Two thousand feet deep, forty-eight miles long, and two million years old, western Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison is one of the most stunning geologic features in the American West. The fourteen miles along the Gunnison River have been protected…

Located near Cottonwood Creek on the Uncompahgre Plateau in Montrose County, Cottonwood Cave is a prehistoric site from the Basketmaker II period (400 BCE–400 CE) of the Ancestral Puebloan tradition. Excavated in 1947 by Clarence T. Hurst, the cave…

Located in Dolores River Canyon in Montrose County, Dolores Cave was occupied by several different peoples from at least 600 BCE to 1400 CE. Subject to extensive looting in the early twentieth century, the site was professionally excavated in 1946 by…

The Gunnison River is a major tributary of the Colorado River, contributing about one-third of the Colorado’s flow at the Colorado-Utah state line. The basin drained by the Gunnison stretches from alpine meadows and forests along the Continental Divide…

The hanging flume is a three-sided, six-foot-wide and four-foot-deep wooden trough that is suspended for ten miles along sandstone walls 150 feet or more above the San Miguel and Dolores Rivers. During late nineteenth-century gold rushes, many Western…

The Harris Archaeological Site includes an Archaic period rockshelter first occupied at least 3,500 years ago, associated rock art, and a separate historic Ute campsite along a drainage on the eastern edge of the Uncompahgre Plateau. The site is named…

Montrose County covers 2,243 square miles in western Colorado. Named for its seat, Montrose, the county is bordered to the north by Mesa and Delta Counties, to the east by Gunnison County, to the south by Ouray and San Miguel Counties, and to the west by…

Located on the eastern edge of the Uncompahgre Plateau near Montrose, the Shavano Valley Rock Art Site is one of the most important concentrations of rock art in western Colorado. Used from at least 1000 BCE to 1900 CE by Archaic and Nuche (Ute) peoples,…

Located southwest of Montrose, Tabeguache Cave was used during the Basketmaker II period (400 BCE–400 CE) of the Ancestral Puebloan tradition. Excavated in 1939–41 by the Colorado archaeologist Clarence T. Hurst, it was Hurst’s first excavation in the…