High concentrations of UFO activity; strange lights in the night sky; reported concentrations of U.S. military activities; cattle mutilations; black helicopters; top secret research programs; ancient myths and legends; tales of witches and supernatural activities -- these are some of the terms often used to describe this unusual and exceedingly strange region known far and wide as the mysterious valley. It has been the subject of books, essays, newspaper stories, magazine articles, government and private investigations, television documentaries and radio interviews; but still there seems no reasonable explanation as to why the region seems to be alive with unusual, and perhaps un-natural phenomenon.
There is no mistaking you have entered a special region when you drive into Southern Colorado's San Luis Valley, a high desert-like valley ringed on all sides by a series of major mountain ranges. Geographically, the valley begins on its southern end at a point just south of Taos, New Mexico. Here the Jemez Mountains coil into the San Juan range and skirt the western border of the well-defined valley. Just to the east of Taos, the great Sangre de Christo Mountains turn into the lower Rockies and make up the eastern border of the arrowhead-shaped valley. If Taos represents the point of the arrowhead, the northern valley border, or the base of the arrowhead is found near the community of Salida, the beginning point of the Rockies famous 15,000-foot peaks, the heart of the mountains.
The San Luis Valley is one America's highest valleys, averaging over 8,000-feet above sea level. It is the agricultural and cultural Mecca of the southern half of the state, sporting healthy annual crops including potatoes, beans, feed and hay, and a rich Spanish heritage dating back 400 years, when the first Spanish Land Grants were issued in the "New World".
A semi-dry high desert climate is offset by two major geologic factors. For one, the extreme high altitude provides radiative heating and cooling, which produces condensation, or moisture, making the nights chilly even in summer, and results in a light bed of moisture on the ground each morning. Secondly, the valley represents the headwaters of the great Rio Grande River, which travels south nearly 2,000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico.
The surrounding mountain ranges contribute much of this water from melting snow and mountain streams bubbling down the slopes and disappearing under the valley floor.
The region is ancient, a land where dinosaurs once walked and prehistoric man carved out a harsh living in the high climate. The valley is home to another geographic landmark, the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, a geologically strange sand formation trapped by the rising slopes of the Sangre de Christo mountains, rising some 700-feet above the valley floor and providing a massive playground for recreational enthusiasts.
