatom falls. Fine layers of clays and muds interspersed with layers of ash form paper shales holding beautifully-preserved fossils, the name Florissant comes from the French word for flowering. In the late 19th century tourist and excavators came to this location to observe the wildlife and collect samples for collections and study. The Petrified Forest, that is now one of the attractions at the monument today. During the 1860s and 1870s the area was mapped by geologists for the first time, paleontologists followed soon after to collect fossils for research. In 1969, the Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument was established after a legal battle between local land owners and the federal government. Today, the park receives approximately 60,000 visitors a year, in the late Eocene to early Oligocene, approximately 34 million years ago, the area was a lake environment with redwood trees. The basement is the Proterozoic aged Pikes Peak Granite, there is an unconformity from the Pikes Peak Granite to the next unit, the Wall Mountain tuff. The massive unconformity is due to erosion that occurred during the uplift of the modern Rocky Mountains, the Wall Mountain Tuff was deposited as a result of a large eruption from a distant caldera. The Florissant Formation itself is composed of alternating units of shale, mudstone, conglomerate, and volcanic deposits. There are six described units within the Florissant Formation, the lower unit, lower mudstone unit, middle shale unit, caprock conglomerate unit, upper shale unit. Each of the shale units represents lacustrine environments, composed of very thin shales that are abundant in fossils, the lower mudstone has been interpreted as a stream environment with the top of the unit being a lahar deposit. The mudstones were deposited on a floor, but not in a lake. The separation of the units by non-lake deposits could mean that there were two generations of lake deposits. Lahars that went through the valley could have dammed up the valley, the middle and upper shale units were then deposited in this second generation of the lake
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Hovenweep National Monument
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Hovenweep National Monument is located on land in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, between Cortez, Colorado and Blanding, Utah on the Cajon Mesa of the Great Sage Plain. Shallow tributaries run through the wide and deep canyons into the San Juan River, later, a succession of early puebloan cultures settled in the area and remained until the 14th century. Hovenweep became a National Monument in 1923 and is administered by the National Park Service, in July 2014, the International Dark-Sky Association designated Hovenweep an International Dark Sky Park. Evidence from the area indicates that there were Paleo-Indians and people of the Archaic period and they were adaptive to find sufficient food, supplementing their diet with nuts, seeds and fruit from wild plants. Late Basketmaker II Era AD50 to 500 The people living in the Four Corners region were introduced to maize, able to have greater control of their diet through cultivation, the hunter-gatherers lifestyle became more sedentary as small disperse groups began cultivating maize and squash. They also continued to hunt and gather wild plants and they were named Basketmakers for their skill in making baskets for storing food, covering with pitch to heat water, and using to toast seeds and nuts. They wove bags, sandals, belts out of plants and leaves –. They occasionally lived in dry caves where they dug pits and lined with stones to store food and these people were ancestors of the pueblo people of the Hovenweep pueblo settlement and Mesa Verde. The simple, gray pottery allowed them a tool for cooking. Beans were added to the cultivated diet, bows and arrows made hunting easier and thus the acquisition of hides for clothing. Turkey feathers were woven into blankets and robes, on the rim of Mesa Verde, small groups built pit houses which were built several feet below the surface with elements suggestive of the introduction of celebration rituals. Pueblo I Era 750 to 900 From pueblos at Mesa Verde we learn of some advancements during this period which are reflected in the Hovenweep structures built in the cultural period. Pueblo buildings were built with stone, windows facing south, the buildings were placed more closely together and reflected deepening religious celebration. Towers were built near kivas and likely used for look-outs, pottery became more versatile, not just for cooking, but now included pitchers, ladles, bowls, jars and dishware for food and drink. White pottery with black designs emerged, the coming from plants. Water management and conservation techniques, including the use of reservoirs, Pueblo II Era – 900–1150 About 900, the number of Hovenweep residential sites increased. Like the people at Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly National Monument, most of the pueblo building was conducted, about the same time as the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, between 1230 and 1275 when there were about 2,500 residents. The Hovenweep architecture and pottery was like that of Mesa Verde, Pueblo III Era – 1150–1350 The Hovenweep inhabitants completed construction over a period of time
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Yucca House National Monument
