This document concerns the prehistory of the Northern Colorado Basin. Its purpose is to provide a brief culture history framework, present and evaluate models of prehistoric behaviors, and provide direction for future archaeological investigations.

Uncompahgre Country tells the stories of the towns and the people of the area drained by the Uncompahgre River and its adjacent lands -- a vast area that includes 14,000 foot peaks, thick evergreen forests, fertile irrigated valleys and desert wastelands. Uncompahgre Country is available individually or as part of a boxed trilogy which includes The Utes: A Forgotten People (the original inhabitants of Western Colorado) and Sunset Slope (twenty-two-true tales of early Western Colorado).

"The country in which I grew up-the rugged areas of southwestern Colorado-was changing rapidly in the 1930s. I sensed that something unique in the nation's experience was ending, and I tried to capture a segment of the passing on paper-the breakup of the great cattle ranches and mines and the last efforts of the old-timers to hang on in the face of declining profits and increasing mechanization they themselves could not afford."-David Lavender