Picket Wire Canyonlands Guided Auto Tour

For a unique and unforgettable family experience, tour Picket Wire Canyonlands. Located on the Comanche National Grassland south of La Junta, Colorado, these primitive canyons are home to the largest dinosaur tracksite in North America. Guided auto tours are the easiest way to experience Picket Wire Canyonlands and learn about its rich, colorful past, and this auto tour is the only motorized access into the canyons. During the tour, knowledgeable guides will show you difficult-to-find dinosaur tracks and the interesting prehistoric, historic and natural features of the canyons. The tracksite, on the banks of the Purgatoire River, is the largest documented assemblage of trackways in North America: over 1,300 prints in 100 separate trackways extend across a quarter-mile expanse of bedrock. Apatosaurus and Allosaurus are two types of dinosaurs that left prints in the mud over 150 million years ago, and the site has given scientists interesting insights into the social behavior of dinosaurs. Guides will tell you what scientists have learned and show you small tracks made by a carnivorous dinosaur, or theropod. Those huge dinosaurs weren't the only prehistoric visitors to the canyons. Rock art images — pecked or painted on rock surfaces by prehistoric people — together with the remains of dwellings, stone tools and pottery, shed light on the lives of prehistoric people. Rock art can be difficult to find, but guides will take you to some of the best sites in the canyons. According to legend, a group of Spanish treasure-seeking soldiers died in the canyons without benefit of clergy, and so in the sixteenth century the river was named El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio, the River of Souls Lost in Purgatory. French trappers later shortened the name to the Purgatoire, and early Anglo travelers on the Santa Fe Trail could not pronounce it, further corrupting the name into Picket Wire. In the 19th century, Hispanic and European settlers homesteaded here. Guides will take you to an early Catholic church and cemetery, built on land donated by Damacio Lopez, and to Rourke Ranch, on the National Register of Historic Places, where you will learn how pioneer Eugene Rourke's ranch grew from a 160-acre homestead in the late 1800s to an over 50,000-acre cattle empire still owned by the Rourke family into the 1970s. All-day tours, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., are offered on Saturdays and some Sundays in May, June, September and October, through the USDA Forest Service. Sign up early because the tours fill up fast. Due to rough roads, visitors will need their own four-wheel-drive high-clearance vehicle. Additional tour dates may be available to groups by arrangement.