Colorado Books

The Dolores River is one of the Southwest's best kept secrets. For 183 miles, from McPhee Dam to its confluence with the Colorado River in Utah, The Dolores offers a variety of scenery few other southwestern rivers can match. Whitewater, solitude, side canyon hikes, and superb campsites abound as the Dolores winds its way through canyons and valleys rich in history and folk tales.

This award-winning book will guide you down the river and introduce you to it's fascinating history and natural history.
---from book's back cover

An amazing journey of John Wesley Powell going down the Colorado River in the early 1900's, good illustrations as well.

Spare and elegant prose, like the dry side of the Cascades, makes this book utterly memorable. Ben Varon is one of those characters, albeit he was a real guy, who stays with you long after the last page has been turned.

I was fortunate enough to read this in early drafts, and reading it now, again, is like rediscovering an old friend. Familiar, yet wonderful, like perfectly broken in riding boots.

John Dunning is simply the best at what he writes. All of John's novels have heart, but I defy anyone to find novels with as much soul. I never want the stories to end and wait impatiently for the next. Superbly written, researched, and edited! Thursday Next: First Among Sequels

I recently purchased property in Durango and wanted a book that would tell family and friends about Durango and the surrounding areas.
This is a beautiful book, well written and the photos are reallly nice!
I was very pleased!

The Eagle on Battle Mountain is a highly detailed and very readable personal account about New Jersey Zinc Company's Eagle Mine at Gilman, Colorado in the 1940s and 1950s. William Burnett, the author, was a welder for most of his career, and in that capacity worked in almost every part of the complex. Most such books tend to be about "the life of the times". That is, the miners' personal lives, which were not greatly different from any other working-class worker. However, Burnet concentrates almost entirely on the mining complex, including the company town of Gilman. Among examples of details about the mining complex: The miners' change-room janitor was also the "powder man" who made up all the fuses and blasting caps used in the mine. The large underground mill (the largest underground mill in the world) was brightly lit with Cooper Hewitt Lamps, which were actually the first electric light bulbs, preceding Edison's incandescent bulbs. The electric shop actually manufactured all of the probably hundreds of electric heaters used throughout the complex. As Burnett was neither a miner nor a mill worker, his descriptions of those operation are brief and superficial---yet, those details can be found in mining journals. The descriptions Burnett provides are exactly the subjects---the support plant and personnel---that never make it into technical journals. As Burnett points out, there are several dozen support personnel for every actual miner. Mining, milling, and miners are fairly well documented. Burnett's view of life in a mine and mining company town is unique.

This is a well written account of Western Slope history by someone who was there, on location.

I am relocating back to Denver and needed a map because I am looking for a residence from TX and other needs I need to relocate. This is a newer map than when I lived in Denver and very impressed with the more detail and highlight than in the past with Denver metro and vicinity detailed street maps. Well done map and very reasonally priced. Anyone traveling to Denver for vacation or whatever, I strongly recommend getting a Denver metro map in advance so you will not get lost which happens a great deal even with obviously given written directions from someelse. Trust me. A Avenue, Place, Street name make all the difference in the world if you are going to end up on the correct street and one's destination. I strongly recommended this map being that it covers a broad vicinity and has the counties included, as well. It has a great of clarity. Having lived in Denver for at least 17 years, I can vouch for this map and I always has one regardless of how long I lived there. Rather critical for me to get lost even though I thought I knew where I was going.
Rand McNally did a job well done.

Eating Up The Santa Fe Trail: Recipes And Lore From The Old West combines authentic recipes used by trappers, traders, settlers, Native American tribes, Mexicans, and frontier soldiers with anecdotes and stories drawn from the American West. This superb compilation of western history and recipes were gathered together by food historian Sam Arnold and ranges in origin and background from Missouri, across Kansas, to Bent's Fort, Colorado, and on to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Here are step-by-step instructions on preparing a wide variety of trail fare including buffalo, elk, carne, washtunkala (jerked meat stew); and traditional eggnog -- the drink of choice after a hanging! Eating Up The Santa Fe Trail is a unique addition to any cookbook collection and will have a special appeal for students and enthusiasts of the America West.

Knowledgeably compiled and deftly edited by Peter Friederici (Ecological Restoration Institute), Ecological Restoration Of Southwestern Ponderosa Pine Forests presents a variety of essays by learned and articulate authors in the fields of forestry, biology, philosophy, ecology, political science, archaeology, botany, and geography. Ecological Restoration Of Southwestern Ponderosa Pine Forests brings together perspectives from all these fields with a special focus upon the task of renewing the pine forests of Southwestern Ponderosa. The thoughtful and scholarly writings are enhanced with black-and-white photographs, as well as charts, maps, and graphs addressing all aspects and difficulties pertaining to contemporary efforts to encourage mother nature. Ecological Restoration Of Southwestern Ponderosa Pine Forests is an important and welcome contribution to professional and academic Environmental Studies reference collections.