Castlewood Canyon State Park

Author's Comments

The first time I drove out to Castlewood, I almost turned around. The plains southeast of Denver do not announce themselves. There is no lift in the road, no sense of approaching anything dramatic, and then the ground simply opens and Cherry Creek is running below you through a canyon you had no idea was there. That is the gift of this place. It is a canyon hidden in plain sight, and the walls tell a long story in stacked color - rhyolite at the base, sedimentary layers above, the whole thing reading like a cross section in a textbook when the morning light hits it sideways. I come early. The canyon faces in a way that the first hour after sunrise puts warm light on the western wall while the floor is still cool and shaded, and the contrast is where the photographs live. The dam ruins are the obvious draw and they earn it. What stands now is a broken arc of concrete and stone, the 1933 failure still legible in the way the structure simply ends midair. I have shot it wide, with the canyon framing it, and I have shot it close, working the texture of the cracked masonry against the green of the creek bottom. Both are worth making. The Inner Canyon Trail is where I spend most of my time. It drops into a microclimate that feels imported from somewhere wetter - ferns, moss, cottonwoods leaning over the water - and in late spring it is genuinely lush in a way that surprises people who think of the Front Range as dry. Bring a polarizer. The creek reflections need it. And bring time. This is not a place that gives itself up in a quick loop.

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