Southeast

Southeast Colorado covers the southeastern plains and Spanish Peaks country, a stretch from Pueblo east to the Kansas line and south to New Mexico. The terrain runs flat to gently rolling — short-grass prairie, sandhills, and the occasional volcanic neck or mesa — with the Arkansas River cutting across the northern half and the Spanish Peaks rising abruptly in the southwest. Pueblo, Las Animas, Huerfano, Otero, Bent, Prowers, Crowley, Kiowa, and Baca counties cover the region. Pueblo is the largest city. Other anchors include Trinidad (the historic coal-mining town), Walsenburg, La Junta, Lamar, and Las Animas. Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site sits near La Junta on the Arkansas River; the Comanche National Grassland covers a large stretch of the eastern plains; Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site preserves the 1864 site in Kiowa County. Most trips here lean historical and geological. Bent’s Old Fort and the Santa Fe Trail markers carry the trade-and-westward-expansion thread; Trinidad’s coal-camp history fills the southern stretch; the Comanche Grassland holds dinosaur tracks and pictographs. The region rewards travelers willing to take long detours off I-25.