COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. We once drove through Walsenburg with a geologist named Brian Penn, passing gas stations and discount stores and fast food chains when suddenly Penn veered his Ford Ranger to the side of the road and stopped.
The road cut through rock on either side. One might’ve called it a very minor, unremarkable canyon, a slight outcrop worthy of no admiration here in drive-by southern Colorado. Not Penn.
“Look at this!” he remarked, leading us up the hill.
He pointed out a xenolith, a white spot in the rough. This, he explained, was a fragment of the Earth’s crust that lodged into magma as it was cooling long ago. It was a subtle hint at the awesome, ancient phenomena that shaped more formations ahead: the Great Dikes of Spanish Peaks Country.
It was all great to Penn.
“I see new stuff all the time,” he said as traffic zoomed by on the littered hillside. “It’s my favorite thing to do.”
This is what it’s like to see Colorado through the always curious, always grateful eyes of a geologist.
You’ll find much more than rock in this guide loading you with ideas for a perfect summer in Colorado. You’ll find tips for hiking, biking, camping, dining, family fun and much more around this state of endless diversion and discovery.
It’s a state of endless beauty. And all of it, one might say, comes down to geology.
One such as Vincent Matthews, author of “Messages in Stone: Colorado’s Colorful Geology.”
“The plains, mountains, valleys and plateaus — indeed every aspect of this natural landscape — are the direct result of geologic processes,” Matthews wrote. “Cataclysmic forces have pushed, pulled, hammered, and baked the state into the ever-changing scenery we call Colorado.”
The beauty is defined in other ways, granted another notable author on the subject, Lon Abbott.
“The climate makes a difference, the vegetation makes a difference, the animals that populate it,” the University of Colorado professor said.
“But ultimately, geology is the substrate that triggers all of that. At a very fundamental level, geology is what makes Colorado what it is.”
Geology is what makes up our most celebrated natural sanctuaries, from Rocky Mountain National Park, to Mesa Verde National Park in one corner of the state and Dinosaur National Monument in another. Other magnificent, federally protected rock to the west: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Colorado National Monument.
Millions more flock to Garden of the Gods every year. Tourists drive and stroll the sidewalks, while locals know of a similar paradise of walls and spires nearby minus the pavement: Red Rock Canyon Open Space.
Yes, it is geology that shapes our cherished playgrounds. Take, for example, the limestone mosaic called Shelf Road near Cañon City, or Eldorado Canyon near Boulder, or Rifle Mountain Park on the Western Slope. Those are known as the birthplaces of American sport climbing, still immensely popular today. Meanwhile, the roots of mountain biking are traced to Crested Butte — no wonder, with all that steep, rugged terrain.
It’s hard to ride a bike or drive anywhere in this state without being struck with rock envy. That’s especially true on drives through Glenwood Canyon, or up to the granite, 14,000-foot likes of Pikes Peak and Mount Evans. How blessed we are for those (mostly) smooth roads.
Others prefer to earn their views on rough and rowdy routes such as the Alpine Loop. In the small, northwest Colorado town of Rangely, locals test their machines at an unusual rock crawling park. Sturdy vehicles also are required to reach Wheeler Geologic Area, the set of stunning spires deep in La Garita Wilderness.
Even when we don’t go looking for rock, we find it. We go to Blue Mesa Reservoir for fun on the state’s largest body of water, only to find ourselves admiring the Dillon Pinnacles. We go to soak at Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort, only for the Chalk Cliffs to command our attention.
Suddenly on the southeast plains, Picket Wire Canyon emerges. Suddenly on the northeast plains, the twin sentries of the Pawnee Buttes rise. And somewhere on the grasslands in between, multicolored hoodoos march across Paint Mines Interpretive Park.
Of all places in Colorado, those unexpected marvels are a few favorites of Matt Morgan, the state geologist with Colorado Geological Survey. Take it as a tip: Don’t let your gaze get stuck on the high peaks and deep canyons to the west, however spectacular.
“It’s such a wide variety that we have here,” Morgan said from his Golden office.
There, he can look out to North Table Mountain, home to basalt flows more than 60 million years old. It’s but one station in the vast, world-class laboratory that is Colorado.
When you’re looking at the column-like shapes along the cap of the Grand Mesa, the world’s largest flattop mountain, you’re looking at remains from some of the most ferocious volcanoes the planet ever knew. Lava flowed and over millenia cooled and hardened to create more of our dreamscapes today across the San Juan Mountains.
Glaciers carved lake-spotted valleys for our backpacking pleasure. Glaciers crafted shapes such as the diamond face on Longs Peak and the Maroon Bells. Nearby is the similarly regal Mount Sopris — “one of the best exposed rock glaciers around in the Lower 48,” Morgan said.
Most amazing to David Gonzales? Perhaps right in the middle of Ouray, the southwest Colorado town tucked in a box canyon.
The panorama showcases layers of rock that developed deep in the Earth’s core, said the geosciences professor at Durango’s Fort Lewis College.
“If I had to pick one spot that has the smallest surface area of the greatest history of geology — even greater than the Grand Canyon I think — that would be the location,” Gonzales said.
In our time of growth and development, the box canyon is a timeless reminder of our wild, prevailing place. It is an icon reminding us of home.
These icons are everywhere up and down the booming Front Range — from the lava-rimmed Fishers Peak down south to the sandstone-topped Horsetooth Mountain to the north and Boulder's Flatirons in between.
For what else can we thank geology?
We can thank it for unforgettable concerts at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. For unforgettable river trips through the Royal Gorge and Glenwood Canyon. If the peach farmers of Palisade are to be believed, we can thank geology for DeBeque Canyon, which is said to bring a breeze that sweetens the legendary orchards below.
We can’t thank geology enough, Gonzales said.
“I tell my students all the time that geology is life,” he said.
We can thank geology for the state being a state. This is, after all, a state built on the metals and minerals that the rocks bear.
Denver would not be Denver were it not for gold. Nor would Colorado Springs be Colorado Springs. For countless other towns, it was gold, silver, coal or something else mined that birthed modern civilization.
“Durango, Silverton, Leadville,” Gonzales said, to name a few more. “The imprint of geology on human history is enormous, and I think most people never really think about that.”
Most people never really think about the deep time on display all around them in Colorado. There is power in that awareness, said Abbott, the University of Colorado professor.
“It’s really easy for us to get caught up in the day-to-day and current events and things unfolding on a time scale of one human life,” he said. “It really bends your temporal framework when you start, as I like to say, thinking like a rock.”
It can make you feel small, he said. It can make you more appreciative of the time you have and the big, beautiful world around you.
It can make you more like that geologist on an unassuming hillside in Walsenburg.
Penn took the time to admire something no one else did, but he didn’t linger long. There was so much more to see.
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