Full AspenCat Catalog

Mesa Verde National Park was America's first cultural park and also the world's first cultural heritage park. Created in 1906, it preserves the sites and materials of the prehistoric Puebloan people. Located in southwestern Colorado near the famous Four Corners, where the states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, the magnificent Mesa Verde is situated in Montezuma County, just south of Cortez and directly west of Durango. The park's...

Originally published in the Durango Herald in the Friday edition. Each article covered one subject and included a photograph or drawing. The series covered the years from 1880's into the 1920's, with a few maverick 1870's articles to set the scene.

As early as the eighteenth century, Spanish explorers left place-names, lost mines, and legends scattered throughout Colorado's San Juan Mountains. In the late 1800s the legends lured hopeful prospectors to the area, ushering in its greatest mining era and transforming it into one of the country's most celebrated mining districts.