Curecanti Needle

Curecanti Needle,
Curecanti National Recreation Area (National Park Service)
The Curecanti Needle photographed ca. 1884.
Highest point
Elevation	7,739 ft (2,359 m)
Prominence	700 ft (210 m)
Coordinates	38°26′56″N 107°24′51″W / 38.44889°N 107.41417°W / 38.44889; -107.41417Coordinates: 38°26′56″N 107°24′51″W / 38.44889°N 107.41417°W / 38.44889; -107.41417
Geography
Location	Morrow Point Reservoir, Gunnison River, Gunnison County, Colorado, US
Topo map	Curecanti Needle MRC: 38107D4 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Topo Series:7.5´ Map Scale:1:24,000

The Curecanti Needle is a 700-ft granite spire located on the Gunnison River in western Colorado. A notable landmark to generations of natives and pioneers, the Needle is located on the southern bank of Morrow Point Reservoir, an impoundment of the Gunnison river between Gunnison and Montrose, Colorado. Used for many years as a advertising symbol for the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, whose narrow-gauge railway famously ran along the northern bank of the river and passed near the Needle, the spire is today part of the Curecanti National Recreation Area, a National Park Service facility that encompasses three impoundments of the Gunnison river, including Morrow Point Reservoir.

The Needle is located in the upper reaches of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, along a portion of the Gunnison river impounded in 1965. On the south bank of the reservoir, the spire is immediately west of the mouth of Blue Creek and directly across the river from the mouth of Curecanti Creek, approximately 3.4 miles west of Blue Mesa Dam. The area south of the Needle is traversed by the section of U.S. Highway 50 between Gunnison and Montrose.

Though the upper Gunnison River area was known to generations of trappers, traders, and explorers, it was the development of the Denver & Rio Grande Western railroad in the 1880’s that first brought the Needle to larger public attention. Famously balked by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in their attempt to build a main line into New Mexico through the Raton Pass, the Denver & Rio Grande Western instead began to expand into central Colorado, building a line west along the valley of the Arkansas River, through the Royal Gorge and into the San Juan Valley. Eager to extend this line to a junction with the Rio Grande and Western, then building east from Utah, the D&RGW continued west from Salida, across Marshall Pass, and into Gunnison, which it reached in August of 1886.