This weekend I was in Purgatory. It was a pleasure, not punishment.
The U.S. government took me to Purgatory. It’s the only way to get there short of a long hike or bike ride, which itself can be a sort of Purgatory.
But the Purgatory I went to was a real river, which on most maps bears the name Purgatoire, which French fur traders bestowed on it in before 1800. Locally, people call it the Purgatory or Picketwire River.
Picketwire (or Picket Wire) is the way early Anglo settlers pronounced Purgatoire. You can hear the correct French pronunciation of this word here. It’s in fact not even close to the way we say Picket Wire.
The Picket Wire Canyonlands are in the Comanche National Grassland, which the U.S. government established in 1960 after the Dust Bowl of the 1930s defeated farmers here. I learned about the tour during my previous trip the the Comanche National Grassland.
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This is an important site, but little known. It’s greatest importance is because it contains one of the world’s largest dinosaur track-ways. The rocks of the Morrison formation preserve more than 1,300 documented brontosaurus and allosaurus tracks that are 150 million years old. Until recently, however, the site was too remote to attract sustained scientific interest.
So few people are able to come to the site that we were able to walk all around it. The tour leader, Kevin Lindahl from the U.S. Forest Service, explained that the Purgatoire River does far more damage to the site when it floods each year than we do. And each year the river’s flood exposes new tracks.
But first we stopped to see rock art at one site. We think that people of Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Apache and related tribes as well as pre-historic people created this rock art between 375 and 4,500 year ago.
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If this person hadn’t been in the way, I might have been able to convince you that this is a huge arch or natural bridge.
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We also toured the ruins of the Dolores Mission and Cemetery. In 1871 eleven families led by Damascio Lopez settled in the canyonlands. Life was hard, and several of gravestones remain.
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Finally, we arrived at the dinosaur tracks. I was surprised to see a dinosaur there. And even more surprised to see how small this one was.
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The little person in the background gives perspective, showing how large the dinosaur tracks are.
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We did see one big bird, the rarest and most expensive of all Osprey species. This is the world’s first production tiltrotor aircraft. We were next to Fort Carson’s PiƱon Canyon Maneuver Site, and in fact had to get special permission to pass through it to reach the Picket Wire Canyonlands. When this Osprey V-22 flew over, we couldn’t miss it.
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When we left the canyonlands, we saw the erosion of the canyon wall that reminded me strongly of the hoodoos that I had seen in Bryce Canyon National Park.
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The tour started at 8 a.m. and we returned to La Junta by 4:30 p.m., giving me just enough time to head out of town again. This time I went north and caught this shot of two horses on the high plains at last light.
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Beauty is simple.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Dale Reed // Oct 24, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Have just visited canyon end of sept. Was totally alone. Hiked the trail in the 5.5 miles. I found fresh bear track in the sand on the trail. There was also a cougar track on bank at dinosaur track site, how cool! Would have loved to see valley before beaver where trapped out back in the early 1800s.
2 TFolsom // Feb 19, 2017 at 4:27 pm
How did you get permission to cross the Pinion Canyon maneuver site?
3 David Mendosa // Feb 19, 2017 at 5:05 pm
Good question! Normally, the U.S. Army has the site closed to everyone else. But on a few days of the year, the U.S. Forestry Service has permission to take small groups across, and I went with one of them. This was so special and I hope that you have the opportunity to go there too.