History of Rocky Mountain Park

Early Inhabitants

During the Ice Age, massive glaciers ground the landscape, shaping the meadows and peaks, and making the present-day park area an inhospitable land. It was not until some 11,000 years ago that humans began venturing into its valleys and mountains.

Native Peoples

We know that even though the area was never the year-round home of early native peoples, the green valleys, tundra meadows and crystal lakes became favored summer hunting grounds for one particular group, 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. It was the Arapaho, venturing west from the Great Plains in search of bigger game, that drove the Utes beyond the Continental Divide. They were the area's first "tourists," for they left no trace of permanent settlements.

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, with the exception of the large river boulders that Ameri-can Indians carried to the top of Old- Man Mountain, the site of their ceremonial vision quests.

Early Explorers and Settlers

The U.S. government acquired the park's original 358.5 square miles as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. But French trappers, and the Spanish explorers that preceded 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 describ-ed the explorations of Rufus Sage from Connecticut. It was the first account of the area's wonders to reach unbelieving Easterners. Sage spent four years roaming the Rockies, and for a month, he hunted deer in the area now known as Estes Park.

The first settler in the area was Joel Estes, a Kentuckian with wanderlust. In 1860, Estes moved into a hunting cabin. At the time, his family stayed with him. It is said that his wife, Patsy, swept the cabin's floor with the wings of eagles. 

Winters proved too harsh for cattle, so, six years later, Estes sold out for a yoke of oxen. The Estes cabin was -converted into guest accommodations in 1867, and from then on, the number of visitors to this area grew steadily.

The west side of the Rockies was also attractive to settlers. In 1865, Grand Lake's first permanent white resident, "Judge" Joseph Wescott, came to Hot Sulphur Springs seeking the benefits of the waters. By 1877, he was Grand Lake's first postmaster. The Proctor family, friends of Wescott, arrived that same year and spent their summers on the lake until 1885. The Proctor's home, like many early settlers' homes, was not built to withstand the winters, which slowed the population of the area.

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 English-woman and the first female member of the Royal Geographic Society, visited Estes Park in the fall of 1873. 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. While much of the West was attracting homesteaders, the Rockies were establishing themselves as a tourist Mecca.

During that time, an Irish earl, Lord Dunraven, arrived and laid question-able claim to 15,000 acres as his private game preserve. He also built the fine Estes Park Hotel, locally known as the English 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. They headed here in droves in the late 1870s during Colorado's gold rush. In 1879, Lulu City was founded in what is now the northwest part of the park. It became a booming mining town with a raucous reputation. Four years later, it was nearly deserted because the region's mineral riches were far less than what had been dreamt.

When the miners and first settlers arrived, the supply of game seemed endless. Bear, deer, wolves and elk were abundant. To feed the boomtown demand, com-mercial hunters went to work. A single hunter could deliver a weekly supply of three tons of assorted big-game meat. By 1900, large game was almost gone from the east side of the park.

The rousing boom times yielded to an industrious home-steading period. Grand Lake became the supply and equipment depot for the boomtowns, and for a time, it was the county seat.

Ranch-ers 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 out of Estes Park) 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 sources of the Colorado River and diverted them for use in cattle ranching and crops. Unfortunately, homesteading proved no more profitable than mining.

A new enterprise—dude ranches— showed promise. Hotel de Hardscrabble, or Camp Wheeler, was one of the more successful ventures of the day. Built at the foot of Milner Pass, the cabin and tent resort housed guests who came on horseback and by wagon over rutty roads from Grand Lake or by an Indian trail from Estes Park. The ranch was known for its excellent meals of wild game and the hunting and fishing opportunities nearby.

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 Pro-tective and Improvement Association was established to protect local wildflowers and wildlife as well as to improve roads and trails. 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 10th national park to preserve the wildlands from inappropriate use. 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 Com-merce 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 estab-lishment 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 416 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 Conserva-tion Fund and some diligent legislators successfully halted land development in this area adjacent to the park's boundary. It is now 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.