Early Inhabitants |
During the Ice Age when massive glaciers
were grinding the landscape, shaping the meadows and peaks,
Rocky was an inhospitable land. It was not until some 11,000
years ago that humans began venturing into these valleys and
mountains. |
Native Peoples |
Spearheads broken in the fury of a mammoth's
charge and scrapers discarded along a nomad's trail tell us
little about the area's early native peoples. We do know that
even though it was never their year-round home, the green
valleys, tundra meadows, and crystal lakes became favored
summer hunting grounds for the Ute tribe. In setting up their
camps, they made use of the straight and slender lodgepole
pine as tepee poles. Until the late 1700s, the Utes controlled
the mountain territories. |
Tepee rings and other signs of summer camps
were still evident by the time the first settlers arrived,
but few vestiges of those times remain today, other than the
large river boulders that Native Americans carried to the
top of Oldman Mountain, a site of their ceremonial vision
quests. |
Early Explorers and Settlers |
The U.S. government acquired the park's original
358.5 square miles in the huge Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
French trappers and the Spanish explorers before them seem
to have skirted the current park boundaries in their wilderness
forays. Even Major Stephen H. Long and his expedition forces
avoided these rugged barricades in 1820. Long was never closer
than 40 miles to the peak named for him. |
Published in 1843, Scenes in the Rocky
Mountains described the explorations of Rufus Sage from
Connecticut. It was the first account of Rocky's wonders to
reach unbelieving easterners. Sage spent four years roaming
the Rockies, basing his explorations from Fort Lupton, north
of present-day Denver. For a month, Sage hunted deer in the
area now known as Estes Park. |
The first settler in the area was Joel Estes,
a Kentuckian with wandering ways. Scouting for game one fall,
he and his son climbed a high promontory that gave them a
view of a breathtakingly beautiful valley. In 1860, Estes
moved his family into a new home in the area now known as
Estes Park. |
Winters proved too harsh for cattle, so
six years later the Estes family sold out for a yoke of oxen.
The Estes cabin was soon converted into guest accommodations,
and from 1867 on the number of visitors to this area grew steadily.
|
A Mountain Mecca |
The Rockies continued to attract the adventurous,
including the great explorer John Wesley Powell, who conquered
the summit of Longs Peak in 1868. Just five years later, Anna
Dickinson became the first woman to succeed in the climb.
|
Isabella Bird, an Englishwoman whose extensive
travels and writings earned her the first female membership
in the Royal Geographic Society, visited Estes Park in the
fall of 1873. She fell in love with the area and, incidentally,
with Jim Nugent, a well-educated mountain man whose violent
death is shrouded in mystery. Bird's book, A Lady's Life
in the Rocky Mountains, attracted many people to the
area, as did Frederick Chapin's Mountaineering in Colorado.
So while much of the West was attracting homesteaders, the
Rockies were also establishing themselves as a tourist mecca.
|
About that time, an English earl, Lord Dunraven,
arrived and laid questionable claim to 15,000 acres as his
private game preserve. He also built the fine Estes Park Hotel.
|
By 1874, a stage line ran between Estes Park
and Longmont by way of North Saint Vrain Canyon. |
Miners and Homesteaders |
Because large veins of silver and gold had
been discovered in other areas of the Rockies, miners considered
the area a land of opportunity and came in droves during Colorado's
gold rush of the late 1870s. Lulu City, in what is now the
northwest part of the park, in 1880 was a booming mining town
with a raucous reputation. Three years later, it was nearly
deserted because the region's mineral riches were far less
than dreamed. It cost the area dearly. |
When the miners and first settlers arrived,
there seemed no end to the supply of game. Bear, deer, wolves,
and elk were abundant. To feed the boom town demand, commercial
hunters went to work. A single hunter could deliver a weekly
supply of three tons of assorted big-game meat. |
The rousing boom times yielded to an industrious
homesteading period. Ranchers and farmers felt that the real
wealth of the Rockies lay in its water. They fought over rights
to it (finally running the greedy Earl of Dunraven out of
town) and built ambitious canal systems to transfer water
from the wetter western slopes to the drier eastern plains.
The Grand Ditch in the Never Summer Range in the park intercepted
the stream source of the Colorado River and diverted it for
use for cattle and crops. Though homesteading proved no more
profitable than mining in this land, another new enterprise
showed promise. Dude ranches began attracting city dwellers
in quest of an original adventure. |
Protecting the Rockies |
In 1903, F. O. Stanley, inventor of the Stanley
Steamer automobile, came to Estes Park for his health. Impressed
by the beauty of the valley and grateful for the improvement
in his health, he decided to invest his money and his future
there. In 1909, he opened the elegant Stanley Hotel, a classic
hostelry exemplifying the golden age of touring. |
Largely due to Stanley's efforts, the Estes
Park Protective and Improvement Association was established
to protect local wildflowers and wildlife and to improve roads
and trails. "Those who pull flowers up by the roots will be
condemned by all worthy people, and also by the Estes Park
Protective and Improvement Association," they warned. It was
the start of a conservation ethic that has become increasingly
important and complex. |
National Park Status |
Even more important to the future of the
area was Enos Mills, who came to the Longs Peak area in 1884
when he was 14 years old. A dedicated naturalist, he wrote
eloquent books about the area's natural history. Not long
after his arrival, Mills bought the Longs Peak Inn and began
conducting local nature trips. |
In 1909, Mills first proposed that the area
become the nation's tenth national park to preserve the wildlands
from inappropriate use. It was his vision that you would arrive
here years later to experience the wonderful Rocky Mountain
wilderness he knew. "In years to come when I am asleep beneath
the pines, thousands of families will find rest and hope in
this park," he proclaimed. |
Unleashing his diverse talents and inexhaustible
energy, he spent several years lecturing across the nation,
writing thousands of letters and articles, and lobbying Congress
to create a new park that would stretch from the Wyoming border
south to Pikes Peak, covering more than 1,000 square miles.
Most civic leaders supported the idea, as did the Denver Chamber
of Commerce and the Colorado Mountain Club. In general, mining,
logging, and agricultural interests opposed it. The compromise
drafted by James G. Rogers, the first president of the Colorado
Mountain Club, was the establishment of a smaller park (358.3
square miles). On January 26, 1915, under President Woodrow
Wilson, it was declared Rocky Mountain National Park. |
The park has since grown to more than 415
square miles. In 1990, it gained an additional 465 acres when
Congress approved expansion of the park to include the area
known as Lily Lake. The National Park Service, the Conservation
Fund, and some diligent legislators successfully halted land
development in this area adjacent to the park's boundary.
It now is an important buffer zone that helps protect the
migratory routes of wildlife in the park. |
Today, the park stands as a legacy to those
pioneers who looked beyond its harvestable resources to its
more lasting values. |
