About 35 miles east of Colorado Springs and two miles south of Calhan, Colorado, a creek and its side streams have sculpted a badlands from the north flank of a high ridge. Now protected within Paint Mines Interpretive Park, the badlands are a colorful mosaic of bluffs, domes and hoodoos, representing Tertiary and Quaternary deposits. The Park's name is a reference to the fact the Native Americans used the clays for decorative purposes.
Accessed by a network of sand-gravel trails that overlook and wind among the rock formations, the park is home to an excellent variety of plants and animals that characterize the Western High Plains; among the resident wildlife are coyotes, red fox, white-tailed deer, ferruginous hawks, prairie falcons, thirteen-lined ground squirrels and short-horned lizards. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the number of visitors, we only encountered the ground squirrels this morning.
A wind farm now stretches atop the ridge above the park but the ecology of this hidden, geologic gem appears to be undisturbed. The stream itself is an upper tributary of Big Sandy Creek which drains part of the Arkansas River watershed, south of the Palmer Divide. Finally, from atop the ridge, one (I imagine) enjoys a spectacular view of the Pike's Peak massif and the distant Continental Divide; unfortunately, a smoky haze from the Western wildfires obliterated that view today.
