Time Traveling at Soapstone Prairie

Just north of the Colorado border off of I-25 Pam Smith veers her tour van onto a private ranching access road, leaving behind the highway, the traffic and civilization.

As Smith, a Fort Collins natural areas tour guide, drives down the bumpy road she points toward three pronghorn antelope off in the distance.

“These animals,” she says over the sound of the engine, “used to roam with the ancient giant bison. They were around when the woolly mammoths were around and used to number in the tens of millions.”

The pronghorn watch the van with as much suspicion as they might a woolly mammoth, this strange beast with eight tourists inside, kicking up dust along the dirt road. Then they swiftly run off toward the green horizon.

A bit farther, while still just inside Colorado's border, Smith drives the van through an unmarked gate.

“This,” she says, “is where Soapstone begins.”

Even before the van tour reaches the actual premises of Soapstone Prairie, it's a stunning experience. The mixed-grass prairie rolls in the distance, and the Old West comes to life with rare chirping birds, barking prairie dogs and pronghorn antelope. And as the tour from time to time waits for cattle to mosey off the road, it's easy to imagine John Wayne or Clint Eastwood appearing on the horizon, smoking chicory cigars on horseback.

Fort Collins bought this 29-square-mile piece of historic anachronism for $11.1 million in 2004; the purchase was made possible by revenue from a quarter-cent sales tax raised as part of a Building Community Choices ballot initiative passed by voters in 1997. It will be open to the public in June 2009.

Pam Smith, who has a masters degree in botany from Andrews University in Michigan and has worked with various outfits of the Colorado Forest Service since 2006, and began giving tours in May. But her knowledge of Soapstone is already borderline encyclopedic.

Driving along at a comfortable 40 mph, Smith tells the curious crew she's guiding about the lively landscape.

“Because this area hasn't been developed you're going to see a lot of wildlife,” she says. “There's badgers and tiny, little swift foxes. Most of the birds you're going to see flitting around our van are—”

Suddenly Smith slams on the brakes. In a flash, a white tail is seen pumping up and down, rising above and falling below the tips of the prairie grass, bouncing off in front of the van.

“And there's a cotton tail rabbit,” Smith says.

Once moving again, Smith reels off a list of the different mammals that have been known to visit Soapstone Prairie: mountain lions, black bears, bobcats, mule deer, elk, white tail rabbit, badgers, ground squirrels, coyotes, black-tailed prairie dogs, and pronghorn.

After she's exhausted her list of animal sightings, Smith says, “That's what happens when you get to leave the land alone for awhile.”

Of all Soapstone wildlife, perhaps it's the pronghorn that best epitomize the essence of Soapstone Prairie. The prairie is not only home to an abundance of wildlife, but also home to a rich archeological history—mainly the historical Lindenmeier Archaeology Site. The site has unearthed artifacts many millennia old, things like scraper tools skillfully made by Folsom Men in the last ice age. They’re artifacts from a time unfathomable to modern imagination.

But the pronghorn, they were there.

The pronghorn ran with the ancient giant bison of the Folsom period. They ran with the bison and the Native Americans before the time of European settlers. They ran with the early 20th century ranchers and homesteaders. And while their numbers have dwindled, they're still running. They're running along with Pam Smith's Natural Areas tour van.

As the tour continues on, Smith's automatic transmission shifts to a lower gear and the terrain begins to incline slightly as the prairie becomes hillier.

A tourist in the front passenger seat, who had recently taken a tour of Pawnee National Grasslands, comments, “I think this is a lot prettier than Pawnee National Grassland.”

Smith replied, “Oh I agree. I used to survey in the Pawnee. And you haven't even seen the pretty part yet.”

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Only 25 miles north of Fort Collins on the edge of the Wyoming border, Soapstone Prairie tours have been part of Fort Collins natural areas program for the last two years. Equine, hiking, biking and van tours are offered with knowledgeable guides to show off the finer points of its 18,778 acres. The first stop of this particular van tour exemplifies the very purpose for the Fort Collins purchase.

“I think I see one there,” Smith says, slowly pulling the van over to the side of the road.

Stepping out of the van, Smith carries her camera and a kit for taking plant samples and heads toward the roadside.

“This is a species we haven't been able to identify yet,” she says pointing to a grip of thriving, white flowers growing beside the road.

Smith snaps some photos of the plant—which she describes as “a type of evening primrose”—and carefully snips off a budding flower so she can identify and record the plant's existence when she arrives back in Fort Collins.

The flower is one of more than 250 native plants found—and protected—in the natural area, and Smith says, “There will be many more identified, easily. I know we have one in the car with us right now.”

Additionally, 113 different species of bird have been recorded on sight, making the prairie a prime destination for nature lovers.

The continual process of preserving and learning from organisms and artifacts that have been at Soapstone Prairie for years and years are the privileges that Fort Collins residents voted and paid for.

Yet beyond listing and observing species, the natural area serves a very real wildlife preservation purpose. An Endangered species like Colorado butterfly plants, and species of concern like swift foxes and ferruginous hawks live inside Soapstone’s borders.

