Historic Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park: A History is more than just the story of Rocky Mountain in its brief tenure as a national park. Its scope includes the earliest traces of human activity in the region and outlines the major events of exploration, settlement, and exploitation. Origins of the national park ideas are followed into the recent decades of the Park's overwhelming popularity. It is a story of change, of mountains reflecting the tenor of the times. From being a hunting ground to becoming ranchland, from being a region of resorts to becoming a national park, this small segment of the Rocky Mountains displays a record of human activities that helps explain the present and may guide us toward the future.

Historic photographs paired with contemporary photographs taken from the exact same locations illuminate the evolution that has occurred in the Estes Park area, as well as in Rocky Mountain National Park, over more than a century. From the Stanley Hotel to Lake Estes, see whether the landmarks and landscape of Estes Park have been completely transformed or if they remain almost unchanged.

Following the establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915, promotional campaigns generated by the railroads lured wealthy travelers to the park with images of the great outdoors and the many luxuries offered by the finest hotels. Postcards were circulated proclaiming the park as the "Playground of the World." The gateway communities of Estes Park and Grand Lake became vibrant hospitality centers, and in 1920, when the two towns were connected with the opening of Fall River Road, a new era of tourism was introduced that continues today. More than 200 postcards are used in this book to provide a chronology of the early hotels, ranches, and other settings that have shaped the park's history for more than a century.

Drawing from his years of biological research within and adjacent to the sixth most visited park in the US, and from files and reports of the park's own biologists, Hess presents a strongly worded, well- documented indictment of gross mismanagement. His analysis diverges from Alston Chase's Playing God in Yellowstone in a number of respects; the case he makes is his own, and he presents a proposal for rescue. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Historic Rocky Mountain National Park captures fascinating moments and untold stories in the history of this magnificent national park, from the days when Paleo-Indians roamed between the mountain peaks to the settlement of the valleys by ranchers and hoteliers. Stories of the Ute and Arapaho tribes, the 1859 Gold Rush, the first people to summit 14,259-foot-high Long's Peak, the women who climbed to the top of the Rockies, the fossils revealed by snowfield melt, the advocates who worked to protect this landscape, and more provide just enough history to make your visit to the top of America even more exciting than you anticipated.