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Yucca House National Monument is a United States National Monument located in Montezuma County, Colorado between the towns of Towaoc and Cortez, Colorado. Yucca House is a large, unexcavated Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site, the site is one of many Ancestral Pueblo village sites located in the Montezuma Valley occupied between AD1100 and 1300 by 13,000 people. Two unexcavated settlement areas covered in vegetation include, Western Complex was a pueblo of up to 600 rooms,100 kivas. A spring runs through the complex, a large building about 80 ×100 feet, Upper House, was made of adobe. The ruins are about 12 to 15 feet high, but may have twice that height. The following archaeological studies were conducted, William Henry Holmes visited in 1875, Holmes erroneously named the land Aztec Springs believing that ruins were the home of a band of Aztecs. He created the map of the ruins. Holmes reports, These ruins form the most imposing pile of masonry yet found in Colorado, the whole group covers an area of about 480,00 square feet, and has an average depth of from 3 to 4 feet. The stone used is chiefly of the limestone that outcrops along the base of the Mesa Verde a mile or so away. A sacred 2½ foot serpent was carved into wood at the ceiling, the study included analysis of pottery on the new site and remapping the site with modern technology. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the site a National Monument on December 19,1919, an additional 24 acres was donated by Hallie Ismay in the late 1990s. It was one of many national monuments designated during that era to preserve the ruins, plants. Hallie Ismay, benefactor of the land in the 1990s, was an unofficial steward of the Yucca House site for 62 years. As a National Park Service historic area, the park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15,1966. The site is managed by Mesa Verde National Park, currently, there are no true interpretive features, facilities or fees at Yucca House. See the Visitor Guide for directions to the remote location, parking space is limited and roads may be difficult immediately following rains or snowmelt
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Arapaho National Recreation Area
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ANRA is under the jurisdiction of the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest. Grand Lake is the largest natural lake in Colorado, collectively, these six lakes are known as The Great Lakes of Colorado. The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail passes through the recreation area
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Curecanti National Recreation Area
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Curecanti National Recreation Area, in Colorado, is formed by three reservoirs, named for corresponding dams on the Gunnison River. The national recreation area borders Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park on the west, panoramic mesas, fjord-like reservoirs, and deep, steep and narrow canyons abound. Recently discovered dinosaur fossils, a 6, 700-acre archeological district, a narrow gauge train, Blue Mesa Reservoir is Colorados largest body of water. Created by Blue Mesa Dam, Blue Mesa Reservoir is 20 miles long, has 96 miles of shoreline, Blue Mesa Dam was completed in 1966, becoming the first large dam built along the Gunnison River. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison begins below Blue Mesa Dam.12 miles below Blue Mesa Dam is Morrow Point Dam, Morrow Point Dam was completed in 1967 creating narrow Morrow Point Reservoir. While the primary purpose of Blue Mesa Dam is to store water and it has about twice the power capacity of Blue Mesa Dam. Crystal Dam is a double curvature arch dam located six miles downstream from Morrow Point Dam. Crystal Dam is the newest of the three dams in Curecanti, construction on the dam was finished in 1976, forming Crystal Reservoir, below Crystal Dam is the East Portal of the Gunnison Tunnel, a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. Just below East Portal is the boundary of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Cimarron Visitor Center is located in Cimarron, Colorado near Morrow Point Dam, the visitor center has narrow gauge railroad cars and engines on display. Lake Fork Visitor Center is located near Sapinero, Colorado near the Lake Fork Campground, there are also two marinas and five boat launches along the shores of Blue Mesa Reservoir. Elk Creek Marina is located near the center at Elk Creek. This marina also includes a restaurant and boat launch, Lake Fork Marina is located near Sapinero, Colorado and is nearby both the Lake Fork campground, visitor center, and boat launch. Stevens Creek boat launch Iola boat launch Ponderosa boat launch NEVERSINK The Neversink trail is located nearest to Gunnison on the bank of the Gunnison River near a Great Blue Heron rookery. This streamside habitat with its heavy undergrowth of grasses, flowers, cottonwoods, length,1.5 miles Difficulty, easy This trail is flat and provides easy walking. It is also wheel chair accessible, along the trail are a few shady places to rest and open sunny vistas with possible glimpses of bighorn sheep. Good shoes or boots are recommended, carry at least 2 quarts of water per person. Length,4 miles Difficulty, moderately strenuous,600 ft ascent, directions, off Hwy 50,6 miles west of Elk Creek Visitor Center
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National Historic Site (United States)
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A National Historic Site is a protected area of national historic significance in the United States. An NHS usually contains a historical feature directly associated with its subject. As of 2015, there are 50 NHPs and 90 NHSs, most NHPs and NHSs are managed by the National Park Service. Some federally designated sites are owned by local authorities or privately owned, one property, Grey Towers National Historic Site, is managed by the U. S. Forest Service. As of October 15,1966, all areas, including NHPs and NHSs. There are also about 80,000 NRHP sites, the majority of which are neither owned nor managed by the NPS. Of these, about 2,500 have been designated at the highest status as National Historic Landmark sites, National Historic Sites are generally federally owned and administered properties, though some remain under private or local government