#rangely

Cañon Pintado National Historic District, CO (No. 1)

The land is what makes the town of Rangely's history interesting. The land is the base from which all human events unfold, whether it is the geology that brought the miners and oil men, or the water that brought the Fremonts, the Utes, the explorers, the ranchers.

To tell the story we must start back in the earlier history of the earth when a shallow sea encompassed most of the area around Rangely, 300 million years ago in what is labeled as the Pennsylvania  and Permian geologic periods. During this time marine creatures would become fossils and can actually still be discovered around Rangely. Huge dunes were formed on the edges of this sea and became porous rock that is now known as the Weber formation. This formed what is called an "anticline." Anticline is a ridge-shaped fold of stratified rock in which the strata slope downward from the crest. Then, as the sea receded, dinosaurs left bones and the extensive plant growth became oil and coal.

The innumerable canyons, draws, and gullies of the area held creeks, rivers and streams which attracted the early Fremont and Ute peoples. The Fremont people migrated to the Rangely area from the Great Basin in south-central Utah between 400 B.C. - 650 A.D. What we know about the Fremont comes from the artifacts they left in the area and from their homes and campsites which we find in the nearby canyons. Evidence of the Fremont people is plentiful in and around Rangely; for example, the rock art on Colorado 139 and Dragon Trail are both examples of Fremont Art. A Fremont dwelling in Texas Creek Overlook was an atypical dwelling for the Fremont people.

In many places around Rangely the art echoes images from other sites in the southwest. The art of the historical Utes records their history of conflict with the white settlers who began moving into the area in the 1800s. Their art is also the first to include horses originally brought by the Spanish.

The first recorded white settlers making a permanent home in the area were Mr. Joseph Studer and C.P. Hill who came in 1882, the same year the Ute people were to be confined to reservations in southern Colorado and eastern Utah. Some time later Mr. Hill was joined by his relatives, among them a cousin, Lee S. Chase, who named the town after Rangeley, Maine. Mr. Hill began ranching and opened a trading post. All supplies were freighted—first from Salt Lake City, Utah, by team and wagon, then from Grand Junction, Colorado, via Douglas Pass. By 1913 there were enough ranching and farming families in the area to necessitate the building of a large one-room school house (now located in the Rangely Outdoor Museum).