Arikaree River - lowest point in Colorado

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The history, as I know it:

April 13, 2000: One of our local newspapers (the Rocky Mountain News) prints a little feature called "Wacky Questions". Readers who have a question on their mind can submit it to the columnist, who is an expert at tracking down obscure information. In April, someone wanted to know, "Where is the lowest point in Colorado?" Here's that clipping:

April 15, 2000: Because the CDoT map lists the North Fork Republican as the state's lowest point, I knew her answer was wrong. But, before I replied to the columnist with that information, I thought I'd check to see whether the Republican was indeed the low point. I checked all the possibilities, such as the Platte, the South Fork Republican, the Smoky Hill, etc. It didn't take long to find that the Arikaree was even lower at the state line. So I e-mailed a response to the columnist - and I was pleased to find, a few weeks later, that she basically reprinted my letter:

April 28, 2000: Although I didn't find out about this until August 2000, there was a discussion on the internet forum "U.S. and World Highpoints". Roger Rowlett, author of the website "America's Roof" (which also contains info on low points, under "America's Basement"), mentioned that he heard the North Fork Republican was lower than the Arkansas. This prompted an investigation on the part of Fred Anderson, who made the same discovery I did: that the lowest elevation in Colorado is where the Arikaree River crosses the state line.

May 2, 2000: Jack Parsell, author of a book on lowest elevations, responded to the posts above, and came to the same conclusion. Around this time, he also may have contacted USGS about their inaccuracy (see "October 2000", below).

May 15, 2000: The "America's Basement" website becomes the first source to acknowledge the true lowest point in Colorado.

June 8, 2000: Adam Roddy went to find the newly-discovered lowest point in Colorado. Meanwhile, I finished my maps of the area, and was just getting around to posting them on this website. Also, I sent my initial inquiry to the USGS on June 12, but didn't get a response.

August 2000: I finally became aware of the "America's Basement" site and the "U.S. and World Highpoints" forum. I corresponded with Roger Rowlett, and then updated this page by filling in all that has happened since April.

September 2000: Ed Quillen published an article in Colorado Central Magazine about the "new" lowest point in Colorado, citing my website. The October issue of that magazine is archived here - or, if that link is broken, you can view this copy I downloaded to my server.

October 2000: I again contacted USGS about the error, and this time heard back from a couple different people. One was Diane Brittle, who told me that someone else had already contacted them regarding the Arikaree River (see "May 2, 2000", above). Regarding the source of the error: from what I gathered, the people who compiled the list of low points (apparently in the 1980s) used smaller-scale maps (the 1:250K series) rather than the largest scale (1:24K series). After viewing the 1:250 quads, this explanation sounds reasonable to me; click here to see the maps for yourself.

July 24, 2001: I checked the USGS page on this day, and I found it had been updated with the new low point! Well, sort of... they had the county and the elevation correct - but instead of "Arikaree River", it said "Alikaree". I e-mailed a correction and received a reply that it would be fixed.

August 6, 2001: The USGS page was corrected to list "Arikaree River" as the lowest point in Colorado. That same day I contacted all the other sites (of which I was aware) that were posting the inaccuracy about Colorado's low point. The chart below lists all those sites, with links in case you'd like to check whether they've corrected their information. The last time I monitoried these sites was August 29, 2001 - sites listed in red have corrected their information, and are now showing the Arikaree River as Colorado's lowest point.

May 2002: The latest Colorado DoT state highway map (2002/2003 issue) now lists the Arikaree as the state low point. Below is a scan of that part of the map. Note the similarity to my letter to the editor (above); even the misspelling of "Arickaree".

But the river is spelled correctly on the map itself. And hey, at least the "official sources" are getting the info out there...

June 2002: Now we just need to clean up the places that have published the old, erroneous info. And there are a lot. Below is a list of some additional websites I found that were still listing the Arkansas River. I e-mailed each of them the correct info in June. I've provided links to the specific pages, so you can see whether they've been updated:

September 2003: It's hard to kill incorrect info, and once it's on the web it seems to spread exceptionally fast. It's a simple thing for anybody to throw up a webpage, but it's not so common for people to make the effort to keep their sites accurate and up-to-date. And apparently newspaper writers sometimes opt to do a quick web search rather than researching their own archives:

Despite the April 2000 items (see above), this item was in the Rocky Mountain News in September 2003. After reading that, I e-mailed the editor for that page, and the next day a correction was printed:

Interesting thing: I later found out the highest elevation was incorrect as well; Kevin Flynn (another News columnist) informed me that the height of Mt. Elbert was revised to 14,440 in 2002 (and yes, I then updated my own webpage with that info!)

September 2005: up until then, the Wikipedia page "List of US States by Elevation" listed the incorrect Colorado lowpoint, but on the 10th it was corrected, and my webpage was cited as the source.

February 2009: Scott Smith visited the site and took some photos (which you may have already seen on this page).