The prairie is also part of the Laramie Foothills Mountains to Plains Project, a 200,000 acre corridor assuring that developers don't block the migration routes of certain species. That corridor is the only place where elk descend from the mountains to the plains in all of Colorado, a sure sign of the effects of Front Range development.

When the prairie opens to the public in next June, the north entrance used by the van tour will be closed to the public. A south entrance off of County Road 15 will be the only entryway provided. Part of the preservation process will be to restrict the access of visitors. All hiking, biking and horseback riding will be on-trail use only, with rangers on hand to help enforce the rules.

Part of the restrictive access is because Soapstone Prairies is more than a nature preserve. It's also a cultural preserve.

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What makes Soapstone Prairie more unique than any other Fort Collins natural area is its cultural and historical relevance. It's more than wildlife or a conservation open space. The natural area serves as a record of human existence. Beneath its soil—even atop the soil—artifacts show signs of human inhabitancy dating from 10,000 B.C. to the early 20th century homesteaders. From the Wyoming border south toward Fort Collins, Soapstone Prairie showcases a range of historical sites.

First is the Old Graves Camp, now inhabited by the natural area's caretaker. The Old Graves Camp served as the ranching headquarters of Basque shepherds from Spain in the early 1900s to the 1950s.

And with the existing use of the grassland for grazing cattle, it's apparent that the rich ranching history of the land is a story that continues to unfold to this day.

Further down the winding road sits the Roman Ranch—an old homestead where its settlers' livelihood consisted of exporting choke cherry wine to Fort Collins in the early 1900s. And near Roman Ranch lays remnants of the foundation of Soapstone School, which educated children in the prairie from 1900 to 1920.

Then heading southwest, foothill formations begin to dominate the flat prairie landscape. Adjacent to the Cheyenne Ridge, which defines the Colorado/Wyoming border, sits Folsom Man Hill. And stretching down an arroyo off Folsom Man Hill rests Soapstone Prairie's most significant historical site, Lindenmeier Archaeological Site.

Compared to the Lindenmeier Site, the ranching and homestead heritage is a mere tick of the second hand in the timeline of Soapstone Prairie’s history. Lindenmeier is famous among archaeological circles for producing some of the oldest proof of human existence in North America.

In 1924 two brothers and amateur archaeologists from Fort Collins named Judge and Major Coffin were digging and searching for arrowheads within arroyos at Soapstone Prairie. At the time, Soapstone was owned by William Lindenmeier Jr., who lived in Fort Collins.

The brothers' search for archaeological treasure came at a time when amateur archaeology was very much in style thanks to the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt only two years before. But unlike most who searched in vain, the Coffin brothers found more than arrowheads. They found a treasure trove of artifacts on Lindenmeier's land dating from the time of the latest ice age: Spear heads known as Folsom points; lithic or stone tools; and the bones of now-extinct giant bison, known as Bison antiquus. The artifacts are called Folsom Man artifacts, named after the Folsom excavation in New Mexico.

By 1930 the Coffin brothers convinced Lindenmeier to contact the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and from 1934-1940 the Smithsonian extensively excavated the site. It proved to be one of the most significant Folsom Man finds in North America.

“For an ice age site it's one of the most pristine, largest sites in North America, says Jason LaBelle, a Colorado State University archaeology professor. “What makes it so special is that you see things preserved that aren't normally preserved.” (See sidebar below.)

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After the Smithsonian finished its excavation in 1940, the site went largely untouched until the city purchased the prairie in 2004. Today many of the artifacts are housed at the Smithsonian, the Fort Collins Museum and the Denver Museum of Natural Science.

In 2006, LaBelle—as part of his research for CSU and Southern Methodist University—began to map and survey not only the Lindenmeier Site, but Soapstone Prairie in its entirety. What LaBelle discovered was that the prairie still has a wealth of history preserved in its soil. Even a few months ago La Belle found a tipi ring once used as a campground by Native Americans.

“Things are still being found out there,” LaBelle said. “We've been mapping portions that are slowly eroding from the site.”

LaBelle has recorded 280 new sites older than 50 years since 2006 with surface surveys alone.

The concern, said LaBelle, is that once the natural area is open to the public that people won't be able to resist looking for their own mementos, marring the map of history that he and his team of archaeologists have been carefully compiling.

“We're worried that people will take them home or sell them,” LaBelle said. “It's really scary. A complete Folsom point can go for four digits. We're worried about the casual person but there's also the people who do it for a living.

“We've already been getting calls from people saying, 'when can I start digging.”

The answer is “never.” Even ranchers from the old days who picked arrowheads off the ground have made it harder for researchers to precisely map the history of Colorado's ancestors.

“People have been picking up artifacts (at Soapstone Prairie) for the last 80 years and it's already affected what we've been doing, because we map things to the nearest millimeter,” LaBelle said.

However, Natural Areas management plans to do everything within reason to prevent people from taking artifacts.

