Dinosaurs and Conquistadors descend on the Purgatoire River

I’ve long had an interest in Southeast Colorado. As the maddening crowds take Horace Greeley's advice, I’m drawn to the quiet canyons hidden in the rolling hills of the Comanche National Grasslands.

I’d spent a little time in the Springfield section of the Comanche National Grassland, but it wasn’t until I read Eric Peterson’s “How to survive...” in the Westword summer guide that I had a new destination. Picket Wire Canyon.

I checked the Comanche National Grassland web site for information on Picket Wire Canyon and made my escape plan.

Melissa, (my wife) her dog Kaleb, and I loaded up the truck and headed East. It’s not that hard to find LaJunta, and if you’re paying attention it’s easy to get there from Denver. We were not paying attention.

We missed our turn in Limon and ended up taking the scenic route via Lamar. (The ridiculous bit is we thought we’d made a wrong turn, turned around and then went the wrong way. If we’d stuck with our first wrong turn we’d have been on the right track)

Once in Lamar we headed west on Hwy. 50 to LaJunta and to the Comanche Grassland office. It was closed, due to it being Saturday, but we found some useful maps and directions in the information box out front.

The road to Picket Wire Canyon is about 13 miles of pavement and 17 miles of dirt road. The dirt road is smoother than I-25 and the traffic was moooving about as fast. It’s open range country down there so watch out for cows on the road.

We drove all the way to the pipe gate and set up camp. There are several pull outs for camping and a pit toilet. The road was a bit rough, especially near the end, and I’d expect that if it was raining the road would turn to the slickest mud you’d ever seen.

The thing I like best about going to the desert in the summer is that there are very few people to share it with. Something about it being 100 degrees in the shade keeps a lot of people away.

There are three major attractions in Picket Wire Canyon: The Rourke Ranch, one of the largest set of Dinosaur tracks in the US and an old spanish mission/cemetery.

Rourke Ranch Main House

The Rourke Ranch is about 17 miles round trip from the trailhead and we had hoped to complete our trip before it got hot. That meant we needed to get going as soon as it was light enough to see. The sun was scheduled to make it’s appearance at 5:39 am, we were on the trail by 5:15.

The first section of the trail is down a steep rocky road that looks like an ad for a Jeep. If you’re a serious mtn biker you should not have any trouble with it. Melissa and I walked it just to be safe. Once we got to the bottom of the hill the trail turned to a nice smooth single track through the grasses. Here is where having brought a bike paid off.

We rode the next three-plus miles to the cemetery (mostly, some of the hills were a bit much so we walked them) and saw the sun come up over the canyon rim. Luck, not planning, had us riding with the sun to our backs for the next couple miles to the dinosaur track site.

We rode all the way to the ranch without stopping to sight see, the plan was to begin at the ranch and sight see on the way out.

The Rourke ranch is a very well preserved look into the past. There are story boards with pictures detailing the life and times of the Rourke family and several examples of desert building techniques. And rabbits, lots of rabbits.

On the ride back we stopped at the dinosaur track site. There are a few dinosaur tracks on the road side of the river, but most of them are on the other side. Ignorance of this fact kept us from bringing river shoes so that we might cross the muddy waters and explore those tracks. Bring river shoes! The water when we were there was muddy and swift. Rain upstream the night before was churning up the algae and other slick green stuff. Given the debris we saw in the river we decided not to “barefoot” it across.

The majority of tracks are on the far side of the river

Our last stop on the way out was the old spanish mission and it’s cemetery. There are still a couple of headstones in the yard (next to a sign asking that you not carry the headstones away) and the structural corners of the building still stand. The cactus in the shade of the old mission were just blooming that day

By midmorning the biting flies had discovered Melissa’s tasty ankles and we decided to ride. And ride fast! On the way out we saw more plants that look like wild squash and many blooming flowers.

By 10:20 we had managed the climb back up the hill to the trailhead and were lounging in the shade of the awning.

Vogel Canyon:
We moved camp to the Vogel Canyon trailhead and spent the night in the parking lot. There are no official campgrounds in this section of the Comanche National Grasslands so we made due with whatever wide spot presented itself.

A cold front moved through in the evening and made the night very nice. I rained like a big dog in LaJunta, but we ended the day with a few little sprinkles, which made splat marks in the dust where they fell.

We hit the trail the next day at 6 am. (It’s good to sleep in...) We took the Overlook Trail to the bottom of the canyon where it connects to the Canyon Trail and the Prairie Trail. The Canyon Trail was easy to find and we rode that until it ended at a fence. Backtracking we connected to the Prairie Trail and rode that westward until we got lost in the grass.

According to the signs, there are cairns marking the trails, but we discovered that some of them are missing, some are shorter than the grass around them and I suspect some were put in place by people who want you to get lost.

The Prairie Trail peters out into a cow path and wanders Westish up the canyon until the canyon peters out and you’re left standing in a mix of cactus and grass. We managed to spot a man-made structure and went to see what it was. It turned out to be the gas tank from a tractor mounted on a post.

But, from there we could see what looked like a sign, so we went to that. The sign told the story of the Santa Fe trail, which ran through these parts from 1875 to 1880, give or take a few years, and it was planted next to the old Barlow and Sanderson Stage Road.

We followed the old Stage Road East to the main road, climbed the fence and rode back to the trailhead. Elapsed time: 2.5 hours.

Melissa spent some time walking Kaleb around the rim of the canyon and I read through a magazine in the shade. We returned to Denver via LaJunta and Rocky Ford. The highway we missed on the way down, Hwy 71, took us north to Limon (where the McDonalds has a stock pen and dog run) and onto I-70 for the trip west.

Contrary to what travelers to the mountains experienced, we never spent any time in traffic jams, waited for a table at a restaurant or suffered altitude sickness.

I love the desert in summer!


If you go:

Bring shade - there are a few trees in the canyon, and on the rim, but they are short and pokey, tough to get any shade without scratches. Like the man said “Out here, if you don’t have shade, you’re nobody.”

Sunscreen - SPF, about a bazillion, and a hat.

Water - do I really need to tell you to bring water to the desert?

Air-conditioning - we cheated and ran the A/C all night the first night

A book - it’s too hot to move much after 10 am, but sitting in the shade was quite nice

A few bucks - do the local merchants a favor and buy some stuff while you’re there


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