Douglas Creek runs north from Douglas Pass toward Rangely through a canyon of pale sandstone cliffs, and Colorado Highway 139 follows it. On September 9, 1776, the Franciscan friars Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante came down this valley looking for a route from Santa Fe to Monterey, and Escalante noted the paintings on the rock and called it Cañón Pintado, the painted canyon.
The paintings and carvings are the work of two peoples. Most are Fremont, made by farmers and foragers who lived along the creek from roughly the first centuries AD to about 1300: broad-shouldered human figures, some with elaborate headdresses, hands, birds, deer, and a humpbacked flute player of the kind now popularly called Kokopelli. Later panels are Ute, made between about 1300 and 1881, when the Utes of this country were removed to Utah; horses, riders and guns mark them as theirs, since none of those existed here in Fremont times. The canyon also holds rock shelters and small stone granaries where food was stored.
The corridor was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 as the Canyon Pintado National Historic District, about 16,000 acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management with the town of Rangely. Sixteen sites are signed from pullouts beside the highway, most reached by short paths: White Birds, Waving Hands, the Kokopelli site, the Ute Horse site, Fremont Ridge and others. The panels are fragile and easily damaged; they are to be looked at, not touched, chalked or traced.
The closest stops worth working into your route