Big Timbers is a wooded riparian area in Colorado along both banks of the Arkansas River that is famous as a campsite for native American tribes and travelers on the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail. The Spanish knew this area as "La Casa de Palo" or the House of Wood.[1] At its greatest extent, Big Timbers may have stretched from the mouth of the Purgatoire to the present-day Kansas-Colorado border, a distance of 60 miles.[1]