Dolores Canyons national monument proposal faces local pushback
Those who love the Dolores River canyonlands agree — the swath of rugged land along Colorado’s western border is one of the state’s last, best wild places. The tract encompasses staggering red rock cliffs, broad valleys and rolling hills that burst into green in the spring. Cutting through it all is the beloved river, which sometimes dwindles to a trickle. Nobody wants to see it overrun with tourists and trash, like so many of the West’s wild places. But disagreements about whether to designate some of the river and its canyonlands as a national monument have driven a caustic rift between the people who love the area. What those protections look like, and who gets to shape them, are at the center of a fiery debate that, in some instances, has sunk to name-calling and declarations of evil doing.