ROCKY MOUNTAIN Rules and Regulations 1920

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION.

The Rocky Mountain National Park includes within its boundaries 397 square miles, or 254,327 acres, of the Front Range of the Rockies in north central Colorado, about 50 miles in a straight line northwest of Denver. It was established by the act of Congress approved January 26, 1915 (38 Stat., 798), and was enlarged by the act of Congress approved February 14, 1917 (39 Stat., 916). Its eastern gateway is the beautiful valley village of Estes Park, from which easy and comfortable access is had up to the noblest heights and into the most picturesque recesses of the mountains. It is by far the most accessible of our national parks—that is, nearest to the large centers of population in the East and Middle West.

LAND OF LOFTY MOUNTAINS.

For many years the Mecca of eastern mountain lovers has been the Rockies. For many years the name has summed European ideas of American mountain grandeur. Yet it was not until recent years that a particular section of the enormous area of the magnificent and diversified scenic range thus designated was chosen as representative of the noblest qualities of the whole by creating it a national park.

And it is splendidly representative. In nobility, in calm dignity, in the sheer glory of stalwart beauty, there is no mountain group to excel the company of snow-capped veterans of all the ages which stands at everlasting parade behind its grim, helmeted captain, Longs Peak.

There is probably no other scenic neighborhood of the first order which combines mountain outlines so bold with a quality of beauty so intimate and refined. Just to live in the valley in the eloquent and ever-changing presence of these carved and tinted peaks is itself satisfaction. But to climb into their embrace, to know them in the intimacy of their bare summits and their flowered, glaciated gorges, is to turn a new unforgettable page in human experience.

This national park is certainly very high up in the air. The summer visitors who live at the base of the great mountains are 8,000 feet, or more than a mile and a half, above the level of the sea; while the mountains themselves rise precipitously nearly a mile, and sometimes more than a mile. Longs Peak, the biggest of them all, rises 14,255 feet above sea level, and most of the other mountains in the Snowy Range, as it is sometimes called, are more than 12,000 feet high; several are nearly as high as Longs Peak.

The valleys on both sides of this range and those which penetrate its recesses are dotted with parklike glades clothed in a profusion of glowing wild flowers and watered with cold streams from the mountain snows and glaciers. Forests of pine and silver-stemmed aspen separate them.

A GENERAL GLANCE.

The range lies, roughly speaking, north and south. The gentler slope is on the west. On the east side the descent from the Continental Divide is precipitous in the extreme. Sheer drops of two or three thousand feet into rock-bound gorges carpeted with snow patches and wild flowers are common. Seen from the east side valleys this range rises in daring relief, craggy in outline, snow spattered, awe inspiring.

In the northeast corner, separated from the Continental Divide by the Fall River Canyon, lies a tumbled majestic mountain mass which includes some of the loftiest peaks and the finest glaciers.

To the south of Longs Peak the country grows even wilder. The range is a succession of superb peaks. The southern park boundary unfortunately cuts arbitrarily through a climatic massing of noble snow-covered summits. The St. Vrain Glaciers, with their surrounding ramparts, a spectacle of grandeur, lie outside the park and, still farther below, the Continental Divide grows in splendor to Arapaho Peak and its glacier.

The west side, gentler in its slopes and less majestic in its mountain massings, is a region of loveliness and wildness diversified by splendid mountains, innumerable streams, and lakes of great charm. Grand Lake, which has railroad connections near by, is the largest and deepest lake in the park. It is the center of a growing cottage and hotel population, and is destined to become a center of much importance upon the completion of the Fall River Road, which will connect the east and west sides across the Continental Divide.

Until the creation of the Rocky Mountain National Park there was little in common between the settlements on the east and on the west sides. The difficult trails over the divide were crossed by few. The projection of the Fall River Road by the State of Colorado sounded the note of common interest. The energetic prosecution of this road and the improvement of trails and the building of new trails by the National Park Service, will work the rapid development of the entire region.

A PRIMER OF GLACIAL GEOLOGY.

One of the remarkable features of the Rocky Mountain National Park is the legibility of the record left by the glaciers during the ages when America was making. The evidences of glacial action, in all their variety, make themselves apparent to even the most casual eye.

In fact, there is scarcely any part of the eastern side where some great moraine does not force itself upon the attention. One enormous moraine built up by ancient parallel glaciers and rising with sloping sides a thousand feet and more above the surrounding valley is so prominent that a village is named for it. From Longs Peak on the east side the Mills Moraine makes a bold curve which instantly draws questions from visitors.

In short, this park itself is a primer of glacial geology whose lessons are so simple, so plain to the eye, that they immediately disclose the key to one of nature's chiefest scenic secrets.

TIMBERLINE.

