Geology, Climate, and Natural Forces
Climate
The region receives about 15 inches of rain and 35 inches of snow annually, and averages 248 sunny days per year. The average high temperature in the warmest month of the year, July, is around 87 degrees, and the average low temperature in January is 17.
Fountain Creek
The Fountain Creek Watershed is located along the central front range of Colorado. It is a 927-square mile watershed that drains south into the Arkansas River at Pueblo. The watershed is bordered by the Palmer Divide to the north, Pikes Peak to the west, and a minor divide 20 miles east of Colorado Springs.
The area is characterized by extremes in temperature and precipitation, large elevation changes, steep gradients, diverse ecosystems, and a multitude of water uses. Portions of El Paso, Teller, and Pueblo counties make up the watershed, which encompasses the eight municipalities of Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Fountain, Manitou Springs, Green Mountain Falls, Woodland Park Palmer Lake, and Monument.
A watershed is a region that drains into a river, river system, or other body of water. John Wesley Powell, the 19th century geologist and explorer, described a watershed as: "that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community.”
Teepee Buttes
Teepee Buttes
The Teepee Buttes, as their name suggests, are teepee shaped buttes that are scattered throughout the Hanna Ranch and other nearby properties, and are what gives the Buttes region of Southern Colorado its name.
These cone-shaped carbonate mounds formed around methane springs and vents on the seafloor of a vast ocean that once stretched from the Gulf of Mexico, through the middle of what is now the United States and Canada, all of the way up to the Arctic Ocean.
At the center of each butte is a limestone core partially filled with cemented sand particles, and large "paleocommunities" once surrounded the limestone cores that support them. These paleocommunities consist of bacteria, algae, and mollusks among other lifeforms. These vents are considered to be relatively rare, and the surrounding Pierre Shale deposits contain fossils from this ancient sea that have been the target of numerous paleontological studies.
