Grand Turk is a 13,167-foot-elevation (4,013-meter) mountain summit in San Juan County, Colorado, United States. It is located three miles (4.8 km) southwest of the community of Silverton, on land managed by San Juan National Forest. Grand Turk is eight miles (13 km) west of the Continental Divide in the San Juan Mountains which are a subrange of the Rocky Mountains. Grand Turk is visible from viewpoints along Highway 550. Precipitation runoff from the mountain drains into tributaries of the Animas River. Topographic relief is significant as the summit rises nearly 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) above the river in 1.75 mile (2.82 km). Neighbors include Bear Mountain, 2.25 miles (3.62 km) to the northwest, and line parentSultan Mountain, 0.67 mile (1.08 km) to the north-northwest. The mountain's toponym has been officially adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names, and has been recorded in publications since at least 1901.
Grand Turk (left), Sultan Mountain (center), and Bear Mountain (right) viewed from northeast.
Climate
According to the Köppen climate classification system, Grand Turk is located in an alpine subarctic climate zone with long, cold, snowy winters, and cool to warm summers. Due to its altitude, it receives precipitation all year, as snow in winter, and as thunderstorms in summer, with a dry period in late spring.
Historic 1874 image of Grand Turk seen from Sultan Mountain
^Frederick Leslie Ransome (1901), A Report on the Economic Geology of the Silverton Quadrangle, Colorado, US Government Printing Office, p. 31.
^Henry Gannett, United States Geological Survey (1906), A Gazetteer of Colorado, US Government Printing Office, p. 79.
^Peel, M. C.; Finlayson, B. L.; McMahon, T. A. (2007). "Updated world map of the Köppen−Geiger climate classification". Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 11. ISSN1027-5606.
