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Dinosaur Lake, Picket Wire Canyon, La Junta, Co.

The first dinosaur footprints you come across are like a dinosaur highway. The hardened mud, now rock, looking like some Plaster of Paris spilled out to catch the unknowing passers-by.

150 million years ago a herd of Apatosaurus (aka Brontosaurus) meandered along a muddy shoreline of a massive inland lake in southeast Colorado, munching on prehistoric plants along the way, they were oblivious to the deep footprints they were leaving behind that would endure the test of time and one day allow me to walk this same path in a distant future they couldn’t begin to imagine. This is Dinosaur Lake, the largest collection of dinosaur tracks in North America. With some 2000 footprints of Apatosaurus, Allosaurus and others, there are over 200 individual tracks to behold in this quarter mile area some 5 miles from the nearest trailhead.

A view across the Picket Wire Canyon, the rock outcropping in the center of the picture in the distance is near where the dinosaur tracks are.
Perhaps a large meat-eater Allosaurus with its elongated feet walked through here
Suzie standing amid the footprints to give you some perspective on how large this area is.
This more rounded footprints with toes on the front looks more like a sauropod such as an Apatosaurus
To give you some perspective of how large these prints are, my dinky size 12 feet pale in comparison

Just south of La Junta, the dried lake shoreline straddles the Purgatoire River through Picket Wire Canyon in the Comanche National Grasslands. Accessed via the Picket Wire Trailhead, while this is an 11.2 mile round trip, the canyon itself along with the many historic artifacts along the way are worth the trip.

The Purgatoire River splits directly between the tracks and often floods them. You have to cross the river to see all the tracks. Purgatoire, French for purgatory, was named after some lost souls who died in the canyon before being given last rights, so they were damned to live in purgatory. So why is the canyon called Picket Wire then? It’s a bad English literal translation of the French word “purgatoire”. “What’s that you say Frenchman? Is he saying Picket Wire?
Whatever it was it was HEAVY!!!

From these tracks uniquely it was learned that the herbivore sauropods traveled in herds including family groups, traveling in a line westward along the lake. The meat-eater Allosaurus likely came through at different times stalking them, but being smaller at 4 tons and 25 feet long, they may have had their tiny hands full trying to bring down the 33 ton, 70 foot long Apatosaurus, some getting as big as 98 feet and 40 tons! Their tracks dart in and out as if they were chasing prey. Long before the uplift of the Rocky Mountains, these Jurassic dinosaurs roamed the massive shallow brackish lake which was surrounded by a conifer forest with ferns along the shoreline.

So why do these track apparently disappear? Perhaps he got in a car at this point.
Doesn’t it look like there was a tussle here of some type, or perhaps someone laid down for a nap?
We pause to muse about what exactly could have caused this relatively smaller print, still much larger than my feet, could it be, um, BIGFOOT!
This gives you some perspective on how deep and wide these prints really are

Near the tracks lies a replica of an Apatosaurus shoulder bone that was unearthed in a nearby quarry in 2008. About half of the full skeleton was found in that quarry.

A replica of an Apatosaurus shoulder bone found in a dinosaur quarry nearby

Dinosaur tracks alone make this trek worth it, but there are some fascinating historical sites to see along the 5 mile journey. This canyon was once settled in the 1870’s through1890’s by several Hispanic families trying to make a go of ranching and farming the valley over a couple generations. Remnants of this past include old fence post lines and stone walls marking boundaries between the ranches, old corrals, wells, and house foundations of adobe of rock.

The remnants of an adobe house sits in stark contrast to the surrounding canyon valley and peaks. An old fence line can be seen in the foreground
It’s November when this was taken, but the yellow fruit of this odd gangly cactus was still there. There were also many prickly pear fruit in the area which looked to perhaps be the favorite snack of a local black bear who left pink-seeded “evidence” of his dining at many places along the trail!
Near the cemetery was the rock walls of an old ranch house, perhaps the Delores or Lopez family
I bet you didn’t expect to see a picture of a tarantula did you? Indeed they are native to the area and we were lucky enough to spot one. When they are mating literally hundreds make their way across a nearby highway where the locals shut down traffic so these critters can cross without getting smooshed.
This old well at a demolished ranch building was remarkably intact. The log someone stuck down it has about another 20 feet into the ground!

But even more telltale of the rough lives these settlers had is a small catholic cemetery and one room Delores Mission whose property it sits on was sold to the Catholic Church in 1889 for $1 (later it was donated back to the US Forest Service). The cemetery tells the story of three young children who died between 1895-1900, their hand-etched gravestones still standing.

The gravestone of Eugenio Padilla
The gravestone of Maria de La Crus
The gravestone of Luicita

Behind the cemetery, the rock walls of the mission still stand with a handmade wooden cross laying against the back wall.

What is left of the Delores Mission behind the cemetery. A wooden cross against the back wall emphasizes the sanctity of history of this place.

Up the hill from this location is something rather geologically amazing, a natural stone amphitheater made from an eroded rock, perfectly turned on end to function as a clamshell to project a speaker’s voice out to the surrounding field. I can only imagine that once a preacher delivered his sermon or a eulogy here to a congregation sitting in the natural rock-walled field in front of it.

This is the natural rock amphitheater behind the Delores Mission. The hole is big enough for a person to stand in and the curved walls act as a megaphone to someone positioned at the focal point of the formation.

So it may be quite a long hike, or bike, for a person to take, but seeing this canyon in all of its natural and historic (and prehistoric!) beauty is well worth putting on your bucket list of places to see. Happy hiking!

Okay, I may be a little overweight, but not THAT much!!!