Colorado Cartwheels

This week, our travel-pic theme is X for Xerox – black-and-white reproductions of some pics we’ve taken around the world.

We’ll start with Colorado Cartwheels – the remnants of a farm wagon in a field just off Trail Ridge Road in Colorado.

Trail Ridge Road is the part of US Highway 34 which traverses the Rocky Mountain National Park between Grand Lake in the south-east and Estes Park in the north-west.

it passes a number of fascinating sites – including the Kawuneeche National Park Visitor Centre which backgrounds the park, and also includes a memorial to a NPS ranger who died in the line of duty.

Further up Trail Ridge Road is the park’s main visitor centre – and then the highest part of the park: 3700m, or 2.3 miles above sea level.

We actually turned around at this point and drove back to Grand Lake – because the roadside drops were terrifying to a driver unfamiliar with driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

But between the two National Park visitor centres there are other amazing things – like Medicine Bow Curve, and Milner Pass (where the Continental Divide actually begins) – and the Holzwarth Historic Site, where our picture was taken.

The Holzwarth family, back around 1920, built a series of cabins beside the headwaters of the Colorado River, and set up one of the first ‘guest ranches’ in the area.

John Holzwarth was a saloon-keeper – but when prohibition came to Colorado in 1916, he started homesteading as a site which was just inside the new National Park.

With the opening of the new Trail Ridge Road, he set up a Trout Fishing ranch and a set of rustic cabins which he called “Never Summer” ranch.

Some of those cabins still stand and although you can’t go inside, they can be photographed from their verandahs.

Other historic buildings are also on the site and in a paddock as you approach them there was this jumble of cartwheels and axles – right next to an abandoned plough, and early 20th century fencing.

The historical village is a pleasant 10 minute walk on flat ground, via a path which actually crosses the Colorado River less than 10km from its birthplace.

There’s no charge to visit – although if you feel so inclined, there is an honesty box to make contributions, as you pick up an educational map and pamphlet in the car-park.