ghost horses

colorado's

west slope

Colorado’s Western Slope is an incredibly diverse region of the American West found between the Denver Front Range west over the Rocky Mountains, past the Continental Divide, to the red sandstone of the Utah state line. 

The 22-county West Slope region contains thirty-eight percent of Colorado’s landmass, yet just 10 percent of the state’s population lives here. About 70 percent of the state’s water is located on the Western Slope flowing from the mountains west towards the Pacific Ocean via the Colorado River. 

People here come from all backgrounds and live in diverse regions from the high prairies to the sprawling mesas to the hollows and nooks of the towering San Juan Mountains towards the four-corners region.

Natives and newcomers, pioneers and planners call the Western Slope home. Generations have put down roots as farmers, ranchers, or while involved with the extraction industries that generated a “boom” now and then with gold, silver, and coal. To those who still work the soil, to those who travel overland to places somewhere else. The roads passing through West Slope are lined with the ghosts that still linger here.

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Ghost Horses is a personal collection of pictures from my rural Colorado home on the West Slope. These pictures are a tribute and a celebration to the inhabitants and places who make up the fabric of life in the wide open space of Western Colorado.