Where did all these people come from? Walnut Hills in the Anthropocene

Hominids, human-like apes, appeared on the Earth about 15 to 20 million years ago in what was, by this time, Africa pretty much as the continent appears today. This model has them evolving, along with other great apes, from gibbons. By 300,000 years ago, they had formed into anatomically modern humans, relatively hairless, typically upright walking bipeds. The switch from hunter-gatherer societies to sedentary lifestyles, what we call "civilization", happened around 30,000 years ago in southwest Asia. About 6000 years ago, city-states developed, primarily in the river valleys of Asia and Africa, and with cities came writing, recorded history, and various technical disciplines like mathematics.

Did homo sapiens (scientific name for humans) appear in different places on Earth. Hints reappear from time to time that they might have but, fossils being what they are-rare and elusive- evidence is not conclusive.

From all that we know, humans are a very new addition to the Americas. Humans were established in North and South America by 12,000 to 14,000 years ago and may have crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia to the area now occupied by Alaska as early as 26,000 to 19,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum. Again, fossils are rare and hard to interpret because they have to be preserved by very special processes. Hunter gatherer societies did not leave abundant traces like later, more sedentary colonies. When humanity began constructing permanent dwellings and tools, human history shifted from paleontology to archaeology. Instead of looking for bones, we began reading the artifacts left behind.

Lamb Springs, south of Lake Chatfield, has produced the remains of mammoths killed by humans dated at 14,140 to 12,140 years ago, so they were in the area before that time. The earliest natives seemed to stick to the plains but later humans were established in both the plains and the mountains. 

By 1700 AD, both the Ute and Apache tribes were settled in this area. The Ute were primarily in the mountains while the Apache were mainly a plains tribe. The. Comanche entered the area in the early 1700s and banded with the Ute to drive the Apache south of the Arkansas River, then, in the 1820s, the Arapahoe and Cheyenne moved in and pushed the Comanche south.

The first settlers of European ancestry in the area were gold prospectors from Georgia. In fact, the early settlement that became Denver was named Auraria after the Georgia town of the same name. Gold prospectors entered the area on the way to California after the Sutter's Mill strike and found some gold in the South Platte River and it's tributaries. Towns like Montana City and Petersburg sprang up but the gold wasn't as forthcoming as the prospectors expected. Still, people settled in to farm the land in places like Arvada and what is now West Denver.

If you spend much time in Denver, you'll eventually encounter the name "Little Raven". That was the name of a Southern Arapahoe chief who established peaceful relations with the first European settlers to enter the area.

The Pike's Peak gold rush commenced in 1859 bringing thousands of settlers into the Colorado territory. In 1862, engineer Richard Sullivan Little brought his wife Angeline and built the Rough and Ready flour mill, establishing the town of Littleton in 1867, which was incorporated in 1890. Both Littleton and Little Dry Creek are named after the Little family.

Centennial is a recent addition of Arapahoe County. It was established February 7, 2001.  Walnut Hills was incorporated much earlier in 1965.

Big history is the history of everything. We are the outcome of everything that has gone before us. Carl Sagan said that, "we're made of star stuff," and he meant that literally. Everything is.

Everything has a big history... your town, yourself. I had a genetic trace done several years ago. My ancestors originated in Africa (like every other hominids on Earth) and left with a handful of others, probably during a time of drought). It's rather miraculous that they survived to exit the continent. Their descendants traversed the passes of the Caucasian mountains and entered Europe about 45,000 years ago, likely following migrations of large game animals like bison. My ancestors obviously included Neanderthal...most hominids today are sapiens hybrids. 

During the last of the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, my people were in the Balkans, as soon as they could, migrating north. We were in southern France about 15,000 years ago, following the retreat of glaciers, finally settling in the region around the Rhine River.

We were dispersed when the Burgundians took over the region during the One Hundred Year war(s) and returned to our homeland after Germanic regions were returned to earlier inhabitants. We were originally Sahns, but took the name VanZandt from the Burgundians who left the Xanten area.

We were present in upstate New York during the Revolutionary War and later migrated to the Midwest, Oklahoma and Texas, and from there to North Carolina and Georgia, where my mother and father was born.

I came (briefly) from southern Florida before my family returned to our homeland in south Georgia, but my father followed jobs to central Georgia and Alabama. Leaving our home in the mill village of Valley, Alabama, I entered the university at Auburn, Alabama and, after twenty years of college and working through college, I began my career in Selma, Alabama as a vocational rehabilitation specialist. Now I have retired to the Denver, Colorado area, and that is my big history.

