Author - The Durango Herald

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

FLC retrieves historic images from unstable negatives

Treasure comes in many forms. Husbands and wives. Children. And rare historic photographs not seen in 100 years. I paid my way through a Ph.D. by teaching photojournalism, America...

DATE: May 11, 2016 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels

As Lake Powell recedes, Glen Canyon reveals its secrets

Drought will alter the Southwest. Climate change means longer, hotter summers. “What happens under the turquoise skies of the continent’s most celebrated landscapes will presage ...

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

Josie Bassett: As wild as the frontier

A pioneer mother accused of murdering one of her husbands isn’t a likely candidate for Women’s History Month, but then Josie Bassett wasn’t a typical pioneer, either. She lived a...

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

In southeastern Utah, the Procession Panel speaks across time

High on a red rock ridge in southeastern Utah lies a petroglyph panel that depicts a fundamental shift in the lives of prehistoric Pueblo peoples. A millennium ago, individual ce...

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

Miners’ secret cabin is a marvel in the snowy San Juans

With ingenious design, hidden bunkhouse survives

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

19th-century fur trapper Denis Julien traveled against the current

Above the white sand beaches in Whirlpool Canyon lies a 19th-century secret lightly etched in ancient stone. Two initials and the date 1838 tell of a lost world and one man’s singular persev...

DATE: Dec 9, 2015 | CATEGORY: Gulliford's Travels