50 Fun Facts About Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

The Black Canyon was carved by which river?

The park holds the deepest 12 miles of the 48-mile gorge; the north rim, reached from Crawford, closes in winter.

Why is the canyon called 'Black'?

Parts of the gorge get only 33 minutes of sun a day, so the walls sit in shadow and look black.

Per one park history, how many minutes of sunlight do the darkest parts of the gorge get each day?

Author Duane Vandenbusche wrote that other western canyons are longer or deeper, 'but none combines the depth, sheerness, narrowness, darkness, and dread of the Black Canyon.'

How wide is the canyon at its narrowest point down at the river?

That spot is called The Narrows; at the rim the tightest gap is about 1,100 feet.

What is the canyon's greatest depth, measured at Warner Point?

The Narrows is 1,725 feet deep; Hells Canyon in Idaho, North America's deepest, drops 8,043 feet.

The Painted Wall, the tallest cliff in Colorado, rises how far from river to rim?

That is nearly twice the height of the Empire State Building; its pink stripes are veins of coarse igneous rock squeezed into the dark gneiss.

The light-coloured stripes across the Painted Wall are made of which coarse-grained igneous rock?

Its quartz, feldspar and mica crystals can grow six feet long; being tougher than the surrounding gneiss and schist, it stands out in bold relief.

How old are the gneiss and schist that make up most of the canyon walls?

They were cooked and squeezed when volcanic island arcs collided with the southern edge of what is now Wyoming.

At what rate did the Gunnison River carve down through the hard Precambrian rock?

The river was bigger and muddier then; trapped in the hard rock and unable to change course, it simply ground straight down.

The Gunnison drops 34 ft per mile through its canyon. How does that compare with the Colorado in the Grand Canyon?

The Colorado falls about 7.5 feet per mile; the Gunnison's steepest stretch plunges 240 feet per mile.

Where in the park does the river make its steepest plunge, 240 feet per mile?

The park holds the deepest and most dramatic 12 miles of the 48-mile canyon.

The Gunnison, one of the Colorado River's largest tributaries, joins it at which city?

In some years its flow rivals the bigger river at the confluence; the Spanish once called it the Rio de San Javier.

How long is the whole Black Canyon, from Curecanti downstream to the Gunnison Gorge?

The park protects the deepest section; the canyon runs on upstream into Curecanti National Recreation Area and downstream into the Gunnison Gorge conservation area.

Which Native people knew the canyon long before Europeans and are said to have avoided it out of superstition?

They called the river 'much rocks, big water'; two Spanish expeditions had passed by before 1776.

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

He called the country 'the roughest, most hilly and most cut up' he had seen and detoured south around the gorge toward the Uncompahgre Valley.

What happened to Captain Gunnison later in 1853?

A band of Pahvant Ute attacked his party near Sevier Lake, killing him and seven others; the river and the town of Gunnison were named in his honour.

Which railroad ran the first passenger train through the canyon on 13 August 1882?

William Jackson Palmer's line reached Gunnison in 1881 to serve the San Juan mines; the terrain forced him to use 3-foot narrow gauge.

Carving the 15-mile railroad bed from Sapinero to Cimarron reportedly cost how much per mile?

Irish and Italian labourers took over a year; the last mile is said to have cost more than the entire Royal Gorge project.

In December 1882, Bryan Bryant set out to survey the inner canyon, expecting 20 days. How long did it take?

Eight of his twelve men quit within days, terrified; he came back declaring the canyon impenetrable, and the line was routed south of it.

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

He said the track seemed to be built 'on the simple principle of dropping miscellaneous dirt into the river and pinning a few rails a-top.'

Rail service through the canyon was finally abandoned in which decade?

A route through Glenwood Springs took the through traffic after 1890, but the 'Black Canyon Line' carried local trains for another 60 years; a steel bridge survives at Cimarron.

What were Abraham Lincoln Fellows and William Torrence seeking on the canyon's first recorded descent in 1901?

The Uncompahgre Valley was short of water; after 10 days, 70-plus swims and a 30-mile run they emerged with a suitable spot.

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

It had a lifeline all round and floated their 35-pound packs; they carried hunting knives, silk ropes and rubber bags for their instruments.