ownership. There are currently 90 NHSs, of which 78 are official NPS units,11 are NPS affiliated areas, one is managed by the US Forest Service, and one by the Bureau of Land Management. Derived from the Historic Sites Act of 1935, a number of NHSs were established by United States Secretaries of the Interior, in 1937, the first NHS was created in Salem, Massachusetts in order to preserve and interpret the maritime history of New England and the United States. There is one International Historic Site in the US park system, the title, given to the site of the first permanent French settlement in America, recognizes the influence that has had on both Canada and the United States. The NPS does not distinguish among these designations in terms of their preservation or management policies, in the United States, sites are historic, while parks are historical. The NPS explains that a site can be intrinsically historic, while a park is a legal invention. As such, a park is not itself historic, but can be called historical when it contains historic resources and it is the resources which are historic, not the park. Klondike Gold Rush International Historical Park was formally established in 1998 by the United States and Canada, the park comprises Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Washington and Alaska, and Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site in British Columbia. It was this trail which so many prospectors took in hopes of making their fortunes in the Klondike River district of Yukon, list of World Heritage Sites in the Americas Designation of National Park System Units
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Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site
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Bents Old Fort is an 1833 fort located in Otero County in southeastern Colorado, United States. A company owned by Charles and William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain built the fort to trade with Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Plains Indians and trappers for buffalo robes. For much of its 16-year history, the fort was the major white American permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements. It was destroyed under mysterious circumstances in 1849, the area of the fort was designated a National Historic Site under the National Park Service on June 3,1960. It was further designated a National Historic Landmark later that year on December 19,1960, the fort was reconstructed and is open to the public. The primary trade was with the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians for buffalo robes, from 1833 to 1849, the fort was a stopping point along the Santa Fe Trail. It was the permanent settlement not under the jurisdiction and control of Native Americans or Mexicans. The U. S. Army, explorers, and other travelers stopped at the fort to replenish supplies, such as water and food, the American frontiersman Kit Carson was employed as a hunter by the Bent brothers in 1841, and regularly visited the Fort. Frémont used the Fort as both an area and a replenishment junction, for his expeditions. During the Mexican-American War in 1846, the became a staging area for Colonel Stephen Watts Kearnys Army of the West. Ralph Emerson Twitchell makes the following statement, Bents Fort is described as having been a structure built of adobe bricks. It was 180 feet long and 135 feet wide, the walls were 15 feet in height and four feet thick and it was the strongest post at that time west of Ft. Leavenworth. The construction of fort was commenced in 1828. At a point on the Arkansas somewhere between the present cities of Pueblo and Canyon City, having been disadvantageously located, four years were required in which to complete the structure. On the northwest and southeast corners were hexagonal bastions, in which were mounted a number of cannon, the walls of the fort served as walls of the rooms, all of which faced inwardly on a court or plaza. The walls were loopholed for musketry, and the entrance was through large gates of very heavy timbers. In 1849 when a cholera epidemic struck the Oklahoma and other plains Indians, William Bent abandoned Bents Fort. When he returned south in 1852, after salvaging what he could, he burned the fort and relocated his business to his log trading post at Big Timbers, near what is now Lamar
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Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
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Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site is a National Historic Site in Kiowa County, Colorado, near Eads and Chivington in Kiowa County commemorating the Sand Creek Massacre. The site is about 170 miles southeast of Denver and about 125 miles east of Pueblo, a few basic park facilities have been opened at this site. Large numbers of bullets, camp equipment, and other items convinced the NPS that they had found the correct site. Subsequent transfers of ownership from the Dawson family, former owners of the property have left the title of the site to the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes with management to be undertaken by NPS. The National Park Service offers scheduled Ranger-led programs without charge during hours of operation, from 9 am –4 pm, April 1 – December 1, or by advance appointment in the winter season. The law authorized establishment of the once the National Park Service acquired sufficient land from willing sellers to preserve, commemorate. The site near the junction of County Road 54 and County Road W was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 28,2001, on August 2,2005, President George W. Bush gave final approval for the site. On April 23,2007 it was announced that site would become Americas 391st official park unit with a date of April 27,2007. The dedication ceremony was held on April 28,2007, currently the Site encompasses 12,583 acres of which 2,385 acres are federally owned. By 2004 the federal government acquired 920 acres from private land owners, on September 9,2006 the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma conveyed to the United States title to 1,465 acres to be held in trust for the National Historic Site. Media related to Sand Creek massacre site at Wikimedia Commons Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site – National Park Service The Conservation Fund – Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
