39 Fun Facts About Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Black Canyon of the Gunnison lies in which region of Colorado?

The Western Slope: the park lies on the Rockies' western slope and also on the Colorado Plateau's far eastern edge, so geologists could assign it to either province.

Why is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison called 'Black'?

Its depths stay in deep shadow: the walls are really dark-grey rock, but the gorge is so steep and narrow that little sunlight reaches the bottom.

Why did the Gunnison River cut straight down through hard rock instead of flowing around it?

Its course was already set: the river first ran over softer volcanic rock, and once entrenched it had no choice but to keep cutting into the hard rock below.

At The Narrows, how wide is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison at river level?

About 40 feet: the extremely hard rock resists widening while the river keeps cutting down, so the gorge there is far deeper than it is wide.

How deep is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison at its deepest point, near Warner Point?

About 2,700 feet: the Grand Canyon is more than twice as deep, but no North American canyon combines depth, narrowness and sheer walls like this one.

Which boats can make the trip down the Gunnison River through Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park?

Kayaks only: the run is for expert kayakers, some stretches can't be run at all, and rafting isn't possible.

The pale veins cutting across the Black Canyon of the Gunnison's dark walls are made of which rock?

Pegmatite: molten rock pushed into the older dark rock and hardened into the pale dikes that streak the canyon walls.

Roughly how old are the dark gneiss and schist that form most of the Black Canyon's walls?

About 2 billion years: the rock is vastly older than the canyon itself, which the river only began cutting about two million years ago.

The 2008 Black Canyon Decree settled a decades-long legal fight over what?

River flows for the park: it set water releases to protect the canyon's river, whose natural flow had been disrupted by three federal dams upstream.

Where in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park does the river make its steepest plunge, 240 feet per mile?

Chasm View: that steep drop gives the river the energy to cut its bed down faster than the walls can widen, keeping the gorge narrow.

A Spanish expedition led by two Franciscan priests reached the Gunnison River while officially seeking a route to where?

California: with snow closing in on the mountains ahead, the priests turned back to Santa Fe before they ever got there.

Fossils found in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park date from which famous era?

The age of dinosaurs: yet instead of skeletons, the park's finds from that time are mostly plant fossils, burrows and bone fragments.

Captain John Williams Gunnison first described the canyon in 1853 while surveying what?

A railroad route to the Pacific: the gorge blocked his party, so the survey had to detour south around it.

What happened to Captain Gunnison later in 1853?

He was killed by Ute warriors in Utah: afterwards his deputy, Lieutenant Edward Beckwith, took command and carried the railroad survey on.

Which railroad pushed a narrow-gauge line into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in the early 1880s?

The Denver and Rio Grande found the canyon below Cimarron too rough to build through, so its tracks left the gorge and climbed over Cerro Summit.

Spain's 1765 expeditions into western Colorado were searching partly for what?

Silver: native traders had brought lumps of silver to New Mexico, but the pure silver they chased eluded them.

During engineer Byron Bryant's winter survey deep in the Black Canyon, what did most of his crew do?

Walked off the job: only a few men stayed with Bryant, and a survey planned for about 20 days dragged on for more than 60.

Which famous writer called his 1889 train ride through the gorge 'the mad ride'?

Rudyard Kipling said the track looked like dirt dropped into the river with a few rails pinned on top, and he ended up praying for the train's safety.

In December 1906, what knocked Gunnison Tunnel drillers from their machines and halted that heading?

An underground stream: its jets shot 40 feet through drill holes, and work on that heading stopped for about six months until a ventilation shaft was sunk.

What did the 1901 explorers use instead of the wooden boats that had doomed a 1900 attempt?

Their multi-chambered rubber raft, an inflatable ringed by a lifeline, floated their 35-pound packs through the rapids that had wrecked the wooden boats of the 1900 attempt.

Which president dedicated the Gunnison Tunnel in 1909?

William Howard Taft dedicated it in 1909, though the river's diversion dam wasn't finished until years later.

Before Congress made it a national park in 1999, what had Black Canyon of the Gunnison been since 1933?

A national monument: the 1999 law abolished the monument, folded its lands into the new park and added land from the Bureau of Land Management.

Which New Deal agency built the North Rim Road and its overlooks in the mid-1930s?

The Civilian Conservation Corps built the five-mile North Rim Road and its five overlooks in the mid-1930s; the road is on the National Register of Historic Places.

In winter, how do visitors reach the overlooks along most of Black Canyon of the Gunnison's South Rim Drive?

On skis or snowshoes: plows stop at the visitor center, and when snow allows rangers groom the six miles of road beyond as a ski trail.

Which nearby town, 15 miles west of the South Rim entrance, is Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park's main gateway?

Montrose: co-founder Joe Selig named the town after a character in Sir Walter Scott's novel A Legend of Montrose.

The unmaintained inner-canyon descents are called what?

The park calls them routes on the South Rim and draws on the North Rim: unmarked Class 3 scrambles thick with poison ivy, taking hours each way, for which hikers need a wilderness permit.

What must anglers on the park's Gold Medal stretch do with any rainbow trout they catch?

Release it: every rainbow must go back, yet anglers may still keep a few brown trout from the same stretch.

Which upstream reservoir, created by damming the Gunnison River, is Colorado's largest body of water?

Blue Mesa: as the reservoir filled in the 1960s, its waters drowned the towns of Iola, Cebolla and Sapinero.

Which small songbird that walks underwater to feed lives along the river in the canyon?

The American dipper, a stocky grey songbird, walks and swims underwater in the fast Gunnison to pick insect larvae off the streambed; peregrine falcons and white-throated swifts work the walls above.

Black Canyon gilia, a rare wildflower of the phlox family, grows mainly where?

In crevices on steep cliffs: though that terrain is largely out of reach, rock climbing is still counted among its threats.

In 2015, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park won international recognition for protecting what?

Its night skies: to earn International Dark Sky Park status, the park had to log every one of its outdoor lights and measure how dark its sky really is.

What tackle are anglers restricted to on the Gold Medal stretch of river inside the park?

Only artificial flies and lures may be used on the Gold Medal stretch, which runs from below Crystal Dam downstream through the park to the North Fork confluence.

When it opened in 1909, the Gunnison Tunnel held what record?

Longest irrigation bore: heat and poisonous gas made the work so grim that, despite good pay, the average miner stayed only about two weeks.

The park's North Rim entrance, closed in winter, lies 11 miles south of which town?

Crawford: boosters once pushed for a bridge across the canyon, but it was never built, so the North Rim is still reached by its own road.

Just below the Black Canyon, the Gunnison River is joined by the North Fork and which other river?

The Uncompahgre: the Gunnison Tunnel sends part of the Gunnison's water into its valley.

Water draining through Mancos Shale soils carries which element into the lower Gunnison River?

Selenium: it threatens endangered native fish of the lower Gunnison, such as the razorback sucker and the Colorado pikeminnow.

According to local lore, how did prospector Frank Lauzon get the idea for the Gunnison Tunnel?

In a dream, as local lore tells it; a state attempt to build the tunnel stalled, and federal funding approved in 1902 finally got it done.

The Black Canyon's ancient walls were raised during which mountain-building event, 70 to 40 million years ago?

The Laramide orogeny raised the Gunnison uplift about 60 million years ago, lifting old rock high enough for the river to cut its canyon later.

Who was the first non-native to record the Gunnison River, reaching it in 1765?

Juan Maria de Rivera was trying to find and cross the Colorado River, and in 1765 his party got as far as the banks of the Gunnison.