At a Glance
- Region: West of Continental Divide
- Ute Habitation: 1,000+ years
- Spanish Exploration: Domínguez-Escalante, 1776
- American Settlement: Post-1868 treaty era
- Key 19th-c. Towns: Ouray, Silverton, Telluride, Glenwood Springs
- Major Rivers: Colorado, Gunnison, Uncompahgre, Dolores
The Ute World Before American Settlement
The Western Slope of Colorado — the vast territory lying west of the Continental Divide — was the heart of Ute country for at least a thousand years before American settlement. The Ute Nation was organized into multiple bands, each with its own territory and leadership: the Uncompahgre or Tabeguache occupied the Uncompahgre Valley and the surrounding San Juan Mountains; the White River Ute ranged across the northern Colorado Plateau; the Southern Ute bands occupied the southern reaches of the Western Slope and the adjacent San Juan Basin. Together these bands controlled a territory of over 55,000 square miles — roughly a third of the present state of Colorado — in the mid-nineteenth century.
Ute culture on the Western Slope was organized around a seasonal movement pattern that exploited the region's extraordinary ecological diversity. Summer and fall were spent in the high country — the mountain parks, alpine meadows, and forest margins between 8,000 and 12,000 feet — where deer, elk, and bison were plentiful and the cooler temperatures were agreeable. As winter approached, the bands moved to lower elevations: the broad valley floors, the canyon bottoms, and the sagebrush plateaus where the snow was less deep and the temperatures more survivable. The hot springs at what is now Ouray were a particularly important winter and transitional-season camp.
Spanish Exploration and the Old Spanish Trail
Spanish colonists from New Mexico made their first documented foray into the Western Slope of Colorado in 1776, when Fathers Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante led an expedition from Santa Fe northward through the San Juan Mountains and across the Colorado Plateau in search of an overland route to Monterey, California. The Domínguez-Escalante expedition passed through the Uncompahgre Valley — within miles of the future townsite of Ouray — and left the first European written descriptions of the region's geography, inhabitants, and natural resources. Their journals noted the Ute settlements, the dramatic canyon and mountain scenery, and the evidence of mineral wealth that would later draw American miners.
The Old Spanish Trail, established as a trade route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles in the 1820s and 1830s, crossed the Western Slope of Colorado and Utah in a route that passed through or near several of the river valleys that would later see American settlement. New Mexican traders used the trail to exchange wool blankets and serapes for California horses and mules; they interacted extensively with the Ute bands along the route, sometimes trading peacefully and sometimes raiding for captives and horses. The trail's legacy is visible in the Spanish-language place names that persist across the Western Slope: the Uncompahgre River, the Dolores River, Mesa Verde, Sierra La Sal — all inherited from the Spanish colonial period.
American Exploration and the Hayden Surveys
American scientific exploration of the Western Slope began in earnest after the Mexican-American War (1846–48) ceded the territory to the United States. The Frémont Expedition of 1848–49, the Gunnison Survey of 1853–54, and other early American expeditions produced maps and reports that, combined with existing Spanish and Ute knowledge, gave the federal government a increasingly detailed picture of the Western Slope's resources and geography. The most comprehensive and consequential American survey was that led by geologist Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden beginning in 1867 and continuing through the 1870s. Hayden's teams produced the first accurate topographic maps of the San Juan Mountains, identified and sampled the major ore bodies, and published illustrated reports that made the region's mineral wealth known to the prospecting community.
The Hayden Survey's work directly precipitated the San Juan mining rush of the 1870s. Before Hayden's teams reached the San Juans, the region was accessible only by pack trail through Ute territory and virtually unknown to American miners. After the survey reports appeared, prospectors had reliable geographic information, ore sample data, and the knowledge that the Brunot Agreement of 1873 had opened the mountain zone to entry. The rush that followed was rapid and intense; within five years of the survey's most significant San Juan season (1874), Ouray, Silverton, and Lake City had all been founded and were growing rapidly.
The Western Slope After Mining: Ranching, Reclamation, and Tourism
The decline of the mining industry in the early twentieth century left the Western Slope with a more diverse economic base than the boom years might have suggested. Agriculture had been developing since the 1880s, particularly in the lower valleys and on the irrigated benchlands served by the Uncompahgre Project — a federal reclamation initiative begun in 1904 that brought water from the Gunnison River tunnel to the farmlands of the Montrose and Delta districts. Orchards, sugar beets, alfalfa, and cattle became the economic mainstays of the middle elevations, while the high country above the valley floors remained in National Forest or BLM ownership, managed for timber, grazing, and eventually recreation.
Tourism on the Western Slope has grown steadily from its Victorian origins to become the region's largest industry. The hot springs towns — Glenwood Springs, Pagosa Springs, and Ouray — have drawn visitors since the 1880s. The ski resorts of Telluride and the high-country jeep roads of the San Juan Mountains draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Ouray, at the heart of the San Juan Mountain recreation zone, is one of the Western Slope's premier visitor destinations — a community that has successfully leveraged its Victorian heritage, its dramatic canyon setting, and its hot springs into a sustainable tourism economy. The Lumberyard Condos at 55 4th Avenue puts visitors in the best possible position to explore the full depth of the Western Slope's history and landscape. Book directly at ouraycondos.com.