Pawnee Pioneer Trails
Colorado Scenic Byway 140 mi in Colorado.
About the Pawnee Pioneer Trails
This byway traverses the rugged Colorado Piedmont, a wide-open region anchored by the towering Pawnee Buttes. The landscape provides refuge for coyotes, prairie dogs, rattlesnakes, pronghorn antelope, and hundreds of bird species.
Travelers can imagine how the shortgrass prairie appeared to Native Americans many centuries ago, and to the frontiersmen, cattle ranchers, and homesteaders who followed. Nineteenth-century settlers endured the hardships of wind, drought, and isolation; railroad towns sprang up, flourished, and declined. The communities that remain are as tough and resilient as the land they occupy, hardy symbols of America's pioneering spirit.
Colorado Department of Transportation's own description, in its words. Byway page on codot.gov.
Camping along the byway
- on the roadCrow Valley · Forest Service · 15 sites · reservable
- on the roadSteward J. Adams Education Site · Forest Service
Public campgrounds within 5 miles of the road as the crow flies, nearest the road first (this stretch is in several separate pieces); 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.