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Old Spanish Trail (trade route)
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The Old Spanish Trail is an historical trade route that connected the northern New Mexico settlements of Santa Fe, New Mexico with those of Los Angeles, California and southern California. Approximately 700 mi long, the trail ran through areas of mountains, arid deserts. It is considered one of the most arduous of all trade routes established in the United States. Explored, in part, by Spanish explorers as early as the late 16th century, the name of the trail comes from the publication of John C. Frémont’s Report of his 1844 journey for the U. S. Topographical Corps, guided by Kit Carson, from California to New Mexico. The name acknowledges the fact that parts of the trail had been known to the Spanish since the 16th century, frémonts report named a trail that had already been in use for about 15 years. The trail is important to New Mexico history because it established an arduous, the trail is a combination of known trails that were established by Spanish explorers, trappers, and traders with the Ute and other Indian tribes. The eastern parts of what called the Old Spanish Trail, including southwest Colorado. The same trail was used by the first Americans to reach California by land, the Mojave desert section of the Mohave Trail is now a jeep trail called the Mojave Road. Upon the return of Antonio Armijo, the governor of New Mexico immediately announced the success to his superiors in Mexico City, as a reward, the governor officially named Armijo Commander for the Discovery of the Route to California. Armijos route was documented by him in a report to the governor, after this date, the route began to be used by traders for usually a single annual round trip. Word spread about the successful trade expedition and some commerce began between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. This route ran northwest to the Colorado and Green Rivers, then crossed over to the Sevier River and it then passed southward to the Santa Clara River, linking up with Armijos route to California. California had many horses and mules, many growing wild, with no local market, usually two blankets were traded for one horse, more blankets were usually required for a mule. California had almost no wool processing industry and few weavers, so woven products were a welcome commodity, the trading party usually left New Mexico in early November to take advantage of winter rains to cross the deserts on the trail and would arrive in California in early February. The return party would usually leave California for New Mexico in early April to get over the trail before the water dried up. The return party often included several hundred to a few horses and mules. Low-scale emigration from New Mexico to California used parts of the trail in the late 1830s when the trade began to die
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Oregon Trail
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The Oregon Trail is a 2, 170-mile historic east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the state of Kansas. The western half of the trail spanned most of the states of Idaho. The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and traders from about 1811 to 1840, by 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. From the early to mid-1830s the Oregon Trail and its offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers. The eastern half of the trail was used by travelers on the California Trail, Mormon Trail. Use of the trail declined as the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, making the trip west substantially faster, cheaper, and safer. Today, modern highways, such as Interstate 80 and Interstate 84, follow parts of the same course westward and pass through towns originally established to serve those using the Oregon Trail. Although Lewis and William Clark found a path to the Pacific Ocean, it was not until 1859 that a direct and practicable route, the first land route across what is now the United States was mapped by the Lewis and Clark Expedition between 1804 and 1806. On the return trip in 1806 they traveled from the Columbia River to the Snake River and they then traveled overland up the Blackfoot River and crossed the Continental Divide at Lewis and Clark Pass and on to the head of the Missouri River. This was ultimately a shorter and faster route than the one they followed west and this route had the disadvantages of being much too rough for wagons and controlled by the Blackfoot Indians. They did show the way for the men, who within a decade would find a better way across. Founded by John Jacob Astor as a subsidiary of his American Fur Company in 1810, two movements of PFC employees were planned by Astor, one detachment to be sent to the Columbia River by the Tonquin and the other overland under an expedition led by Wilson Price Hunt. Hunt and his party were to find possible routes and trapping territories for further fur trading posts. Upon arriving at the river in March 1811, the Tonquin crew began construction of what became Fort Astoria, the ship left supplies and men to continue work on the station and ventured north up the coast to Clayoquot Sound for a trading expedition. While anchored there, Jonathan Thorn insulted an elder Tla-o-qui-aht who was elected by the natives to negotiate a mutually satisfactory price for animal pelts. Soon after the vessel was attacked and overwhelmed by the indigenous before being blown up, killing all the crew, from there they went over the Teton Range via Teton Pass and then down to the Snake River into modern Idaho. They abandoned their horses at the Snake River, made dugout canoes, after a few days travel they soon discovered that steep canyons, waterfalls and impassable rapids made travel by river impossible
