Located between the mountain ranges and the mesas and plateaus of Colorado's Western Slope, the Battlement Mesa and Parachute area was once a seasonal campground of the Ute Indians and later attracted settlers seeking a milder climate for ranching and farming. Beginning in the mid-to-late 1800s, the region shifted from agriculture to mineral extraction, aided by railroad and later automobile links to both coasts, while ranching, fruit growing, and other settlement continued at places such as Battlement Mesa, Morrisania Mesa, and along Parachute Creek. The area's history includes early recorded European visitors in 1776, the arrival of sheepman J.B. Hurlburt in the 1880s after advice from Luther Sage "Yellowstone" Kelly, the growth of cattle and sheep ranches and orchards, and the region's long reliance on mineral resources including oil, oil shale, natural gas, soda ash, and uranium, which brought repeated boom-and-bust cycles. In the 1980s, oil shale development on the Roan Plateau led Exxon to build Battlement Mesa as a planned company town, but the 1982 collapse of the Colony Oil Shale project left the nearly completed community to be remade into a large homeowners association development of about 5,000 residents. The region also includes historic sites such as the 1897 Battlement School and the McKay-Wasson House, preserves the memory of the 1904 Wild Bunch train robbery west of Parachute, and remains known for its mountains, forest reserve lands, wildlife, recreation, and outdoor scenery.