What's yours?

How deep is my valley?

Sounds like one of those period dramas, doesn't it?

Of course, I'm still just going on about the Little Dry Creek valley a couple of blocks over from my house.

I've mentioned that the mountain streams in the Rockies are very different than the ones I knew as a child back east. Little Dry Creek, on the other hand, looks very familiar, but all streams have their own personalities. 

On the last walk down the hill, I took some side trips from the main road that parallels the creek, Arapahoe Road, down to the creek to get an idea of the cross sections. You remember that I took one elevation profile down Uinta Street a couple of blogs ago. I supplemented that with three others starting near the rim of the South Platte River valley and stopping at the western end of Walnut Hills, Quebec Street.

Little Dry Creek Park is near the head of the valley where the creek emerges from a culvert under Yosemite Street. On the other side is just storm drainage channels.

Here the creek cuts a shallow channel surrounded by a wide plain. In about 250 feet, there's only a rise of about 10 feet to the surrounding residences. I figure that the plain was carved by the creek because the rise up to the residences have been reinforced by stone to prevent further erosion in that direction.

The headwaters of Little Dry Creek is just building up energy and volume here. There's enough flow to have cut a shallow notch but it looks like it has meandered in the recent past. I doubt if there has been a lot of flooding. The flow has been erratic as shown by water level readings over the last year.

I was in the area in 2020 and 2021 and the maximum flow of 5 cubic feet per second was not enough to flood the creek's banks.

Much of the variance is due to snow melt and occasional spring rains. This data is from the area west of Walnut Hills where the creek passes under Arapahoe Road.

As the creek builds up energy and volume, it cuts a deeper valley with less meandering.

At Uinta Street, the valley drops into the hilly section behind Walnut Hills Elementary School. 

The elevation difference between the top of the hill to the bottom, at Spruce Street, is about 70 feet. The ridge passes through Walnut Hills. It's very visible on Arapahoe.

I would think that it's older than the creek...maybe a bump in the Dawson formation that appears as outcrops northeast and south of Walnut Hills. Regardless, the creek has cut deeply through the ridge. The whole length of the creek has erosion prevention features like small weir dams and boulders that have been moved into the stream bed so the back cutting has been slowed considerably.

I like trying to visualize what different places might have looked like before buildings were there. I wonder if there was a Cascade here.

At the bottom of this grade, Spruce Street crosses the creek.

The creek begins to meander again and there's a wider plain. They're also deeper banks. 

In 0.2 mile, the walk down from Arapahoe only descends about 40 feet. 

The creek begins cutting some fairly deep banks, some about six feet, close to my last stop, Quebec Street at the western boundary of Walnut Hills. These show some nice soil profiles, so I should be coming back later.

Here the valley is broad and the gradient into it is gradual. Over 0.2 miles, the descent is only about 30 feet. On the other side of Quebec, the valley begins deepening again, as shown in the photograph above shot through a fence. (The Little Dry Creek Trail pulls away from the creek for a ways to follow sidewalks around a residential area.)

I have only been looking at the creek valley in Walnut Hills neighborhood. The valley actually extends further on the other side of Arapahoe Road. The rim peaks about a half mile from the creek at Fiddler's Green. Little Dry Creek has slowed down considerably due to erosion controls installed with the residences of Walnut Hill, but it has evidently been much more active in the past 

Now, a few words about the AllTrails app. It's a great tool for measuring distances and elevations but it's not terribly intuitive, so let me give you a few tips. My version is 14.3.1 of AllTrails Pro and I use it on an Android phone version 8.0.0.

Use the Navigate command (the middle button on the toolbar at the bottom of the AllTrails window) to get to the tools. Choose "Start without a route" and choose an activity. Hiking or walking is good. Then just press the start button. When you reach your destination, press and hold Pause and the app will ask you if you are finished. Press Finish. It will ask you how your trip was. On my Android, the app has frozen at this point but, if you close the app and restart it, you will find your data saved in History. Later versions may fix this glitch and it may not happen on other operating systems.

Nevertheless, AllTrails is an excellent app to measure the shape of your landscape. There is a free version. The Pro version isn't expensive and provides more reporting features.

Before begining a study outside, it helps to get a lay of the land. What does your neighborhood look like? What does it contain - rocks, plants, animals, attractions, hazards, streams, hills... outcroppings,