5 Best Sights in Cuchara Valley, South Central Colorado

This entire town is a National Historic District, and it's the most significant example of a turn-of-the-20th-century coal-coke camp in Colorado. As you drive through the area, note the telltale streaks of black in the sandstone and granite bluffs fronting the Purgatoire River and its tributaries, the unsightly slag heaps, and the spooky abandoned mining camps dotting the hillsides.

From Trinidad, the scenic Highway of Legends curls north through the Cuchara Valley. As it starts its climb, you'll pass a series of company towns built to house coal miners. The Highway of Legends, also known as Route 12, takes you through some of the wildest and most beautiful scenery in southern Colorado. You can start the drive in Trinidad or La Veta.

The Highway of Legends passes through the tiny, laid-back resort town of La Veta before intersecting with U.S. 160 and turning east toward Walsenburg, another settlement built on coal and the largest town between Pueblo and Trinidad.

As you approach Cuchara Pass, several switchbacks snake through rolling grasslands and dance in and out of spruce stands whose clearings afford views of Monument Lake. You can camp, fish, and hike throughout this tranquil part of the San Isabel National Forest, which in spring and summer is emblazoned with a color wheel of wildflowers. Four corkscrewing miles later you'll reach a dirt road that leads to Bear Lake and Blue Lake. The resort town of Cuchara is about 4 miles from the Route 12 turnoff to the lakes.

In the Cuchara Valley you'll see fantastic rock formations with equally fanciful names, such as Profile Rock, Devil's Staircase, and Giant's Spoon. With a little imagination you can devise your own legends about the names' origins. There are more than 400 of these upthrusts, which radiate like the spokes of a wheel from the valley's dominating landmark, the Spanish Peaks. In Spanish they are known as Dos Hermanos, or "Two Brothers." In Ute, their name Huajatolla means "breasts of the world." The haunting formations are considered to be a unique geologic phenomenon for their sheer abundance and variety of rock types.