Author - The Durango Herald
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Andrew Gulliford
Position: Fort Lewis College

Sheep wagons: From Old West function to New West fashion

Across the Old West, what was once function is now fashion. Well-worn cowboy boots, spurs, saddles and Stetsons all have a new cachet as collectibles. One man’s junk is another man’s buffed ...

The truth behind a frontier myth in Pagosa Springs

Just west of Pagosa Springs is a small roadside park north of the highway. A bronze plaque set in granite says that more than a century ago Capt. Albert Pfeiffer stripped naked on behalf of ...

Putting Everett Ruess to rest: Perhaps a final conclusion to a 1934 desert mystery

One of the great mysteries of the Four Corners and the Southwest has been the 1934 disappearance of young artist Everett Ruess. He left the Utah village of Escalante alone, descended Davis G...

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...

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...

Walls of time, wonders: Dominguez and Escalante canyons

History, geology tell old tales in these Colorado desert canyons

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...