“In his search for the routes used by the West’s early travelers, archaeologist Jack Pfertsh has become a detective of detritus. Today he’s on the hunt for old tin cans and fragments of purple and green glass. The mid-November sun is sinking as we walk the windswept land just north of Delta, Colo. Brown grasses like broom bristles throw long, sharp shadows across the rolling plateau. Pfertsh points out a slight matting and thinning of the vegetation — a faint path running south, its edges lined with chunks of volcanic rock. ‘Once you know what you are looking for,’ he says, ‘you start seeing these old roads everywhere, cutting across the land.’ The 49-year-old Pfertsh is tall and lean and wears a newsboy cap and black T-shirt. He gestures with quick hand-chops, the overlapping tribal-style tattoos on his arms adding a tinge of color to the landscape’s sea of beige. He’s spent most of the last two years seeking out faint patterns on the land for Montrose-based Alpine Archaeology. The ones he’s showing me today happen to be remnants of one of the West’s earliest, most important and least documented road systems: the Old Spanish Trail.”

The Old Spanish Trail passes through Green River, Utah! Read the rest of the article here.