11,800 Foot Stone Wall — Built for Hunting

At 12,000 feet on Colorado's Continental Divide, archaeologists mapped over a mile of stone walls and 52 hunting blinds—structures built to channel bighorn sheep into kill zones. Radiocarbon dating shows the system was used for 5,800 years, from 3800 BC through the 1850s. Here's what the evidence shows about one of North America's most sophisticated high-altitude hunting complexes.

Key Evidence:

Elevation: 12,000 feet (3,658 meters)
Wall length: 2,085 meters (1.3 miles)
Dating: 3800 BC – AD 1850
Feature count: 52 hunting blinds
Target species: Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis)

The site (5BL148) sits at Rollins Pass on the Continental Divide in Colorado's Front Range. The low stone walls functioned as "drift fences," guiding animals uphill toward intercept points where hunters waited in circular blinds. Excavations recovered projectile points, scrapers, and a glass trade bead from the 1800s, proving continuous use across millennia.
The cultural identity of the Early Archaic builders remains unclear, though later use is associated with Ute and Arapaho groups. Modern wildlife biologists have noted that game trails still follow the ancient alignments—the trap, in a sense, still works.

Primary Sources:

Meyer, K. A. (2019). Absolute and Relative Chronology of a Complex Alpine Game Drive Site (5BL148), Rollins Pass, Colorado. Colorado State University.
Benedict, J. B. (1996). The Game Drives of Rocky Mountain National Park. Center for Mountain Archaeology.
LaBelle, J. M., & Pelton, S. R. (2013). Communal Hunting Along the Continental Divide in Northern Colorado. Quaternary International.

Related Topics:

High-altitude archaeology
North American game drives
Bighorn sheep hunting strategies
Mountain Tradition cultures
Lichenometry dating methods

0:00 Intro — 12,000 Feet
0:31 The Anomaly — 52 Hunting Blinds
1:01 Why Build It Here?
1:09 The Site — 5BL148
1:29 The Mechanics — Drift Fences
1:54 Target Species — Bighorn Sheep
2:23 The Evidence — Tools & Artifacts
2:54 Continuity — The Glass Bead
3:12 Caloric Investment
3:50 What We Know — 5,800 Years
4:17 Cultural Identity — Mountain Tradition
4:47 Scale of the Hunts
5:16 The System Remains
5:51 Closing Thoughts
5:59 Outro

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