Just at timberline, where the winter temperature and the fierce icy winds make it impossible for trees to grow tall, the spruces lie flat on the ground like vines; presently they give place to low birches, which, in their turn, give place to small piney growths, and finally to tough straggling grass, hardy mosses, and tiny alpine flowers. Grass grows in sheltered spots even on the highest peaks which is fortunate for the large curve-horned mountain sheep which seek these high, open places to escape their special enemies, the mountain lions.

Even at the highest altitudes gorgeously colored wild flowers grow in glory and profusion in sheltered gorges. In late September large and beautiful columbines are found in the lee of protecting masses of snow banks and glaciers.

Nowhere else is the timberline struggle between the trees and the winds more grotesquely exemplified or its scene more easily accessible to tourists of average climbing ability. The first sight of luxuriant Engelmann spruces creeping closely upon the ground instead of rising a hundred and fifty feet or more straight and true as masts arouses keenest interest. Many trees which defy the winter gales grow bent in half circles. Others, starting straight in shelter of some large rock, bend at right angles where they emerge above the rock. Others which have succeeded in lifting their heads in spite of winds have not succeeded in growing branches in any direction except in the lee of their trunks, and suggest big evergreen dust brushes rather than spruces and firs.

Still others which have fought the winter's gales for years are twisted and gnarled beyond description—like dwarfs and gnomes of an arboreal fairyland. Others yet, growing in thick groups, have found strength in union and form low, stunted groves covered with thick roofs of matted branches bent over by the winds and so intertwined that one can scarcely see daylight overhead—excellent shelter for man or animal overtaken by mountain-top storms.

These familiar sights of timberline are wonderfully picturesque and interesting. They never lose their charm, however often seen.

PAINTED MOUNTAINS.

Above timberline the bare mountain masses rise from one to three thousand feet, often in sheer precipices. Covered with snow in autumn, winter, and spring, and plentifully spattered with snow all summer long, the vast, bare granite masses, from which, in fact, the Rocky Mountains got their name, are beautiful beyond description. They are rosy at sunrise and sunset. During fair and sunny days they show all shades of translucent grays and mauves and blues. In some lights they are almost fairylike in their delicacy. But on stormy days they are cold and dark and forbidding, burying their heads in gloomy clouds from which sometimes they emerge covered with snow.

Often one can see a thunderstorm born on the square granite head of Longs Peak. First, out of the blue sky a slight mist seems to gather. In a few moments, while you watch, it becomes a tiny cloud. This grows with great rapidity. In 5 minutes, perhaps, the mountain top is hidden. Then, out of nothing, apparently, the cloud swells and sweeps over the sky. Sometimes in 15 minutes after the first tiny fleck of mist appears it is raining in the valley and possibly snowing on the mountain. In half an hour more it has cleared.

Standing on the summits of these mountains the climber is often enveloped in these brief-lived clouds. It is an impressive experience to look down upon the top of an ocean of cloud from which the greater peaks emerge at intervals. Sometimes the sun is shining on the observer upon the heights while it is raining in the valleys below. It is startling to see the lightning below you.

ACCESSIBILITY.

One of the striking features of the Rocky Mountain National Park is the easy acccssibility of these mountain tops. One may mount a horse after early breakfast in the valley, ride up Flattop to enjoy one of the great views of the world, and be back for late luncheon. The hardy foot traveler may make better time than the horse on these mountain trails. One may cross the Continental Divide from the hotels of one side to the hotels of the other between early breakfast and late dinner.

In fact, for all-around accessibility there surely is no high mountain resort of the first order that will quite compare with the Rocky Mountain National Park. Three railroads to Denver skirt its sides, and Denver is only 30 hours from Chicago and St. Louis.

This range was once a famous hunting ground for large game. Lord Dunraven, a famous English sportsman, visited it to shoot its deer, bear, and bighorn sheep and acquired large holdings by purchase of homesteadings and squatters' claims, much of which was reduced in the contests that followed. Now that the Government has made it a national park, the protection offered its wild animals will make it in a few years one of the most successful wild-animal refuges in the world.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHEEP.

These lofty rocks are the natural home of the celebrated Rocky Mountain sheep, or bighorn. This animal is much larger than any domestic sheep. It is powerful and wonderfully agile. When fleeing from enemies, these sheep, even the lambs, think nothing of dropping off precipices apparently many hundreds of feet high, breaking the fall at short intervals, of course, upon friendly ledges. They do not land on their curved horns, as many persons declare, but upon their four feet held close together. Landing on some near-by ledge, which breaks their fall, they immediately plunge again downward to another ledge, and so on till they reach good footing in the valley below. They also ascend slopes surprisingly steep.

They are more agile even than the celebrated chamois of the Swiss Alps, and are larger, more powerful, and much handsomer. It is something not to be forgotten to see a flock of a dozen or 20 mountain sheep making their way along the volcanic flow which constitutes Specimen Mountain in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

LONGS PEAK.

