Vogel Canyon
A Short Side Canyon Off The Purgatoire Valley On Comanche National Grassland, Holding Rock Art Panels Made By Plains Peoples, The Remains Of A Stagecoach Station And Homestead Ruins, Reached By Four Short Trails. · La Junta, Colorado
Vogel Canyon is the accessible version of what Picketwire does the hard way. It is a short side canyon off the Purgatoire valley, half an hour from La Junta down a road that a normal car can manage, with four marked trails totalling a few miles and springs at the bottom that drew people here for a very long time. On the canyon walls are rock art panels made by Plains peoples - figures, animals and abstract marks, some of them several hundred years old - and in the grass above are the remains of a stagecoach station on the Santa Fe Trail route and a homestead. It is free, it is quiet to the point of silence, and vandalism has damaged some of the panels, which is why the interpretation asks quite firmly that you look and do not touch. Come at either end of the day: the panels are faint and weathered, and in flat midday light they vanish into the rock entirely. It is the easy alternative to Picketwire an hour away - the same country and the same story, on four short trails instead of an eleven-mile round trip.
Comanche National Grassland, La Junta, Colorado, 81050, United States
Open year-round as public land during daylight hours, with no fee and no visitor centre. Facilities are a car park, a vault toilet and a picnic shelter. The access road is graded but unpaved for its final stretch and can be poor when wet. THERE IS NO SHADE AND NO WATER on the trails, and summer afternoons on the plains are punishing. Spring and autumn are the practical seasons. Comanche National Grassland offices at La Junta hold the current information.