Highway of Legends
Lathrop State Park, CO

Huerfano County is the home of Colorado's oldest state park at Lathrop, just west of Walsenburg. The park has two lakes, Horse-shoe and Martin, and offers a look at the vegetation and animal life typical of a high plains grassland. The Visitors Center's walls are covered with murals, painted by Paul Busch, depicting the history of the area from the days of the Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellers to the coal strikes of the early 1900s.

From almost anywhere in the Park, the view of the Spanish Peaks is spectacular. Indian legends say that at the beginning of time, a Paradise on earth existed at the foot of Wahatoya, where no man suffered pain or cold or was even unhappy. This blissful state continued until the "invasion from the north"; then the gods of Huajatolla became angry and made it like other parts of the world. Later the Rain Gods took possession of the Great Mountains, and made clouds and dispatched them over all the world. The Indians believed that "Huajatolla are the Breasts of the World, and all living things derive their sustenance from them. Without the clouds there is no rain, and when no rain falls we have no food - we must perish all."