Never Summer Ranch

Throughout the late 1870s prospectors filtered into the mountains, especially into the Rabbit Ear Range (today's Never Summer Range). Thus the prospector became a familiar figure throughout the Front Range and Never Summer Range for decades to follow.

From ...

UNESCO World Heritage Site-Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak

Discovered in 1944, this tomb dates from the Hellenistic period, around the end of the 4th century BC. It is located near Seutopolis, the capital city of the Thracian king Seutes III, and is part of a large Thracian necropolis. ...

UNESCO World Heritage Site- Timbuktu

Home of the prestigious Koranic Sankore University and other madrasas, Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a centre for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and ...

Baca National Wildlife Refuge

Baca National Wildlife Refuge was created in 2004 as part of the expansion of Great Sand Dunes National Monument into a national park and preserve, protecting the entire natural hydrological system of the Great Sand Dunes. It is adjacent ...

Sand Creek

There are two streams that flow along segments of the dune field perimeter. Medano Creek flows along the east and southeastern sides of the dune field and Sand Creek flows along the northwestern side.The streams have a give and ...

Escape Dunes

Escape Dunes is in an open grove of ponderosa pine. Escape dunes are actively moving dunes formed when sand was blown eastward across Medano Creek in dry years, piling up against the foothills. Ghost forests, (places where dunes have ...

Morris Gulch

Each year in late September, Morris Gulch turns into a golden river of aspen trees. In contrast, the drier slopes of the montane zone support smaller trees and shrubs. Three-leaf sumac is a montane shrub that can turn brilliant ...

Mosca Creek

Narrow-leaf cottonwoods are large, shady trees along riparian corridors through montane and grassland areas. Some of the largest cottonwood trees in the park have been dated at over 300 years old.

Rocks at Mosca Creek are unique and between ...

Music Pass

American pikas live primarily on the alpine tundra of Great Sand Dunes National Preserve. They spend their summers gathering mounds of grass to dry in the sun, then stay active all winter under the snowpack eating their summer's work. ...

Medano Creek

In the 1920s, local newspapers ran articles estimating there was gold in the Great Sand Dunes worth at anywhere from 17 cents/ton to $3/ton. Active placer mining operations sprang up along Medano Creek. In the 1920s the Volcanic Mining ...