Colorado141 was built by the United States Atomic Energy Commission as an access route to the mines producing the elements uranium and vanadium, which were used in making nuclear weapons.  These drying ponds along the road near the town of Uravan contain a strange substance which looks like raw foam rubber as it dries.  

Rain clouds close in over the red rock canyons of western Colorado.

At the lower right of this picture, and the upper left of the picture at right, you can see the remains of "hanging flumes", built to carry water to the mines.  The 13-mile flume was four feet deep and five feet four inches wide.  The wooden structure carried over 23 million gallons of water each day to the Montrose-Placier Mining company's gold mines.  

The flume's construction was an dazzling engineering feat for the era.  Unfortunately, the mines weren't that dazzling, the company folded after three years of only minor gold finds.