Author - The Durango Herald

Marie Ogden’s search for truth in the Utah desert

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, 49-year-old Marie Ogden, a spiritualist and millennial Christian, moved to Dry Valley in San Juan County, Utah, to establish a religious colon...

DATE: Mar 9, 2017 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

Secrets of the Saguache stone snakes: A remarkable mystery endures

There are secrets in the San Luis Valley at the northern edge of the Sangre de Christo Mountains. One of the most interesting is the riddle of large stone snakes, who built them, when and wh...

DATE: Feb 8, 2017 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

Walls of time, wonders: Dominguez and Escalante canyons

History, geology tell old tales in these Colorado desert canyons

DATE: Jan 11, 2017 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

Sheepherder Pacomio Chacon: An artist among the aspens

In researching sheep and public lands grazing across Colorado, I have seen hundreds of carved aspen trees or arborglyphs. But only one artist of the aspens truly stands out. His work enliven...

DATE: Dec 7, 2016 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

Grand visions in the New Mexico desert

Historians love birthdays and anniversaries, and southern New Mexico is celebrating a big one. It’s been a century since the Bureau of Reclamation constructed the Elephant Butte ...

DATE: Nov 9, 2016 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

All in family: A century of selling groceries in Georgetown

In Georgetown, one of the oldest family-owned groceries operating in the Rocky Mountains began as Kneisel & Anderson in 1883. Original bins, shelving and tea canisters were insta...

DATE: Oct 12, 2016 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

Love stories at Tres Piedras: Aldo Leopold’s cabin in New Mexico

“There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land,” wrote Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac. As one of the 20th...

DATE: Sep 7, 2016 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

David Petersen featured in new film

The scattered remnants of the 1960s generation have mostly grown older, softer and lost their cutting edge. Not so for writer, conservationist and bow-hunter David Petersen, who moved with h...

DATE: Sep 1, 2016 | CATEGORY: Film, TV and Streaming

Looking at the life of prospector Cass Hite

In the desert at twilight, as the heat slowly dissipates, the sky turns cobalt blue and stars peak over canyon walls, I think about lone prospectors who spent years of their lives looking fo...

DATE: Aug 25, 2016 | CATEGORY: Books

Pioneers of La Plata County: Aspass family settled in 1870s

At the beginning of La Plata County history, even before Colorado statehood in 1876, the Hans Aspaas family was here. Over the next 140 years, family members moved across the cou...

DATE: Aug 10, 2016 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

Phantom Ranch: Mary Colter’s oasis in the Grand Canyon

Anyone who has hiked the Bright Angel Trail off the Grand Canyon’s South Rim knows the pleasure 9 miles below of finding Phantom Ranch. How the ranch got there, who planted the first trees a...

DATE: Jul 13, 2016 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

Mining on the edge at the Old One Hundred high above Silverton

The first time I saw the Dropping the field glasses to my chest and squinting, I tried to take in one of the most dramatic structures in the silvery San Juans, and one of the most difficul...

DATE: Jun 8, 2016 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels