1,400 military vehicles to convoy through Las Animas County this week

Commuters headed toward Trinidad, ranch traffic along eastern Colorado 94 and freight haulers on U.S. 350 faced a moving bottleneck this week as about 1,400 military vehicles left Fort Carson for the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in Las Animas County.

Fort Carson warned drivers to keep their distance, not pass or merge into the convoys and to be patient while the vehicles were on the road. Some of the vehicles were routed east on Colorado 94 and south on Colorado 71, while others traveled south on Interstate 25 and east on U.S. 350, putting slow-moving military traffic on the same roads used by local commuters, school trips and commercial drivers.

The practical effect was most likely to be felt where traffic narrows and passing opportunities disappear. That meant extra time for anyone driving between Trinidad and the eastern plains, along ranch routes feeding into the county’s road network, or on hauls that rely on clean access to the interstate and the state highways leading deeper into southeastern Colorado.

The convoy also underscored how central Piñon Canyon remains to the region’s transportation picture. Fort Carson says the site was purchased in September 1983 and sits about 150 miles southeast of the post. The Army describes the maneuver site as a 235,000-acre to 237,000-acre training area with six small-arms ranges, used for large force-on-force maneuver training that draws big movements of vehicles onto highways far outside the post itself.

That scale has long carried a local tradeoff. The Army’s historical research says the site did not exist before 1983 and that the land includes prehistoric rock art, Native American sacred sites and pioneer-era ranches. State historic-preservation officials have clashed with Fort Carson over those places, saying the Army’s negotiating posture amounted to an “unjustified threat.”

The convoy advisory landed in the middle of a broader month-long exercise called Ivy Mass, which Fort Carson and KRDO said began May 1 and was expected to bring noise and dust at both Fort Carson and Piñon Canyon. For Las Animas County, the immediate issue was slower travel on familiar roads. The larger reality is that the county remains part of a military training corridor whose movement patterns can reach straight into daily life.