INTRODUCTION 



I. PHYSIOGRAPHY 



Boulder, Colorado, lies nestling close to the Rocky Moun- 

 tains just north of the 4Oth parallel. There the foot- 

 hills are strikingly beautiful and high, and only twenty miles 

 away Arapahoe Peak, clasping to its bosom the best glacier 

 of the southern Rockies, gleams whitely in full view, while 

 twenty- four miles to the northwest towers jaggedly Long's 

 Peak, 14,271 ft. high, the highest point in Boulder County, and 

 one of the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Away to 

 the eastward the plain stretches unbrokenly, save for an oc- 

 casional butte, till lost to vision. There is then room for a 

 great diversity of vegetation, ranging from the semi-desert 

 plants of the arid plains to the arctic plants that grow at the 

 wasting edge of the perpetual snow. 



The Continental Divide, which, due west of Boulder, 

 touches its easternmost point in North America, is only from 

 twenty to twenty- four miles away. It rises as a vast snow- 

 covered wall of rock to an average height of from 11,000 to 

 12,000 feet; the highest points in the Divide in this region 

 are Long's Peak, 14,271 ft., Mt. Audubon, 13,173 ft., Mt. 

 Baldy, 11,470 ft., Arapahoe Peak, 13,520 ft., and James' 

 Peak, 13,283 ft. Due west of Boulder Arapahoe Pass 

 crosses the Divide at an altitude of 12,000 feet. It 

 will be seen, therefore, that there is an almost impassable 

 barrier between the vegetation of the Pacific slope and that of 



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