Tarantula Tourism Has Put La Junta on the Map

There’s a market for everything, tarantula tourism included. These creepy crawlers have become a sort of destination mascot for La Junta, a small town set about three hours southeast of Denver. From September 27 to 28, it will host its third annual Tarantula Fest in celebration of the spiders’ mating season, which is often mislabeled as a migration.

But through early November, groups of males do travel up to twenty miles to find their mates, scurrying across the Comanche National Grassland just south of La Junta. This 440,000-acre expanse is the fourth-largest grassland in the country and, being mostly undeveloped, it is a prime habitat for Colorado brown tarantulas.
However, don’t expect to see something out of an arachnophobic’s nightmare. Even during September’s peak season, spotting just a few of these titillated tarantulas requires some local insight. Fortunately, Visit La Junta director of tourism Pamela Denahy has a few tips for first-timers.

“Look for the tarantula hawks — spider-hunting wasps that prey on tarantulas,” she says. These blue-bodied, orange-winged insects are hard to miss, being one of the United States’ largest wasp species. Denahy affirms that if you see one, “That is a pretty good indication that a tarantula is nearby.”
She also recommends keeping an eye out for females’ burrows, which are draped in webbing for protection, and exploring an hour before dusk. Knowing where to go within the Comanche National Grassland is helpful, too.

“It's a large landscape, but we have identified some of the best places to see the tarantulas,” comments Denahy. Visit La Junta lists several on its website and most appear on its recommended tarantula safari.

From La Junta, searchers should first head to the Sierra Vista Interpretive Site, which features a 3.7-mile section of the iconic Santa Fe Trail. Walk along covered-wagon ruts while scanning the landscape and turn around at Timpas, one of the many ghost towns in Colorado.

Then, drive east on County Road North and south on County Road 25 to several points of interest, including a late 1800s cemetery, the ruins of Dolores Mission and the largest continuous dinosaur trackway in the world.

From there, visitors should make their way east on Forest Service Road 2200. Detour at Vogel Canyon, a recreation area with hiking trails and centuries-old rock art, before continuing north on Highway 109 back to La Junta.
This experience almost guarantees tarantula sightings through September. But witnessing them is one thing — understanding their significance is another. Denahy says that while the La Junta Tarantula Fest has plenty of fun entertainment planned, like a tarantula-inspired parade, hairy leg contest and eight-legged races, education is a big piece of its programming.

On Friday, September 27, from 1 to 3 p.m., arachnid researchers Dr. Paula Cushing and Dr. Cara Shillington will host a tarantula talk at Otero College, located at 20 Pinion Street in La Junta. Later that day, at 4 p.m., a public tour bus will depart from 302 Colorado Avenue, taking passengers on a guided version of the tarantula safari.

“Guides on the buses [share] history about the area and researchers out on the grassland give education about the tarantulas while you're out on the tours,” explains Denahy. “It's a high likelihood that you will be able to spot a tarantula,” she says, adding that previous groups have seen a minimum of twenty each.

Of course, like on any outdoor adventure, it’s important to follow Leave No Trace principles and keep wildlife wild. Tarantula venom is not poisonous to humans, but Visit La Junta urges recreators not to come into direct contact with the spiders. Take photos from a distance, respect private property, do not stop your vehicle in undesignated areas and avoid wearing white and tan. It’s hunting season and you wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a pronghorn.

Denahy concludes with one final tip: “I encourage people, when they're out looking for the tarantulas, to look up and appreciate the beauty of our landscape. It's quite breathtaking.”