The Western Slope & the Northwest
The plowed racetrack at White River and the removal of the Utes, the canyon John Otto talked into a monument, and the dam that was never built at Echo Park.
This was the heart of the reservation the 1868 treaty promised the Nuuchiu. At the White River Agency the agent Nathan Meeker set out to make the Utes into farmers, and in September 1879 he had their horse-racing ground plowed. Troops came south from Fort Steele in Wyoming, and on September 29 Ute warriors stopped them at Milk Creek, killing Major Thomas Thornburgh and twelve others; the same day they killed Meeker and ten agency employees and took five women and children captive. The demand that the Utes must go carried Congress, and in 1881 the White River and Uncompahgre bands were marched to reservations in Utah.
Grand Junction was laid out within weeks of their removal, in the fall of 1881, where the Gunnison meets the Colorado, which was called the Grand River until 1921. West of town a trail builder named John Otto lived among the sandstone canyons and wrote letters until they became Colorado National Monument in 1911, and he was its first custodian, paid a dollar a month.
In the far northwest the Yampa and the Green meet at Echo Park inside Dinosaur National Monument, where the Bureau of Reclamation planned a dam in the 1950s. Conservationists fought it in Congress and won in 1956, a victory bought partly by giving up Glen Canyon downstream, and the two rivers still run free through their canyons.
What to See in The Western Slope & the Northwest
5 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Geology & Rock Formations
Natural Areas
Historic Sites
Towns & Gateways
Scenic Drives through The Western Slope & the Northwest
Stories from The Western Slope & the Northwest
The Western Slope & the Northwest rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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