Eccentrics, dreamers and seekers flock to Crestone, Colo.

For thousands of years the high, arid San Luis Valley has spawned tales of the strange and the fantastic.

Native Americans called it the Bloodless Valley, setting aside their weapons as they made vision quests up sacred Blanca Peak, the great sentinel of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains whose bony spine winds dramatically from southern Colorado to Santa Fe, N.M.

Later inhabitants noted a peculiar energy attributed to a combination of wind, 8,000-foot altitude and an enormous aquifer beneath the highest high desert outside of Tibet. Some went further, claiming hidden UFO bases and mysterious portals where aliens enter and exit our world. All the while, the largest alpine valley on Earth became a magnet for eccentrics, dreamers and seekers.