Picketwire Canyonlands

The Largest Documented Dinosaur Trackway In North America More Than 1,300 Footprints In Over A Hundred Trackways Along A Quarter Mile Of Exposed Riverbed In The Purgatoire River Canyon, On Comanche National Grassland. · La Junta, Colorado

About a hundred and fifty million years ago a herd of brontosaurs walked along the muddy margin of a lake on what is now the south-eastern Colorado plains, and allosaurs walked after them. The mud set, the rock lifted, the Purgatoire River cut down through it, and the result is more than thirteen hundred footprints in over a hundred separate trackways along a quarter-mile of bedrock - the largest documented dinosaur trackway in North America. There is no visitor centre, no ticket and no easy way in. It is an eleven-mile round trip on foot or by bicycle down a canyon with no shade and no water, or a guided Forest Service four-wheel-drive trip on limited dates. Also down there are a ruined 1871 mission and its graveyard, rock art, and a ranch that ran for a century. The effort is the reason nobody is here: the largest dinosaur trackway on the continent and you will likely have it to yourself.

Comanche National Grassland, La Junta, Colorado, 81050, United States

Open year-round as public land, but PRACTICALLY SEASONAL: summer heat on the plains makes an eleven-mile shadeless round trip genuinely dangerous, and the Forest Service guided four-wheel-drive tours run only on limited dates in spring and autumn and book up. There is no fee and no visitor centre. The north trailhead is reached by unpaved roads that are impassable when wet. CARRY ALL YOUR WATER - there is none on the route and the river is not drinkable.

Picketwire Canyonlands on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos