Black Canyon of the Gunnison for Dummies

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

If you were to take a vote of the Antisocial Network staffers, their favorite place on earth would most likely be the Colorado Plateau. The great highland that surrounds the Four Corners region is quite probably topographically unique, not to mention downright gorgeous. That may be why one of the staffers was taken aback by the misinformation spread across HubPages by Richard Francis Fleck (juneaukid) in a post he called "Our National Parks: Black Canyon of the Gunnison: A Place of Wonder."

Several of our staffers are quite familiar with the Black Canyon, although not the version Fleck describes... Richard opens his little travelogue by telling his readers,

"Maura and I drove for two hours east of Grand Junction, Colorado through pinyon pine, juniper and sagebrush country ever upward to the rim... "

For starters, two hours east of Grand Junction puts you somewhere around Vail on I-70: Richard and Maura headed southeast along US 50. For another, they didn't climb "ever upward to the rim": they followed the broad valley of the Gunnison River to the National Park entrance, then climbed Colorado 347 for about 13 miles. Plus the slopes at the rim are pretty well forested, not "sagebrush": flowery language is no excuse for inaccuracy! Continuing in that language of roses and lilacs (actually more like Titan arum, if you know what we mean), Fleck describes the scenery:

"The gently rolling sagebrush slopes came right up to a knife edge rim at 8,000 feet and dropped 2,000 to 3,000 feet straight down to the Gunnison River slithering in hidden depths below..."

After we stopped retching at his choice of "slithering" as the verb, we remembered that the slopes don't "come to a knife edge," they come to a sheer cliff. Look it up: a knife edge isn't the same thing. After more of this lavender prose, Fleck got to his version of the science behind the gorgeous gorge:

"There are several geological periods responsible for the formation of this enigmatic canyon." Given that a "geological period" is a unit of time, that's like Fleck declaiming that "there are several hours responsible for my writing this rubbish." Richard continues in this vein for one whole paragraph, eventually informing his readers that "Eventually the entire region was uplifted and the ancient Gunnison River carved deper [sic] and deeper (on its way to the Colorado River) into the softer shales and sandstones exposing the hard core of gneiss, granite and schist..."

Umm, yeah: but why is the canyon so narrow? Why are there such precipitous slopes? More to the point, why did the Gunnison cross a highland to reach the Colorado River instead of draining east into the Arkansas? Richard has nothing to say on those points... even though there's lots of information at the visitor center.

Fleck closes out his post with the observation that

"The Gunnison River joins the Colorado River at Grand Junction, Colorado. To date this city has not created a city park at the junction of the two rivers. I would think such a park would attract more tourists to the city of Grand Junction and hence give meaning to its name..."

...by which Richard demonstrates common ignorance of the origin of the city's name. You see, the Colorado River upstream of Utah's Canyonlands was once known as the Grand River, at least until John Wesley Powell rafted the whole length to demonstrate that it was a single river. Grand Junction got its name because it's where the Gunnison met the Grand – not because a "big junction" could be found there. For that sort of misinformation we happily hand him a Dumbass of the Day award. Oh, and by the way, Richard? you must've missed Riverside Park...

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