USA Guide
The Rockies
Colorado
Geographically diverse Colorado veers from the outstretched flats of the east and the colossal mountains of its central region to the arid canyons and plateaus of the west. In the north, Native Americans hunted and trapped in lush mountain valleys in summer, and returned to the prairies for the winter; in the south, the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde grew corn on their isolated mesas and shared in the great early civilization of the Southwest.
For the modern visitor, the obvious first stop is Denver, at the eastern edge of the Rockies and the biggest city for several hundred miles around. Outside Denver, the northern half of the state holds many of the most popular destinations, starting with the dynamic college town of Boulder and spectacular Rocky Mountain National Park. The majority of the resorts that have made Colorado the continent's foremost skiing destination snuggle into the mountains west of Denver: Summit County attracts the most visitors, Vail is considered best for terrain, and Aspen boasts the glitziest apres-ski scene. The far west of the state stretches onto the red-rock deserts of the Colorado Plateau, where the dry climate has preserved the extraordinary natural sculptures of Colorado National Monument. Pikes Peak towers over the state's second-largest city, Colorado Springs, but beyond that, the state's southeast quarter is mostly agricultural plains. In the southwest, Mesa Verde National Park preserves perhaps the most impressive of all the cliff cities left by the ancient Ancestral Puebloan civilization, while the old mining towns of Durango and Crested Butte stand revitalized in the mountains.
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