Los Caminos Antiguos
Colorado Scenic Byway 149 mi in Colorado.
About the Los Caminos Antiguos
The Great Sand Dunes are one of nature's most painstaking creations. Hundreds of feet high and more than a thousand miles from the nearest ocean beach, these drifting dunes accumulated over the eons as winds swept sand against the west face of the Sangre de Cristo Range. That slow, determined process reflects the spirit of the San Luis Valley - an enormous, sun-baked flat between the Sangres, and the San Juan foothills. Life here would not seem to have changed much since the 1600s, when Spain cast its claim over this region. Los Caminos Antiguos takes you to Colorado's oldest surviving community (San Luis, 1851), its oldest parish (Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Conejos), and one of its first military posts (Fort Garland). Drive, explore, take your time- there's plenty of it to spare.
Colorado Department of Transportation's own description, in its words. Byway page on codot.gov.
Designations: BLM Back Country Byway, Colorado State Scenic Byway.
Camping along the byway
- Mile 33 · 0.6 mi offZapata Falls Campground · Bureau of Land Management · 45 sites · reservable
- Mile 123 · on the roadMogote · Forest Service · 43 sites · reservable
- Mile 126 · on the roadAspen Glade (Rio Grande National Forest, CO) · Forest Service · 32 sites · reservable
- Mile 133 · on the roadElk Creek Campground (Rio Grande NF) · Forest Service · 38 sites · reservable
- Mile 145 · 1.7 mi offTrujillo Meadows Campground · Forest Service
Public campgrounds within 5 miles of the road as the crow flies, in order along the byway; each one's page has its facts, season and weather by month.
About this page's facts
The line is the Federal Highway Administration's scenic byways layer (HEPGIS, a snapshot of 2022-06-24, a US government work), cut at the state line and simplified for the map; the length is the line's. The designation is the program's own: the national tiers from FHWA's America's Byways roster, the rest from the layer's designation field. Road conditions, closures and seasonal gates change: check the agency's own page and the state's road conditions before you go.