At least two crashes occurred Saturday as drivers returned to roads as a three-day storm left Montezuma County.
Three vehicles were involved in a crash that left a Jeep rolled over in the center lane of U.S. Highway 160/491 south of Cortez, injuring at least one man and briefly shutting down the highway Saturday morning.
Both lanes of the highway were closed for about 30 minutes beginning about 11 a.m., and traffic was backed up for about a mile between Cortez and the crash.
Colorado State Patrol Trooper Gary Cutler said the crash involved three vehicles, of which two drivers were cited.
A 32-year-old man was driving the Jeep with a 41-year-old passenger, Cutler said, and a 78-year-old man driving another vehicle was cited for driving on a canceled license. A 20-year-old female was driving a third vehicle.
Cutler did not have any additional information on the cause of the crash.
Cortez Fire Protection District Lt. Charlie Borden said the driver and passenger of the Jeep were transported to Southwest Memorial Hospital.
The driver of the Jeep was treated at the scene, placed on a stretcher and taken to Southwest Memorial Hospital about 11:25 a.m. Both lanes of traffic opened at 11:35 a.m.
Borden said a pickup slid off the highway on Friday night in the same area, but was not related to the rollover.
A separate crash occurred at 12:05 p.m. north of Dolores near the intersection of County Road W and County Road 31. The crash involved two vehicles and four people with minor injuries. No one was transported to the hospital.
Another collision Saturday on Colorado Highway 184 outside Mancos sent one driver into a snowbank and the other into a row of roadside mailboxes.
Colorado State Patrol Trooper Loving, who was in an early stage of the investigation, said the two vehicles, a Honda SUV and a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck, collided on the highway near County Road 39 intersection. Although an ambulance reported to the scene of the crash, neither driver was transported to a hospital, Loving said.
The crashes came the day after a storm blanketed the Four Corners area with snow. A winter storm warning expired at 5 p.m. Friday, and sunny, dry weather was forecast for the weekend and through Thursday.
“It is winding down, but there could be lingering snowfall into the afternoon east and northeast of Cortez,” Kris Sanders, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Friday.
sdolan @the-journal.com
