Making Rocky Mountain National Park

On September 4, 1915, hundreds of people gathered in Estes Park, Colorado, to celebrate the creation of Rocky Mountain National Park. This new nature preserve held the promise of peace, solitude, and rapture that many city dwellers craved. As Jerry Frank demonstrates, however, the park is much more than a lovely place. Rocky Mountain National Park was a keystone in broader efforts to create the National Park Service, and its history tells us a great deal about Colorado, tourism, and ecology in the American West. To Frank, the tensions between tourism and ecology have played out across a natural stage that is anything but passive. At nearly every turn the National Park Service found itself face-to-face with an environment that was difficult to anticipate—and impossible to control. Frank first takes readers back to the late nineteenth century, when Colorado boosters—already touting the Rocky Mountains’ restorative power for lung patients—set out to attract more tourists and generate revenue for the state. He then describes how an ecological perspective came to Rocky in fits and starts, offering a new way of imagining the park that did not sit comfortably with an entrenched management paradigm devoted to visitor recreation and comfort. Frank examines a wide range of popular activities including driving, hiking, skiing, fishing, and wildlife viewing to consider how they have impacted the park’s flora and fauna, often leaving widespread transformation in their wake. He subjects the decisions of park officials to close but evenhanded scrutiny, showing how in their zeal to return the park to what they understood as its natural state, they have tinkered with its features—sometimes with less than desirable results. Today’s Rocky Mountain National Park serves both competing visions, maintaining accessible roads and vistas for the convenience of tourists while guarding its backcountry to preserve ecological values. As the park prepares to celebrate its centennial, Frank’s book advances our understanding of its past while also providing an important touchstone for addressing its problems in the present and future.

Relive your visit to Rocky Mountain National Park, one of America's most loved national parks with this beautiful photo book by professional photographer Erik Stensland. Memories of Rocky Mountain National Park is filled with stunning photos showing the park as it transitions through the year with flower filled meadows, golden aspen trees and snow covered peaks. It is an ideal way to remember your visit. This book is designed to celebrate the beauty of the national park with 80 full color photos in an attractive and affordable package that you will want to prominently display on your coffee table. Each page sings with natural beauty and calls you back to the wilderness. It's a great way to hold you over until your next visit.

Are you planning a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park? Do you want to take stunning photos of this incredible landscape? Then you will want this book written by a professional photographer who has spent the last 15 years exploring and photographing Rocky.

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.

Best Hikes Rocky Mountain National Park features the best hiking throughout Rocky Mountain National Park. Detailed maps and trail descriptions make navigating these wonderful trails easy, from family-friendly strolls to popular vistas to hillier wooded pathways. FalconGuides have set the standard for outdoor guidebooks for more than thirty-five years. Written by top experts, each guide invites you to experience the adventure and beauty of the outdoors. Look inside to find: Hikes suited to every ability Mile-by-mile directional cues Difficulty ratings, trail contacts, fees/permits, and best hiking seasons An index of hikes by category—from easy day hikes to waterfalls Invaluable trip-planning information, including local lodging and campgrounds Full-color photos throughout GPS coordinates

A local authors uncovers the real Boulder, from the high mountains and sparkling streams of Rocky Mountain National Park to the historic buildings, shops, galleries, and more.

Ecology and Wonder celebrates Western Canada's breathtaking landscape. The book makes several remarkable claims. The greatest cultural achievement in the mountain region of western Canada may be what has been preserved, not what has been developed. Protecting the spine of the Rocky Mountains will preserve crucial ecological functions. Because the process of ecosystem diminshment and species loss has been slowed, an ecological thermostat has been kept alive. This may well be an important defence against future impacts of climate change in the Canadian West.