Pawnee Pioneer Trails

Length: 128 miles
Driving time: 3 hours

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.

Pawnee Pioneer Trails Photo Tour