“We're wanting to make people aware that it's a sensitive area and that everybody has to stay on the trails,” said Mark Sears, Natural Areas manager.

Soapstone Prairie will have limited parking, with only two parking lots, one for horse trailers and one for cars. Sears said that along with limited parking, there will also be an entrance station where a park ranger will meet visitors to make sure they're aware of the expectations to stay on the trails.

Sears also stressed that the educational aspect is the key to successfully warding off vagabond souvenir seekers.

“We're going to try to get across to people who come in here to know that this is a very special place that needs to be treated with respect, dignity and stewardship,” Sears said.

Educational signs and displays will be provided to help to provide a sense of pride among visitors. The Lindenmeier Site will have an observation area a few hundred yards above it with displays and signs touting its significance. No trails will actually lead to the site.

Additionally the Fort Collins Natural Areas Program will occasionally provide guides for interpretive hikes and designated speakers.

“There should be a pretty strong public presence every day,” Sears said. “It's almost a self-policing type thing.”

LaBelle added that there will continue to be a strong archaeological presence in the prairie, further discouraging people from taking away the pieces to the historical puzzle that he and his team are trying to put together.

But even the archaeologist agrees that residential pride in the history-heavy prairie is the key to protecting the natural area.

“We want to make people so proud of (Soapstone) that they will want to protect it,” LaBelle said. “It's not like we can have armed guards. What we're really trying to do is build a sense of stewardship, where everybody's proud of Soapstone.

“What's really cool is that when we have our sight on Soapstone, it allows people to time travel. You can see that people lived here since 10,000 B.C.,” he continued. “This is what the Front Range looked like before we had malls and houses and roads. And it really looked like that 13,000 years ago.”

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With the plains in the rear view mirror and twisting, curving turns through the foothills in the windshield ahead, Pam Smith throws the 15-passenger van into overdrive to climb the steep foothills. At last, the touring party arrives at what Smith refers to as “the pretty part.”

But “pretty” is definitely not the right word.

As the passengers climb out the van at its stop near the highest point in all of Soapstone Prairie, the view is a 360-degree assault upon all the senses. To the south is The Big Hole, a stunning view of Red Mountain at the top of a 500-foot drop off. It's a combination shrubland atop bright red sandstone rolling against hills carved out by arroyos. The red sandstone is highlighted against the dark green of mountain mahogany shrubs defined by different shades of the green grama grasses.

Looking down, The Big Hole is as it sounds, a hole carved by the various geologic foundations. But it seems as though it ought to have a more elegant name.

A turkey vulture sails overhead and the smells of the fresh prairie plants seem to have all wafted atop The Big Hole lookout point.

On a short walk north to the highest point in all of Soapstone, one of the tourists spins in a circle and half-mockingly sings, “The hills are alive with the sound of music!”

And he's not far off.

From that point, all 29 square miles of Soapstone can be seen, and then some.

Smith says, “On a clear day, Horsetooth can be spotted, even though it looks like a zit from here.”

And from there it's easy to see what LaBelle means by saying that Soapstone allows for time travel. Looking down at The Big Hole, millions of years of geologic formations from Permian to the Jurassic age could be sorted through simply by sight by a knowledgeable geologist. To the north lays the Folsom Man Hill, a reminder of ancient heritage. And to the east lies the imposing smoke stacks of Raw Hide Power Plant—a symbol of the development forever warded off by Fort Collins’ most impressive natural area.

And somewhere out in the distance is the pronghorn antelope, connecting all the time frames together.

Why the Lindenmeier Site is so valuable: These are six reasons why the Lindenmeier Site is so significant for archaeologists: » The scope in time of the artifacts recovered: The oldest are more than 12,000 years old, some of the oldest in North America. There's evidence of Clovis people, which hail from an earlier time in the last ice age than the Folsom Man. However, the same site is home to artifacts from more modern Native Americans as well, proving that there's been continual human habitation of the prairie for more than 12,000 years. » The large number of artifacts recovered: Several thousand Folsom Man tools have been recovered from the site, including points, scrapers, drills and bone needles, among others. » Some of the earliest signs of human decoration in North America were found at Lindenmeier: Decorated beads were recovered, one the earliest signs of art. CSU archaeology professor Jason LaBelle said that the site contained “the best and earliest decorated beads in North America.” » The large variety of types of animal bones recovered: The site is considered to have served as a slaughterhouse for prehistoric people as evidenced by not only the many thousands of bones found, but the variety of animals. Some of the rarer animal bones recovered belonged to woolly mammoths, giant bison, snow shoe hares, saber tooth cats, short-faced bears and—intruiginingly enough—camels. » While the Folsom Site in New Mexico was the first finding of Folsom points near giant bison bones, the Lindenmeier Site unearthed a Folsom point actually imbedded in a giant bison vertebrate. » The size of the site is larger than most archaeological digs: Smith said, “Most digs are the size of a basketball court. Lindenmeier Site stretches almost a half-mile long.” —Tim Maddocks