Tour Guides

Duane Vandenbusche, Historian

Dr. Duane Vandenbusche served as a professor of history at Western Colorado University from 1962 through 2021.  He taught on the history of the US West, especially water, public lands, and the environment. His history of Colorado’s Western Slope, A Land Alone, has been the standard text on the region since its publication in 1981. He served as the State Historian for the 2020–21 term. He is the author of 11 books, including: “The Gunnison Country,” “Around Monarch Pass,” and “Lake City”.  

Steve Jenkins, Geologist

Steve retired from Chevron after 37 years looking for oil/gas in the Rocky Mountains and various corners of the world. Gunnison has been “home base” since 1992 when he was stationed overseas for most of the year. He helped to develop a new seismic technique (4D) to peer into the rocks and find oil in Sumatra, Indonesia. His kids Ben and Anna-Marie were born in Indonesia. Later he was stationed in Nigeria, Angola, and finally Kazakhstan where he worked on the development of Chevron’s largest oil field. You could find him building computer models of oil fields and guiding wells to targets miles below the ground. He had the good fortune to escape into the field and conduct geologic studies in the mountains of Italy, Spain, Turkey, the Rockies, and even Texas (Guadalupe Mountains). Following his retirement from Chevron Steve has continued exploring the mountains of Western Colorado.  Steve holds a BA in Geology from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (1979) and an MA in Geophysics from Indiana University, Bloomington (1981). You may know his wife Cindy Jenkins (Klinker). She grew up in Crested Butte and Gunnison, and graduated with a Geology Degree from Western State College.

Accomodations