Paint Mines — Hoodoos & Painted Clay of the Eastern Plains

Forty-five minutes east of Colorado Springs, past the last of the foothills and out onto the wide shortgrass prairie of El Paso County, the land drops without warning into a hidden maze of clay badlands: the Paint Mines. Water and wind have cut the buried sediments into spires, gullies, and delicate white hoodoos capped with harder stone, and the exposed clay glows in bands of ochre, rust, lavender, and pink — colors that shift with the light and give the place its name. Ute and earlier peoples quarried this clay and knapped the outcropping selenite and quartzite here for more than 9,000 years, one of the longest records of human presence on the Colorado plains. This is a single, focused day of walking: the gentle prairie approach, the descent into the hoodoo-lined washes, and the slow return through the badlands as the afternoon sun deepens the clay. It is day-use only, with no water, no shade, and no facilities on the trail — the prairie sun is relentless and the beauty is entirely earned on foot.