Kawuneeche Valley and the Birth of the Colorado River
Near Grand Lake, Colorado
The broad, marshy valley stretching north from Grand Lake is the Kawuneeche Valley, and the modest stream winding through it is the beginning of one of the most fought over rivers on the continent. This is the upper Colorado River, still small enough here that you could wade across it, gathering itself from snowmelt off the Never Summer Mountains before it begins a journey of more than a thousand miles to the Gulf of California. The name Kawuneeche comes from the Arapaho language and means valley of the coyote.
The Arapaho once traveled and hunted through this high meadow, and their words survive in the names on the map. The valley floor is a wet mosaic of willow thickets, beaver ponds, and grassy flats, exactly the kind of habitat that draws wildlife down out of the timber. It is one of the best places in Rocky Mountain National Park to look for moose.
Standing here, it is worth pausing on the strange fact that a river that will one day carve the Grand Canyon, fill Lake Powell, and water the cities of the desert Southwest, starts as this quiet, willow lined trickle in a Colorado meadow where coyotes hunt and moose browse in the shallows.
