Fort Garland, CO.

Shooting in Fort Garland, Colorado!

Yes, there’s really parts of an old US Army fort here…

I arrived in Fort Garland, Colorado last night, driving through two lightning storms along the way, in a soft top Jeep, was not my idea of fun. I went to Lu’s Main Street Cafe which was pretty good, I’m sitting there again as I write this! I just finished shooting the Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center, which was a great experience. It contains five buildings of the original Fort Garland, a US Army fort built in 1858. It was established to protect settlers in the territory of New Mexico. The fort had a short life as the US Army abandoned the fort in 1883. Interestingly, it’s commander from May 1866 to November 1867 was none other than Kit Carson who was famous as a mountain man, trapper, guide, and by this point an Army officer. Not only did Carson reside in the Commander’s Quarters, but he lived there with his wife and children. A pretty cool piece of history that I didn’t know about till this morning! After the Army closed the fort in 1883, it fell in to disrepair until a local citizen took it upon himself to restore and get the old fort designate as a Colorado historic site. The Colorado Historical Society purchased the fort in 1945, restored it, and opened it as a museum to the public with five of the original 22 buildings restored! Those buildings, with the parade ground and its restored original 1858 flagpole at the center of the compound are a perfect day trip!

However, the morning started off with an early morning visit to Great Sand Dunes National Park. I had hoped to shoot the sunrise but there wasn’t one. Well, there was a sunrise as there is every day, the park was clouded in. These dunes are the tallest in North America coming in at approximately 750 feet high and cover about 30 square miles! Because the temperature on the dunes can reach 140 degrees in the summer, I brought plenty of hot weather gear. But… the warmest it got was 57 degrees by the time I left. These dunes are so massive that the photos just didn’t do them justice so I had to include people for scale. Sometimes the human eye/brain needs people in a photo tOverall, even though Mother Nature didn’t cooperate, I think I may have still gotten some good shots.

Tomorrow I’m heading out early to shoot the little town of San Luis, Colorado, the states oldest town (establish April 5, 1851). After that I’m off to do some shooting in Taos, New Mexico, and finally spending the rest of the day/night in Santa Rossa, New Mexico on the old Route 66! I plan to shoot the old hotels and buildings, some still in use and some abandoned, on the old road in Santa Rosa and Tucumcari, New Mexico. Then a few more things to shoot on Saturday and home that evening. It’s been a pretty cool trip! Below are iPhone 13 mini shots, all except the shot of me are unedited (that was edited on the iPhone).

iPhone 13 Photos