Fields of Gold
Mile 1,403, U.S. Highway 491
Headed westward past Cortez towards Utah, we expected the terrain to become a pseudo-wasteland dotted with buttes, as we saw coming into Colorado from the Four Corners area. We were instead surprised to see endless, rolling farmland, much of it harvesting wheat, all the way to U.S. Highway 491’s terminus in Monticello, Utah. By the way, the road wasn’t always called 491; until 2003, it was Route 666, an unintentional reference to the devil and source for much superstitious grief and pilferage of signage before the Department of Transportation reassigned the highway with a more unassuming number.