Mesa Creek Trail-Curecanti

The Mesa Creek Trail is a 1.5 mile round trip along the Gunnison River in the Curecanti National Recreation Area, east of Montrose in southwest Colorado. This trail is at the historic Cimarron area near the toe of the Morrow Point Dam and is at the upper end of the 6 mile long Crystal Reservoir.

The road to the trailhead follows the grade of the railroad bed that followed the Cimarron River to a junction with the Gunnison River in the Black Canyon. A preserved trestle normally shows the historic Engine 278, but in 2012 the engine has been removed for renovation. If I’m reading the map correctly, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad exited the Black Canyon here at Cimarron and continued west to Montrose.

The trail descends from an overlook point, crosses a footbridge and continues west on the north side. The Mesa Creek flows into the Gunnison River from the north side and there is a small footbridge across the creek.

This is an easy trail to access the bottom of the Black Canyon and view the steep deep canyon walls that were such an obstacle to early settlers. These rocks are very old, more than 1 billion years.

Looking back upstream, there are views of the Morrow Point Dam. It is also possible to walk closer along a sidewalk from the parking area. The Morrow Point Lake behind the dam is 11 miles long and relatively narrow, but 450 feet deep.

At the river junction, the turbidity of the Cimarron River flows separately for a while with the clearer Gunnison River. My hike on the Mesa Creek Trail took 1:00 hour on a late May morning. 

There is also the short walk toward the dam and the railroad displays to view in this area. The Morrow Point Dam was completed in 1968 and is the middle of the three dams in the Curecanti area. It was the first thin-arch double curvature concrete dam built in the United States.

 It is 469 feet high and holds 117,190 acre feet of water in an area of 817 acres at a water elevation of 7160 feet. The power plant has two turbine driven generators with a total capacity of 173 megawatts after an upgrade in 1992 from 120 megawatts.