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Los Caminos Antiguos
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Wayside Excursion: Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Preserve
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| Located in the San Luis Valley, Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes are the largest inland sand dunes in the United States. The dunes are thought to have formed about 12,000 years ago when the Rio Grande, full of glacier melt-water from the melting of Ice Age glaciers, spread sand and other debris across the San Luis Valley. After the valley dried out, winds are thought to have carried the sand across the San Juan Mountains to the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where the sand was deposited. The dunes cover an area of about 40 square miles. |
| The people of the Clovis culture, who inhabited the Great Sand Dunes area about 11,000 years ago, are thought to have been the earliest residents. About 10,800 years ago, Folsom Man is suspected of living in the area. During these early years, the San Luis Valley possessed much more water than today. The water and the abundance of game probably attracted the first people to the area. |
| From the 1600s to mid-1800s, the Utes laid claim to the San Luis Valley. The Utes were a nomadic people who came to the valley in search of game and plants. Peeled bark on some of the pine trees in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument show that the Utes visited the area as they sought food and medicine from the trees. |
| The first European to observe the dunes may have been Don Diego de Vargas in 1694. However, it was Lt. Zebulon Pike who first wrote about the dunes. During the 1770s and 1800s pioneers, trappers, prospectors, and traders all encountered the mysterious dunes where local legends tell of entire wagon trains vanishing among the dunes and of strange creatures lurking in the dunes by night. |
| In 1932, President Herbert Hoover proclaimed the Great Sand Dunes a National Monument and placed it under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. On November 22, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a bill converting the Great Sand Dunes National Monument to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Preserve, which will protect not only the sand dunes, but high mountain tundra, alpine lakes, and a great variety of Rocky Mountain flora and fauna. |
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Great Sand Dunes
Great Divide Pictures LLC
In 1932, President Herbert Hoover proclaims the Great Sand Dunes a National Monument .
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Utes inside teepee, 1911
Courtesy, Denver Public Library, Western History Department, P-107
The native people believe they are of the land, destined to co-exist in a delicate balance with nature. |
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