The greatest of all these mountains, Longs Peak, has a great square head towering above everything else. It is a real architectural structure like an enormous column of solid rock buttressed up on four sides with long rock ledges. On the east side a precipice of 2,000 feet drops sheer from the summit into the wildest lake that one can possibly imagine. It is called Chasm Lake, and there is only one month in the year when its surface is not, partially at least, frozen. Mount Meeker and Mount Lady Washington inclose it on the south and north, and snow fields edge its waters the year round.

Geologists tell us that these three mountains originally formed a single great peak. Probably then the mountain mass had a rounded summit. It was glacial action that made three mountains out of one. In the hollows just below this summit snow collected and froze. The ice clung to the granite bottom and sides, and when its weight caused it to slip down the slope it plucked and pulled fragments of rock with it. The spaces thus left promptly filled with melting water, froze again, and again plucked and pulled away more rock.

Thus began glaciers which, in the ages following, carved out the great chasm east of the central peak, furrowed and molded the mountain's sides, and eventually divided its summit into the three peaks we see to-day, One of the smaller of these ancient glaciers, now known as the Mills Glacier, though man never saw it, scooped out the chasm and piled up the Mills Moraine, which to-day is so picturesque a scenic feature from the valley.

Longs Peak was first recorded by Lieut. Pike, for whom Pikes Peak was named, in 1806. He named it Great Peak. Members of Col. S. H. Long's party, which explored the mountains to the north, renamed it in honor of Col. Long in 1819. Some of the party visited the mountain, but Col. Long was not among them. In 1864 W. N. Byers made an unsuccessful attempt to climb it. In 1868 Mr. Byers made the first ascent in company with Maj. J. W. Powell (who the year following made the first passage of the Grand Canyon) and W. H. Powell, L. W. Keplinger, Samuel Gorman, N. E. Ferrell, and John C. Sumner.

FLOWER-CARPETED GORGES.

A distinguishing feature of the Rocky Mountain National Park is its profusion of precipice-walled canyons lying between the very feet, so to speak, of the loftiest mountains. Their beauty is romantic to a high degree. Like all the other spectacles of this favored region they are readily accessible from the valley villages by trail, either afoot or on horseback.

Usually several lakes are found, rock embedded, in such a gorge. Ice-cold streams wander from lake to lake, watering wild flower gardens of luxuriance and beauty. However, the entire park is a garden of wild flowers. From early June to late September, even into October, the gorges and the meadows, the slopes, and even the loftier summits, bloom with colors that change with the season. Blues, lilacs, and whites are the earlier prevailing tints; yellow predominates as autumn approaches.

There are few wilder and lovelier spots, for instance, than Loch Vale, 3,000 feet sheer below Taylor Peak. Adjoining it lies Glacier Gorge on the precipitous northern slope of Longs Peak and holding in its embrace a group of lakelets.

These, with lesser gorges cradling romantic Bear Lake, almost inaccessible Dream Lake, beautiful Fern Lake, and exquisite Odessa Lake, and still others yet unnamed, constitute the Wild Gardens of the Rocky Mountain National Park, lying in the angle north of Longs Peak; while in the angle south lies a little-known wilderness of lakes and gorges known as the Wild Basin.

A GLANCE AHEAD.

Although as many as 169,000 persons have, in a single summer, visited the valleys at the foot of these mountains, comparatively few have yet enjoyed their heights and their fastnesses. This is because of the absence of roads and well-developed trails.

When these are provided, this region, because of its accessibility and the favorable living conditions of its surrounding valleys, is destined to become one of the most popular mountain resorts in the world.

VARIOUS DIVERSIONS.

There are few places which offer diversion for so many kinds of people as the Rocky Mountain National Park. One of the valley hotels has golf. Estes Park Golf and Country Club, completed 1918, has an excellent 18-hole golf course and a tennis court; clubhouse, log construction, buffet lunches. Many have tennis and croquet. From all, as centers, there is much motoring, horseback riding, and hiking.

The valley has many miles of admirable road which connects with roads of great attractiveness outside of park neighborhoods. The motorist may skirt the loftiest of snow-splashed mountains for miles, or he may run up the Fall River Road and leave his car to start afoot on mountain-top tramps and picnics. The horseback rider may find an infinite variety of valley roads, trails, and cross-country courses, or he may strike up the mountain trails into the rocky fastnesses. Suitable equipment, including clothing and shoes, for outdoor trips can be purchased from the general stores in Estes Park village.

FISHING.

Excellent fishing may be had in the park. The streams and lakes are stocked each year with eastern brook, native, and rainbow trout, which insures a variety of fish and excellent sport, in either streams or lakes. All of the lower streams and lakes, and many of the lakes in the higher altitudes, are well stocked, thus affording choice to the angler of lake or stream fishing, the latter running from a few feet to 50 feet wide. Fishing tackle can be purchased or rented from either of the five general stores in the village of Estes Park. A game and fish map in the office of the superintendent of the park, also in Estes village, gives the approximate location of the different kinds of fish in streams and lakes, and also the range of the different animals, and visitors are invited to consult it.