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Pony Express
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The Pony Express was a mail service delivering messages, newspapers, and mail. Waddell, all of whom were notable in the freighting business, during its 19 months of operation, it reduced the time for messages to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to about 10 days. The idea of a fast mail route to the Pacific coast was prompted largely by Californias newfound prominence, after gold was discovered there in 1848, thousands of prospectors, investors and businessmen made their way to California, at that time a new territory of the U. S. By 1850, California entered the Union as a free state, by 1860, the population had grown to 380,000. The demand for a way to get mail and other communications to. In the late 1850s, William Russell, Alexander Majors, and they were already in the freighting and drayage business. At the peak of the operations, they employed 6,000 men, owned 75,000 oxen, thousands of wagons, and warehouses plus a sawmill, a plant, a bank. Russell was a prominent businessman, well respected among his peers, Waddell was co-owner of the firm Morehead, Waddell & Co. After Morehead was bought out and retired, Waddell merged his company with Russells, in 1855 they took on a new partner, Alexander Majors, and founded the company of Russell, Majors & Waddell. They held government contracts for delivering supplies to the western frontier. The initial price was set at $5 per 1⁄2 ounce, then $2.50, the founders of the Pony Express hoped to win an exclusive government mail contract, but that did not come about. Russell, Majors, and Waddell organized and put together the Pony Express in two months in the winter of 1860, the undertaking assembled 120 riders,184 stations,400 horses, and several hundred personnel during January and February 1861. Alexander Majors was a man and resolved by the help of God to overcome all difficulties. He presented each rider with a special edition Bible and required this oath, the Pony Express demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system of communications could be established and operated year-round. When replaced by the telegraph, the Pony Express quickly became romanticized and its reliance on the ability and endurance of individual young, hardy riders and fast horses was seen as evidence of rugged American individualism of the Frontier times. From 1866 until 1889, the Pony Express logo was used by stagecoach and freight company Wells Fargo, the United States Postal Service used Pony Express as a trademark for postal services in the US. Freight Link international courier services, based in Russia, adopted the Pony Express trademark, in 1860, there were about 157 Pony Express stations that were about 10 miles apart along the Pony Express route. At each station stop the rider would change to a fresh horse
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Santa Fe Trail
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The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, it served as a commercial highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880. Santa Fe was near the end of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which carried trade from Mexico City. Comanche raiding farther south in Mexico isolated New Mexico, making it dependent on the American trade. The Trail was used as the 1846 U. S. invasion route of New Mexico during the Mexican–American War, the road route is commemorated today by the National Park Service as the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. The trail was used to manufactured goods from the state of Missouri in the United States to Santa Fe. Santa Fe was near the terminus of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. This limited trade traffic transited the site that would become Fort Bent in Colorado and this post was only eight miles east of the site of Fort John on what became the Oregon Trail. The lost fort was on the site where Fort Bernard was later founded in the eastern Oregon Country. That Fort Bernard ran cargo mule trains to the Santa Fe is historically certain, the earlier Fort and its traders are less so, and that gives weight that they might have been independents, and not employees of the large fur companies. Regardless of the lack of documents, it is known the light trading with Mexico used the trail. In 1825 the merchant Manuel Escudero of Chihuahua was commissioned by New Mexico governor Bartolome Baca to negotiate in Washington for opening U. S. borders to traders from Mexico. In 1835 Mexico City had sent Albino Pérez to govern the department of New Mexico as Jefe Politico, New Mexicans had grown to appreciate the relative freedoms of a frontier, remote from Mexico City. The rebels defeated and executed governor Albino Perez, but were ousted by the forces of Rio Abajo led by Manuel Armijo. The Republic of Texas claimed Santa Fe as part of the territory north, in 1841, a small military and trading expedition departed from Austin, Texas representing the Republic of Texas and their president Mirabeau B. Their aim was to persuade the people of Santa Fe and New Mexico to relinquish control over the territory dispute with Mexico. Having knowledge of the recent political disturbances, they believed that they might be welcomed by the faction in New Mexico. Known as the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, the Texans encountered many difficulties and were captured by governor Armijos Mexican army under less than honest negotiations
