From
out on the eastern plains of Colorado, I can pick out
the snowy summit of Longs Peak, more than one hundred
miles away. I’ve fantasized about the cool, green
land the peak heralds many times while driving across
the seemingly endless, hot, parched, and bronzed plains
of eastern Colorado. The highest summit within today’s
Rocky Mountain National Park, Longs Peak is named for
Major Stephen Long, who in 1820 mapped what was then
the unknown western reaches of United States territory.
Like me, Long was tantalized by the promise of its chill
heights, as he trudged across the dusty plains, which
he characterized as the “Great American Desert.”
Though he never did get very close to the mountain that
now bears his name, Long was the first white explorer
to draw attention to these mountains, which today are
visited by three million people annually.
Centuries
before the area around Longs Peak was given park status,
it was the province of Native Americans. Paleo-Indians
hunted bison in the highlands after the retreat of ice
age glaciers more than 100,000 years ago. By the 1700s
and early 1800s, Ute and Arapaho Indians were traversing
the ridges in what is today’s park, en route to
hunting grounds on the plains and in large, open mountain
valleys, such as Middle and North Parks, where they
stalked bison, elk, and deer. Indeed, at least five
major Indian trails cross Rocky Mountain National Park,
with Trail Ridge, now a paved highway, among the best
known.
After
Long’s passage, a few other itinerant trappers
and frontiersmen passed through the region, but it was
Joel Estes who laid claim to being the area’s
first permanent white settler. He homesteaded his namesake
valley, Estes Park, in 1860 and spent seventeen years
trying to run cattle in the high country. However, when
he realized the high, open valley (or Park) might produce
more dollars as a vacation destination than as a cattle
ranch, he converted one of his cabins into a guest facility
and launched the first tourist venture in what would
become Rocky Mountain National Park.
—From
“The Rooftop of America” by George Wuerthner
ROCKY MOUNTAIN
The
Rooftop of America
George Wuerthner
64 pages. 8.5”x7.375”
ISBN 0-939365-43-X
$7.95 
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