General Information

The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is located in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado, 35 miles west of Colorado Springs. Made famous by its fossil deposits, visitors to the Monument will find a temperate montane community dominated by ponderosa pine, fir, spruce, and aspen, and an underlying geology that reveals dramatically different environments of the past. Volcanic and sedimentary deposits filled with a rich collection of fossils tell a story of mountain building, volcanic turmoil, and changes in climate. Since geologists started flocking to the area in the late 1800s, more than 1,500 species have been identified, making it one of the most diverse fossil assemblages in the world. Most have been dated to 34 million years before the present, and so the deposits provide a remarkably detailed glimpse into the ecosystem that characterized the Florissant Valley at that time.

Recognizing the unique nature of the Florissant region and fearing development around the fossil deposits, the US government gave the site National Monument status in 1969. In the petition to legislators at that time, the importance of the fossil collection to geology, paleobiology, and evolution was likened to the importance of the Rosetta Stone to Egyptology. The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is now a sanctuary for the fossils remaining in situ and plays host to around 60,000 visitors annually, providing 15 miles of hiking trails along which visitors can appreciate how the contemporary environment contrasts with that of the past.

This website is designed to characterize trails within the Monument based on the diversity of present-day vegetation communities, the diversity of geologic formations directly underfoot, and general descriptors such as their length and elevation profile. The goal is to provide spatially-explicit information to prospective visitors so they can choose hikes best suited to their interests. To do this, we have utilized spatial data from the National Park Service as well as a tool called Geographic Information Systems, which is commonly refered to as GIS. For more details on our analytical techniques, we invite you to visit the GIS Concepts section of our webpage. Otherwise, you can peruse through the other sections to find specific information on the types of vegetation communities and geologic formations within the Monument, as well as spatially-explicit guides to each of the 8 trails. This project was made possible by the skills we acquired in Dr. Melinda Laituri's GIS class in the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University.