A trout fishing paradise lies flooded beneath a Colorado reservoir

One of my favorite stories my grandfather used to tell me took place in the late 1940s and the 1950s. As a young man, he and his buddies would drive from their farmland homes on the windswept prairies of eastern Colorado to the canyon country of the state’s south-central region. They’d stop in Denver for breakfast, and do their best to make it to Fairplay for a potty break. Then, they’d bust it through South Park and stare down the Collegiate Range above Buena Vista.