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Colorado

Mesa Verde National Park (NPS photo)

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site

35110 Highway 194 East La Junta, CO 81050

719-383-5010

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site features a reconstructed 1840s adobe fur trading post on the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail. William and Charles Bent built the fort to trade with trappers, travelers, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes for buffalo hides. Today, living historians recreate the sights, sounds, and smells of the past with guided tours, demonstrations and special events.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

102 Elk Creek Gunnison, CO 81230

970-641-2337

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is notable for its namesake canyon, Black Canyon of the Gunnison (48-miles in length), which features a narrow opening, sheer walls and great depths. The canyon's name owes itself to the fact that parts of the gorge only receive 33-minutes of sunlight a day. Black Canyon is known for collapsing rocks, awe inspiring heights and a lack of places to place protective equipment. Rock climbing here can be a challenge, even for expert climbers.

Colorado National Monument

1750 Rim Rock Dr. Fruita, CO 81521

970-858-3617

Colorado National Monument offers spectacular canyons cut deep into sandstone and even granite-gneiss-schist rock formations. Towering monoliths exist within a vast plateau with juniper forests and canyon panorama. You can experience sheer-walled, red rock canyons along the twists and turns of Rim Rock Drive, where you may spy bighorn sheep and soaring eagles. Activities include hiking, horseback riding, road bicycling, and scenic drives.

Curecanti National Recreation Area

102 Elk Creek Gunnison, CO 81230

970-641-2337

Curecanti National Recreation Area is a series of three reservoirs along the once wild Gunnison River. The National Recreation Area borders Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park to its west. High up in the Rocky Mountains, this park offers opportunities for hiking, boating, camping and bird watching.

Dinosaur National Monument

4545 Hwy 40 Dinosaur, CO 84035

435-781-7700

Dinosaur National Monument contains over 800 paleontological sites and has fossils of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs once roamed here. Their fantastic remains are still visible embedded in the rocks. The rock layer enclosing the fossils is a sandstone and conglomerate bed of alluvial or river bed origin. The dinosaurs and other ancient animals were carried by the river system which eventually entombed their remains. Petroglyphs found in the park hint at earlier cultures. Today, the mountains, desert and untamed rivers flowing in deep canyons, support an array of life. The Yampa River flows within the park and is known to be the last undammed river in the Colorado River System. Dinosaur National Monument is located in Colorado and Utah.

Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument

15807 Teller County Rd. 1 Florissant, CO 80816

719-748-3253

Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument has one of the richest and most diverse fossil deposits in the world. The park is famous for the numerous and well preserved insect and plant fossils that are found in the mudstones and shales of the Florissant Formation. Petrified redwood stumps up to 14-feet wide and thousands of detailed fossils reveal the story of a very different, prehistoric Colorado.

Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve

11999 Highway 150 Mosca, CO 81146

719-378-6399

Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve contains North America's tallest sand dunes that can be higher than 750-feet. The dunes were formed from sand and soil deposits of the Rio Grande and its tributaries. Researchers say that the dunes started forming less than 440,000-years ago. The park offers hunting, hiking, sand sledding, splashing in Medano Creek and wildlife watching.

Hovenweep National Monument

McElmo Route Cortez, CO 81321

970-562-4282

Hovenweep National Monument is largely known for the six groups of Ancestral Puebloan villages built between 1200 and 1300. These groups include the Cajon, the Cutthroat Castle, the Goodman Point, the Holly, the Hackberry and Horseshoe and the Square Tower group. Evidence has been discovered that this area was occupied by earlier hunter-gatherers from 8,000 to 6,000 BC until about 200 AD. The site contains a variety of structures, including multistory towers perched on canyon rims and balanced on boulders. Hovenweep National Monument is located in Colorado and Utah.

Mesa Verde National Park

P.O. Box 8 Mesa Verde, CO 81330

970-529-4465

Mesa Verde National Park protects some of the best preserved stone villages of the Ancestral Puebloan archeological sites. These people made this place their home for over 700-years, from 600 to 1300 AD. The park has over 4,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. These are some of the most notable and best preserved sites in the U.S. Cliff Palace is one of the best known structures in the park and is thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America.

Rocky Mountain National Park

1000 Highway 36 Estes Park, CO 80517

970-586-1206

Rocky Mountain National Park is located in the front range of the Rocky Mountains. It has varied climates and environments ranging from wet, grassy valleys at 8,000-feet to mountainous peaks reaching higher than 14,000-feet. The park is split by the Continental Divide, which gives the eastern and western parts of the park a different character. The east side of the park tends to be drier, with heavily glaciated peaks and deep valleys. The west side of the park is wetter and lusher, with thick forests dominating that region.

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site

P.O. Box 249 Eads, CO 81036

719-438-5916

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site commemorates the Sand Creek Massacre. On November 29, 1864, 675 cavalrymen attacked a village of approximately 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho on Sand Creek in Colorado. An unprovoked attack on men, women, and children, the massacre at Sand Creek marked a turning point in the relationship between American Indian tribes and the U.S. Government. This 8-hour massacre changed the Great Plains forever.

In 1999, archaeological teams from the National Park Service, Department of BLM, Colorado Historical Society and accompanied by Native American observers, made a major archaeological discovery of remains of the massacre site. Large numbers of period bullets, camp equipment and other items located there convinced the NPS that they had found the correct site.

Yucca House National Monument

P.O. Box 8 Mesa Verde, CO 81330

970-529-4465

Yucca House National Monument preserves the Yucca House, one of the largest, unexcavated Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites. It has one of many villages located in the Montezuma Valley area which was occupied by approximately 13,000-people between 1100 and 1300 AD. Two unexcavated settlement areas covered in vegetation include the Western Complex with up to 600-rooms and the Lower House with eight small rooms.