Mining Paint and Pottery

Today we went to a most unusual place.  It was called 'Paint Mine Park', owned by El Paso County which is the Colorado Springs county, but it is also on the National Register of History Places.  The Paint Mine is outside of Calhan, Colorado which is the poster child for cattle country and about 30 miles east of Colorado Springs.  It was quite warm today, and there was exactly one tree and very little shade on this hike.  The brilliant sunshine made for nice pictures this morning.  

This landscape is just west of the Rocky Mountains

The Paint Mine is similar in geology to the South Dakota Badlands, and to the Palo Duro Canyon in Texas.  There are hoodoos and petrified sands.  It is almost completely hidden by the surrounding landscape.  It differs in that it contains brilliantly colored clay and petrified sand deposits and has been visited and 'mined' by Native Americans for thousands of years.  It where colored clay was dug for pottery and for the raw materials to make brightly colored ceremonial paint.  The formations in the following pictures are almost invisible from this viewpoint even though they are less than a quarter of a mile away.

As always, and particularly in this case, the pictures tell the story:

https://goo.gl/photos/oYoLkjMuVJ8Amneq5