Vogel Canyon, pictured above (both pictures), is located just south of La Junta and is one of the areas threatened by the army’s plans for expansion. Photo © Doug Holdread
The muddy road that runs alongside Comanche National Grassland’s cattle pastures under endless, cloudless blue skies drops suddenly into steep canyons. This is the way to Picket Wire Canyon, a little–known national treasure that lies hidden some two dozen miles south of rural La Junta, Colorado.
Agile hikers, bikers and horseback riders might attempt the alternate trail, a ten–mile round–trip full of perils—scorpions, tarantulas and cacti—but this four–wheel–drive route is the easiest way in.
A U.S. Forest Service tour guide in a pickup leads the way down a soft clay road made slippery by recent rain. To get to Picket Wire, we must traverse a slice of Fort Carson’s Piņon Canyon Maneuver Site, a 235,000–acre U.S. Army training ground that straddles the grassland, and our guide holds the key to the unmanned gate. A few bumpy minutes later we pass another gate to the Army site, which includes a mock Iraqi village somewhere in its interior, and then we reenter the national grassland.
Picket Wire holds ancient treasures—it’s a paleontologist’s dream full of dinosaur tracks and fossilized remains, as well as petroglyphs and rare and endangered flora and fauna. But this remote area could soon become another casualty in the global war on terror. Military officials want to more than double the size of Fort Carson to train its troops with farther–reaching weapons in maneuvers that include tanks, aircraft and soldiers.
Ranchers, local officials, preservationists and others fret that Army expansion will alter the character of the region and curb tourist interest in places of historic and scientific wonder—including jewels like Picket Wire.
Picket Wire Canyon’s name evolved from the Spanish El Rio de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio, or The River of Lost Souls in Purgatory. It was named after Indians slaughtered a group of Spanish explorers who never received last rites from a priest. When French–speaking fur trappers came through, they renamed the river with their word for purgatory, Purgatoire—pronounced “Purga–twa”—which tongue–twisted, English–speaking settlers morphed into the nonsensical Picket Wire. The canyon was added to the grassland in the early 1990s, following efforts to preserve the region’s history by two former Colorado lawmakers, Republican Representative Hank Brown and Democratic Senator Tim Wirth.
The waters of the Purgatoire, a crooked river fed by southern mountain peaks, amble alongside the road. Bears, mountain lions, antelope, deer, elk, coyotes and cottontail rabbits are all common here, as are tarantulas and red–and–blue dragonflies.
The old Wineglass Ranch, the homestead of Eugene Rourke that grew from forty acres in 1871 to more than 53,000, now stands lonely vigil over little but strong winds. On the rocky canyon sides above, stone fences loom, long–abandoned by Basque sheep herders who came about the same time as Rourke with a community of Latino settlers from New Mexico.
Beyond the ranch, canyon walls glow with rock drawings predating Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World by perhaps 1,000 years. Anthropologists think some of the rock carvings may be 4,000 years or older, carved by the hunters and gatherers who lived here. Judging from the drawings, they tracked antelope and revered the sun.
A short hike down to the river leads to the largest dinosaur track site in North America.The tracks have led paleontologists to important discoveries about the behavior of Apatosauruses, gigantic plant–eating creatures that dominated this land 150 million years ago when it was a muddy flat at the edge of a vast lake. Footprints indicate that the creatures rumbled over the ground in herds, nurturing their young.
Nearby, from the same time period, are the prints of Allosaurus—a big–toothed, claw–bearing beast that probably hunted Apatosauruses.
Today, Forest Service scientists are digging up the fossils of large beasts, including the long spine of an Apatosaurus. Five skeletons have been located and perhaps ten or fifteen more remain, according to Bruce Schumacher, one of only two paleontologists employed across the nation by the Forest Service.
But the Forest Service’s role in the canyon is in question as Fort Carson looks to expand its training ground by 418,000 acres. The plan currently under review by the Pentagon, in a process that would eventually engage Congress, is vague. A map released by Fort Carson shows a 1–million–acre, donut–shaped area of interest that engulfs Picket Wire Canyon, swaths of the national grassland, cattle ranches, a slice of the historic Santa Fe Trail and the small towns of Bloom and Model. The plan, which would rely on “willing sellers,” faces strong opposition by an array of groups concerned for the future of the region.
The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, which opposes the plan, estimates Army expansion would decimate southeast Colorado’s ranching industry, costing ranchers $12 million annually and ruining businesses that depend on the industry, such as veterinarians and feed sellers.
Over the summer, the city of La Junta issued a resolution opposing the expansion plan, fearing that tourism, historic and scientific sites, transportation and the regional economy are all in peril.
Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, successfully pushed legislation to require the Pentagon to answer questions before any expansion can proceed, including what alternatives were considered that do not require doubling the size of Fort Carson.
One factor driving expansion is the increasing number of troops that will be trained at Fort Carson. The site will see nearly year–round activity, including seasons when plant life is more susceptible to damage, a fact which the base uses as justification for the large amount of acreage it seeks.
“In order for Fort Carson to manage the training lands in a sustainable manner, it is necessary to have twice the maneuver land requirement,” Fort Carson planners wrote in an April 2005 document.
Fort Carson officials also proposed a conservation area in the Purgatoire River basin where Picket Wire Canyon lies to “offset the environmental impacts of this project.”
But Bill Sulzman, a Colorado Springs peace activist opposed to the expansion, notes the conservation effort would take land that is already protected and hand it to an organization the base has declined to name. Officials have written that any such conservation area would include “limited access … for the public.”
“It certainly wouldn’t be what you have now,” Sulzman says. “You have Forest Service tours and supervision. You have a paleontologist actively working the site. I suppose it would be open in theory, but you wonder if that’s just for the sake of appearances.”