How long is the Gunnison Tunnel, completed in 1909 to carry river water to the Uncompahgre Valley?

It cost nearly $3 million and 26 lives, and was the world's longest irrigation tunnel at the time; President Taft came out to dedicate it.

Which president dedicated the Gunnison Tunnel on 23 September 1909?

Early tunnelling was done by hand and candlelight, one miner turning the drill while another swung a sledgehammer; most men quit after two weeks.

How many workers died building the tunnel over its four years?

Crews faced carbon dioxide, heat, mud, flooding and a fractured fault zone; it took almost a year to bore 2,000 feet of water-filled rock.

In which year was Black Canyon of the Gunnison first protected as a national monument?

A New Deal work crew then built the North Rim Road and its five overlooks, now a historic district.

In which year did it become a national park?

The change added 4,000 acres from the Bureau of Land Management and created the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area downstream at the same time.

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

The five miles of road and five overlooks are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

What fraction of the park was designated wilderness in 1976?

That is 15,599 acres; the 2,500-acre Sanburg Ranch was added to the park in 2017.

Which nearby town, 15 miles west of the south rim entrance, is the park's main gateway?

The north rim entrance is 11 miles south of the smaller town of Crawford.

The East Portal Road down to the river has what maximum grade, which bars vehicles over 22 feet long?

It leads to the diversion dam that feeds the tunnel; the tunnel itself is not visible.

The unmaintained inner-canyon descents are called what?

They take about two hours down and two to four back up, need Class 3 scrambling, and are thick with poison ivy; hikers must be ready to rescue themselves.

The Gunnison in the park is "Gold Medal Water". What must anglers do with any rainbow trout they catch?

Only artificial flies and lures are allowed, and no fishing at all within 200 yards below Crystal Dam.

Which reservoir upstream, created by a 1966 dam, is Colorado's largest body of water?

It is 20 miles long with 96 miles of shoreline and the biggest lake trout and kokanee salmon fishery in the United States.

Curecanti National Recreation Area, upstream of the park, is named after what?

The recreation area, set up in 1965, manages three reservoirs built by the Bureau of Reclamation on the upper Gunnison.

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

The park also lists two eagle species, eight hawks and six owls, plus peregrine falcons and white-throated swifts working the walls.

Which wildflower is named for the park and native to it?

Aliciella penstemonoides grows among the pinyon, juniper, Gambel oak and sagebrush of the rims.

Which science-fiction author based the city in her 1967 novel City of Illusions on the canyon?

The gorge also inspired a 1954 symphonic poem by Frank Erickson and a 2017 Infamous Stringdusters song about the 1901 raft trip.

The Infamous Stringdusters' 2017 song '1901: A Canyon Odyssey' commemorates what?

The bluegrass band retold the 10-day rubber-raft trip that found the tunnel site.

How many people visited the park in an average year between 2007 and 2016?

That makes it one of the quieter national parks; most visitors drive the south rim and peer over the edge.

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

The designation runs from 200 yards below Crystal Dam to the North Fork, including the 12 miles within the park.

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

It quickly turned the arid Uncompahgre Valley around Montrose into profitable farmland and became a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972.

How many miles of the Gunnison River lie inside the national park?

The park holds the deepest and most dramatic section of the 48-mile canyon; another 4,000 acres of BLM land were added at redesignation in 1999.

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

The South Rim entrance, by contrast, is 15 miles east of Montrose and open year-round.

On most maps of the 1850s and 1860s, the Gunnison was known by what name?

It was renamed for Captain John W. Gunnison, the Army topographer killed by Pahvant Utes in Utah Territory in 1853.

Irrigation of soils derived from the Mancos Shale contaminates the Gunnison River with which element?

Together with mercury from mining and coal burning, it threatens native fish such as the razorback sucker and Colorado pikeminnow.

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

By the early 1890s Lauzon was farming in Montrose; the tunnel was eventually built by the Bureau of Reclamation between 1905 and 1909.

The canyon's Precambrian walls were raised during which mountain-building event 70 to 40 million years ago?

Volcanism from 35 to 26 million years ago then buried the area under thousands of feet of ash before the river cut down through it.

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

He reached the banks just below the Uncompahgre confluence; Escalante saw the river eleven years later in 1776.