Elk Springs, Colorado isn’t far from the headwaters of Twelve Mile Gulch.
The gulch drains north toward the Yampa River, which runs more or less undisturbed by dams or diversions for 250 miles through northwestern Colorado.
John C. Frémont explored the river in 1843. Nine thousand years before that, ancestors of the Utes and Shoshone lived along the Yampa.
Elk Springs, Colorado remembers how the Bureau of Reclamation wanted to build the Echo Park Dam and plumb the last free flowing river in the west.
Voices of opposition shot the project down.
It was tough to ignore the engineers’ previous failures and all the trouble at the Teton Dam.
