[2] State Highway 141 runs inside Unaweep Canyon between Whitewater and Gateway, one segment of the Colorado-designated Unaweep/Tabeguache Scenic Byway.

In the late 19th century, members of the Hayden Survey recognized the oddity of a canyon with two outlets, and suggested it was carved by the ancestral Colorado or Gunnison river.

Several have suggested that Plio-Pleistocene uplift caused diversion of the (Colorado and/or Gunnison) river(s) and abandonment of the canyon.

However, another hypothesis holds that the ancestral Gunnison River did not carve the canyon, but exhumed a pre-existing paleocanyon.

[11] This core proved the existence of a thick (>300 m) sediment fill in the canyon, an idea first proposed in the 1970s on the basis of a geophysical study.