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The Dolores River Canyon runs deep through Southwest Colorado. Carved by the river north of the McPhee Dam, it holds sacred sites of the Ute tribe, joins with the San Miguel below the Hanging Flume in the Colorado Mineral Belt, and travels north below soaring red rock mesas on to Gateway.

Scott Braden, Director of the Colorado Wildlands Project, says “it’s an area that Coloradans have worked tirelessly for over fifty years to try to conserve.”

Over the last decade — longer, even — interested parties have come together to hash out and propose a national conservation area, says Braden. “And that process is what led to the NCA legislation introduced by Senator Bennett and Senator Hickenlooper for the Southern portion of this reach.”

An NCA requires passage by Congress. Despite grassroots support from a broad coalition in Southwest Colorado, Congress hasn’t acted on the Dolores Proposal. Meanwhile, Braden says, the NCA effort and its protections don’t cover the entire river. 

“Unfortunately in Mesa and Montrose Counties, [the NCA process] has failed, has broken down,” he says. As such, “there are currently no protections pending for those lands.”

About a year and half ago, a consortium of conservation groups known as the Protect the Dolores Coalition decided they should pursue further efforts, “and so,” says Braden, “we started to put together a proposal for a national monument as a complement to a national conservation area.” 

A monument works differently from an NCA: it doesn’t require passage by Congress. Instead it is signed into existence by the President’s pen. There are over 130 national monuments across the country, and they are quite diverse: some set up as major recreation and tourist attractions, others are secluded and little known. But, says Mason Osgood, Director of the Telluride-based conservation group Sheep Mountain Alliance, in general “national monuments are really great because they bring the management of the landscape under one office.”

Advocates claim that creating a single, protected area from an alphabet soup of federal lands will allow for more intentional planning when it comes to future recreation, development, and mining decisions. 

In their efforts to attract President Biden’s attention, the Dolores Coalition has circulated a petition, garnering over a hundred thousand signatures from folks across Colorado and the country. Braden says much of that support begins on the local level:

“We have hundreds of signatures in support from Mesa County Residents. We have dozens and dozens of Mesa County businesses and organizations in support of a Dolores River National Monument. “

And, their movement has traction. This spring, former Grand Junction City Mayor and current Councilmember Anna Stout delivered the petition to Washington DC to attract the attention of lawmakers; it worked. In late April US Senator John Hickenlooper visited the region to learn more about the proposal. 

But claims of grassroots local support hardly reflect the reality. In the remote towns along the banks of the Dolores, T-Shirts and yard signs vowing to “Halt the Dolores Monument” are ubiquitous. 

Aimee Tooker, is a business owner and community organizer in Nucla, CO. Speaking outside her bed & breakfast on Main Street, Tooker says conservation groups turned to the National Monument after the breakdown of the NCA process. Those groups are trying to bypass local input, she says. 

“They didn’t wanna talk to the stakeholders anymore. They didn’t get what they want, they didn’t get their way [with the NCA]. And so this is one way to do it is, [by saying] ‘we’ll just go around everybody and all the stakeholders and all the ag users and the ranchers and the miners and just do it this way.’”

Tooker claims, “99% of people in this community are against the National Monument.”

It’s true, at forums and public meetings, opposition from West End residents has been nearly unanimous. But there are those who see opportunity in the effort. Natalie Binder owns CampV, a hotel and hipcamp refurbished from the Main Street of the old Vanadium mining town. 

“As a business that is directly related to the recreation we of course stand to benefit,” says Binder. But she also recognizes the West End community has been through tremendous change and struggle in recent decades, often due to economic forces out of its control. 

“With the loss of the Uranium Mine in the eighties, and then the loss of the coal-fired power plant, think about it: you lose, approximately, 70 percent of your tax base. That’s a big change and a big transition for a community to go through,” Binder says. “It’s hard for other groups who aren’t living that reality, or aren’t in this community on a daily basis, to really understand how the loss of those industries have really impacted a lot of families and a lot of community members here.”

So far, conservation groups and those opposing a monument have struggled to bridge that divide. Things have often been contentious.  

“My community is pretty emotional about not having any say in this, what’s being done to us,” says Tooker. “I’m just about sick to death of these groups coming in and, and trying to slam our faces into the dirt.”

The Coalition says even while it hopes to preserve some 400,000 acres inside a Dolores Monument, its proposal will respect area ranching and mining rights. Additionally, Osgood says, nothing is settled.  

“It’s really early in the process,” he says, “and so these conversations are just beginning. I continually try to foster a place where we can find common ground in whatever that may be.”
Outside Nucla, the Dolores reaches its confluence with the San Miguel River before heading north to the Utah state line. It is calm, it’s waters wide and flat, moving slowly through deep canyon walls. It is early summer in the desert, and the growth is bright green along the river’s banks.  

While the fate of a Monument may lie in Washington with the decision of President Biden’s pen, the conversations discussing the future of this community and its landscape continue to play out here, along the river’s course.