GRAND JUNCTION • The worst name in the National Park System?

That’s easy.

Colorado National Monument.

When hearing the name, you think of a statue and you think boring and you keep driving. You don’t think of a spectacular series of canyons that rank among the most distinctive and accessible destinations in the West. This is not a monument to honor some historical moment. This is a monument to beauty.

This is the time to drive the 305 miles from Colorado Springs to Colorado National Monument. Sometime in the future our park system will find a more descriptive, alluring name. (I’d go with Colorado Canyons, a name first suggested more than a century ago.) Also probable in the future is this national monument’s transformation to a national park.

A fresh name and promotion will lure crowds to explore this jewel. Trust me on that one. Black Canyon’s attendance doubled after it was promoted from national monument to national park. Remember, Black Canyon is located in a remote section of Colorado between Gunnison and Montrose. Its beauty still attracted 432,818 visitors in 2019.

Colorado National Monument is minutes off I-70. When the word of its exotic wonder gets out, attendance will leap from 2019’s 397,032 to more than a million. This series of canyons will, like the wonders of nearby Moab, be embraced as a national treasure. A monument is seen as a second-tier destination with the top tier reserved for national parks. These canyons belong, no doubt, with the top tier.

Future popularity will drain the fun. Hordes of out-of-state types will arrive as the national park circus begins. Silence will flee, too.

Go soon.

We arrived not long after dawn on a summer morning and for the first hour had the monument virtually to ourselves. It’s best to explore the two-lane Rim Rock Drive in solitude. Traffic jams are, sadly, often part of the national park system experience. I’ve never endured jams at Colorado National Monument, but sitting in traffic will be part of its future.

Colorado National Monument is friendly to those who want to walk very little and also to those who want to take long, lonely, sweaty treks from the rim to the bottom of the canyon.

You can, if in a rush, breeze through the 23-mile Rim Rock Drive in 75 minutes. That’s too fast, but if you’re the type who dislikes savoring and walking, this could be your ideal destination. No other destination in the national park system is more friendly to those who just want to sit in the car for a glorious drive.

The 23-mile Rim Rock Trail was constructed from 1931 to 1950 and remains a marvel of engineering. Much of the work was done by workers from Civilian Conservation Corps, a voluntary social relief program of the 1930s. These men carved the road out of sandstone. It was exhausting, dangerous labor.

You can, if not in a rush, spend a full day, or more, exploring and hiking and biking on 14 trails that range from ½ mile to 14 miles. We enjoyed a leisurely four-hour drive along the rim with hikes to a half-dozen viewpoints.

On the drive, we learned the story of John Otto, who first saw these mountain canyons in 1906 and began a decades-long crusade. At the time, the canyons remained a virtual secret, even in the Rocky Mountain region. Otto changed all that.

“Singlehanded (Otto) has opened this great playground to the world,” the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel proclaimed in 1909.

Otto was obsessed with this exotic spot, so obsessed that his marriage to Boston artist Beatrice Farnham was doomed when they exchanged vows in the canyons. She wanted Otto to sleep at their cozy home. He wanted to sleep in a tent, as he had pre-marriage, among the canyons he so loved. She left Grand Junction a few weeks after their wedding ceremony. She never returned.

“I tried hard to live his way, but I could not do it, I could not live with a man to whom even a cabin was an encumbrance,” Farnham wrote after her return to the East Coast.

Otto returned, fully, to his true love.

“I’m going to stay and build trails and promote this place,” Otto wrote, “because it should be a national park.”

He was and is correct. This monument deserves a promotion.

When the fires subside, go to Colorado National Monument.

Go before Otto’s vision becomes reality.

A view of the canyons — and Grand Junction — from Rim Rock Drive in Colorado National Monument.

David Ramsey, The Gazette

A view of the canyons at Colorado National Monument. (Photo by David Ramsey)

A collared lizard soaks in sunshine in Fruita just outside Colorado National Monument. (Photo by David Ramsey)

A collared lizard soaks in sunshine near Colorado National Monument. (Photo by David Ramsey)