The San Luis Valley is a landscape speckled in a diverse cultural richness, that dates back over 11,000 years. As you crest one of the four major road passages into the San Luis Valley, your eyes lay sight on the majestic open skies, it is as if you traveled back in time. The 8,000 square foot alpine desert valley, is tucked away where the southwestern culture of New Mexico tangles together with the western frontier culture of south-central Colorado. Los Caminos Antiguos Scenic and Historic Byway will take you through the Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area; an experience that will immerse you in vast, untouched natural beauty and inspiring narratives of native tribes, explorers, frontiersmen, buffalo soldiers, ranchers, miners, and railroad boomers. Where today you can sand board down the tallest dunes in North America at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, have room to breathe, lay under a blanket of infinite stars in one of the nation’s darkest places, and drift through the history between quaint towns of generations past in the back of beyond. This is where Colorado began and where the old west spirit of honesty, adventure, and small town hospitality is still very much alive.