“Half of Colorado is beautiful and half of it is ugly, and the same is true for Oklahoma. But people only talk about the beautiful half of Colorado and the ugly half of Oklahoma.”

Our friend, Steve, said this as we dined together in downtown Aspen, and he is a man who knows, as a fellow native of Oklahoma and longtime resident of Aspen, Colorado. While I think calling any of it ugly is harsh (although, understandably, if you live in Aspen everything pales by comparison), Steve has a point about the way folks view the two states. There’s no need to repeat all the good press Colorado deservedly receives for its scenery. And it may be a similar restatement of the obvious to note that Oklahoma hasn’t shaken its Dust Bowl image in spite of its diverse, well watered terrain.

But in my mind the less spectacular landscapes of eastern Colorado and western Oklahoma simply reflect the more subtle beauty of the Great Plains, half a million square miles of broad, flat grasslands reaching north into Canada and south to Mexico. Conventional wisdom says it’s a place to get across as fast as possible, but I’ve discovered on my travels west that it holds many surprises for the inquisitive traveler willing to slow down and sample some of those seemingly empty places on the map.

Colorado's Picture Canyon

Traveling from our home near Oklahoma City to Utah in early September, 2016, my husband Bill and I decided to route through the corner of southeastern Colorado to explore one of those little-known treasures. Barely north of the Oklahoma border, we left the highway and followed the Baca County roads west to Picture Canyon, a remote outpost of the U.S. Forest Service.

The landscape changed quickly as we approached the canyon, the long views of the prairie yielding to sandstone formations as the dirt road wound into a picnic area as devoid of people as the blank space on the map suggests. Picnic tables and a vault toilet are tucked against a bluff, the tables shaded by white-roofed pavilions against the heat of the sun, an unrelenting force here in July and August. Interpretive panels along a concrete path tell the story of the canyon, named for the rock art left by historic Plains Indians and their prehistoric predecessors.

Here the native people found shelter and spring water in this gentle sandstone canyon amid rolling hills and low buttes. We planned to hike the Arch Rock Trail to see the rock art but it was a warm afternoon and we decided first to explore in our truck. Miles of four-wheel drive roads wind through the yucca and juniper, up and down the canyon, through deep sand and over rocks. We stopped to examine a stone ruin left by homesteaders who settled the area in the late 1880s. The remaining walls of the structure were filled with gourd vines and probably a rattlesnake or two. The hope for living off this land was lost to farmers during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Now it’s part of a half-million acre preserve in southeastern Colorado called the Comanche National Grasslands.

Soon it was time to settle on a campsite. We would hike the next day, in the cool of the morning. Dispersed camping is allowed anywhere in the Grasslands and we found a perfect spot in a grove of cottonwoods. Gnats swarmed around my head as we set up camp but a good shot of Deep Woods Off alleviated my annoyance and my irritation faded altogether when, after dinner, we escaped to our truck-top tent. There we listened to heavy raindrops thumping on the roof as a thunderstorm passed through. When the storm dissipated, coyotes announced their presence and we fell asleep to their serenade.

The next morning we set out on Arch Rock Trail, a 4-mile loop. Along the canyon walls are alcoves housing pictographs (ancient drawings or paintings on rock walls) and petroglyphs (rock carvings). There was a tour group – four people on horseback – ahead of us on the trail and when we caught up with them the guide, Laneha Everett of Canyon Journeys, invited us to tag along. Some of the markings here have astronomical significance; in particular, those in Crack Cave are illuminated by the sun’s rays at dawn only during the spring and autumn equinox. The Chamber of Commerce in nearby Springfield, Colorado, sponsors equinox festivals and tours of the cave to celebrate the events.

Crack Cave is protected by locked metal gates, but another rock shelter I climbed into has markings that look much the same. Everett says that most people believe the inscriptions are of similar origin. “Traditional thinking has them down as calendrical markings for the passing of time. The non-traditional line of thinking says they are of the alphabet Ogam (an ancient Celtic system of writing) and could even potentially give a message such as 'water found below.’ The marks are often found with solar alignment sites throughout the Oklahoma Panhandle and southeastern Colorado.”

