The East Portal Road stretches down the slopes of Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Assigned a grade of 16%, it’s one of the steepest paved roads in the West. Scraped into the hardscrabble cliffs of Black Canyon with picks and shovels some 120 years ago, it supported the tunnel-building town of East Portal at the bottom. Last year’s South Rim Fire at Black Canyon burned across the oak brush habitat above East Portal. Today’s battered landscape reveals some of the original and steeper stretches of the road that once put the grade at 32%. The plants coming back from the fire reveal a tenacity for survival, clinging to canyon slopes that are more vertical than the old East Portal Road.
One of those making a new start, is Prunus virginiana, commonly known as the chokecherry. The people of East Portal harvested the wild cherries for jam, juice, pies and such, as do Utes and other tribal members mashing, them into pemmican. |
