In the morning, we drove the car on a paved but very steep road (grades up to 32%) to the bottom of the canyon at East Portal, the site of a once-busy town of about 200 people that served the construction workers building the Gunnison Tunnel, an incredible project that diverted river water to the farming area of Uncompahdre Valley to the west. This was a massive and courageous undertaking at the turn of the century (1905-09) and a visit to East Portal will confirm the difficulties the engineers and construction workers faced to tunnel through six miles of rock. Today, this is an excellent site for picnics, fishing, and feeling in touch with history.
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