Everett adds that Picture Canyon is unusual in that it houses several sites with many other types of markings similar to other ancient languages. “The statistics of coincidence seems pretty high here,” she says. Some claim that five ancient languages are represented in the rock shelter I explored. “Picture Canyon offers interesting problems,” says Everett. “Either there are ancient languages, which in the case of Crack Cave were deciphered and the message then proven by the presence of an equinox solar alignment site, or the Native Americans were writing in unusual ways that were highly similar to ancient languages from other parts of the world.”

There are two other loop trails here – Homestead and Outlaw – with a combined distance of about 10 miles, including spur trails. The spurs lead to rock art, homestead ruins and Crack Cave, and a rock arch and rock molar. Forest roads accessible by vehicle – including some of those we explored in our truck – are also integrated into this trail system.

Camping at Carrizo Canyon

After our hike we continued our journey west but on our return from Utah a week later, we camped at nearby Carrizo Canyon. Arriving as the sun set, we sought a camp site right away. The area lacks the web of forest roads we enjoyed in Picture Canyon, but we found an out-of-the-way spot to camp in a cattle pasture. There on the edge of the canyon, perched on a slab of sandstone trimmed with prickly pear, we grilled steaks bought in the last town to celebrate our last night of camping.

Next morning, fresh Colorado peaches added sweetness to our breakfast before we hiked the 1-mile loop trail along the east fork of Carrizo Creek. At the trailhead, we greeted a young couple also preparing for the hike. In the high grass of late summer, the trail was difficult to follow and we ended up bushwhacking through a labyrinth of cottonwoods clogged with flood debris, agreeing that winter would be a better time to explore.

We waved to two working cowboys as we left Carrizo Canyon, then turned southeast toward home. On back roads we skirted Oklahoma’s high point – not quite 5,000 feet elevation at Black Mesa, just south of the Colorado border in what was once “No Man’s Land,” now the Oklahoma Panhandle. This is what Steve calls the “ugly half” of Oklahoma and, while these buttes are not the 10,000-foot, aspen-covered, snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains, they do have their charm. Lucky for us, these natural treasures of the southern plains will remain obscure as long as most people consider the area less than appealing, and perhaps it’s better not to dispel that notion. We saw a total of eight people in our visits to the two canyons – six of them on horseback. Solitude is one of the benefits of slow travel through the Great Plains and I suspect there is little danger of that changing.

Need to Know

Information

Canyon Journeys, based in Pritchett, Colorado, offers tours of Baca County heritage sites, educating people through interpretation and excursions into and of local legends, historical and pre-historical sites, wildlife, plant life, geology, and astronomy. Their goal is to foster the desire to preserve, support and love the area and its western culture. Springfield, Colorado and Boise City, Oklahoma are the closest towns with dining and lodging. More information can also be found in this Forest Service document.

Best Time to Go

It’s best to visit in fall or spring, and even winter can be pleasant for hiking here at times. Summers are usually quite hot.

Getting There

To reach Picture Canyon travel to Campo, Colorado (20 miles south of Springfield, Colorado and about 28 miles north of Boise City, Oklahoma) on Highway 287 and turn west on County Road J. Continue for 10 miles, then turn left (south) at County Road 18 for 5 miles. Turn right (south) at the Picture Canyon sign and continue for 1 mile to the parking lot.

To reach Carrizo Canyon, from Springfield, Colorado drive south on Highway 287 for 17 miles. At County Road M Turn right (west) and continue for 22 miles, then turn left (south) at Forest Service Road 539 for 1.9 miles to parking lot.

Books and Maps

Hiking Colorado: A Guide to the State’s Greatest Hiking Adventures (Falcon Guide) and a good gazetteer is always helpful. We used the Colorado Road and Recreation Atlas by Benchmark Maps.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 35 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here for additional photos and content.