Durango, Colorado
About
San Juan Sunday is a free weekly email for Durango and the San Juans. It lands Sunday morning, and it's meant to be read with your coffee.
It's written by Bryant, who lives here full time with his 2 sons and wife. No news roundups and no tourism board copy. Each issue has the conditions for your Sunday, a few things worth leaving the house for, a neighbor worth knowing, and a short piece of local history.
Where the look comes from
In the 1870s a crew of government surveyors rode into these mountains with mules, notebooks, and a big wooden camera. Their maps are where our look comes from.
Ferdinand Hayden ran the show. He was a doctor turned geologist, and from 1867 to 1878 he led the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories. His 1871 trip to Yellowstone helped make it the first national park. Then he turned to Colorado. His crews measured the state peak by peak, and his Atlas of Colorado came out in 1877.
William Henry Jackson carried the camera. He was the survey's photographer from 1870 to the last trip in 1878, hauling glass plates up mountains on muleback. In September 1874 a prospector named John Moss led him down the Mancos Canyon, just west of here, and Jackson came back with the first photographs of the cliff houses at what's now Mesa Verde.
He lived to 99 and kept coming back to the San Juans for decades. Here are a few of his.
Photographs by William Henry Jackson. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division. No known restrictions on publication.
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