ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK 



727 



sides by the towering peaks of the Rockies. There are 

 very few towns or villages in the United States that are 

 so beautifully situated as is Estes Park, but here I must 

 take issue with the author of that Department publica- 

 tion who calls the town " beautiful." The site is wonder- 

 ful, and if one is inclined to place credit where it is due, he 

 must say that God made a masterpiece of this beautiful 

 valley ; but in so far as I was personally able to ascertain 

 through a stay of some length at Estes Park, there was 

 nothing in the village 

 that had been done by 

 man that did not scream 

 its impropriety. How- 

 ever, the assault upon 

 the eyes made by the 

 inartistic cottages and 

 houses of Estes Park is 

 short-lived, for no one 

 who has ever breathed 

 deeply of the ail"- of 

 mountain peaks can 

 long withstand the call 

 of the ridges that sur- 

 round the village, and 

 the excellent Stanley 

 Hotel is really worth 

 while. 



There is a bit of 

 road running from the 

 village up the Fall 

 River to one of the 

 western entrances. In 

 1914 a small bit of this 

 road had been graded 

 into the Park and now 

 there are within the 

 Park perhaps as much 

 as eight or nine miles 

 of wagon road, two or 

 three of which, horrors of extravagance, have been built 

 by the Federal Government. If, therefore, the tourist 

 expects to see anything of the Rocky Mountain National 

 Park from an automobile, he is doomed to the bitterest 

 of disappointments, but if he will ride or walk, the most 

 beautiful part of the Park can be visited without staying 

 away from the hotel over night. 



There is a trail running from Iceberg Lake, in the 

 northern portion of the Park, along a plateau that main- 

 tains, for six or seven miles, an almost constant elevation 

 of twelve thousand feet. From this ridge the crest of 

 the Continental Divide is silhouetted against the western 

 sky across a great canyon half a mile in depth. This 

 wonderful plateau enjoys the distinctive and descriptive 

 name of Trail Ridge, it probably having been assumed by 

 the namers that no other ridge ever carried a trail upon 

 its undulating bosom. Speaking of names, the Rocky 

 Mountain National Park offers much food for thought. 

 There are Blue Lake, Black Lake, The Loch, Green Lake 

 and possibly, if one had time to carefully study the map, 



Photograph by Wiswall Brothers, Denver. 



PORTION OF ROAD BUILT BY CONVICT LABOR 



The Government has built but a small bit of road in the National Park, in fact it has built 

 practically none of the road exclusively with Federal funds, but has used what meager appro- 

 priations could be secured from. the State of Colorado, and, with the aid of convict labor, has 

 built a few miles of very excellent road. The picture here shown is a portion of the Fall 

 River road which was built by Colorado convict labor according to the excellent survey of 

 the State Highway Commission. 



Red, Purple and Yellow Lakes might be found. These 

 names stand out rather distinctively against such names 

 as Ouzel Lake, Fern Lake and Shelf Lake, whose names 

 seem to indicate something of the character they possess. 

 Of course, the list of names in the Park, as usual, em- 

 braces a list of office holders in the Federal Government 

 and local celebrities, who feared they might die with no 

 other evidence of their having existed than their names 

 upon a government contour map. 



The most interest- 

 i n g and picturesque 

 part of the entire 

 Park is the area em- 

 bra c i n g about fifty 

 square miles centered 

 around Long's Peak. 

 Here the Continental 

 Divide, which rises 

 more gradually from 

 the western boundary 

 of the Park, drops off 

 precipitously, leaving 

 great glaciated cirques, 

 vertical cliffs and tre- 

 mendously deep can- 

 yons which, from a dis- 

 tance, seem to defy ex- 

 ploration. Odessa 

 Lake, on Fern Creek, 

 is an exquisite gem of 

 green and blue, which 

 seems to be almost sur- 

 rounded by the jagged 

 crests of the Continen- 

 tal Divide and its spurs. 

 Further south, clinging 

 fairly closely to the 

 base of the eastern 

 slope of the Divide, are 

 Bear Lake, The Loch, Mills and many other beautiful 

 sheets of water cupped in the hollow of granite walls. 



There is a stretch of territory to the east of the Divide, 

 and snuggling up close beneath its towering crest, which 

 seems to be the place in this portion of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains where nature concentrated in an effort to run the 

 entire gamut of her repertoire of scenic wonders. This 

 area begins at a point almost due west of the village of 

 Estes Park, and runs south about seven miles. In it 

 there are almost every form of scenic wonders with the 

 exception of such phenomena as are to be encountered 

 in Yellowstone National Park. The area is dotted with 

 lakes and meadows traversed by innumerable streams, 

 covered with beautiful forests and boasts of an occasional 

 glacier thrown in here and there for good measure. In 

 a small area, consisting of not more than one township, 

 there are somewhere in the neighborhood of forty lakes, 

 if one is willing to apply the name " lake " to some small 

 sheets of water not more than one hundred yards in 

 diameter. In this same area are the Andrews Glacier and 



