234 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



THE PROPOSED ESTES NATIONAL PARK 



By Enos a. Mills. 



Estes Park, Colorado, and its scenic surroundings has 

 been named as a place well worthy of being perpetuated 

 as a national playground and is before the public as the 

 proposed Estes National Park and Game Preserve. The 

 scenery of this splendid hanging wild garden, its climate, 

 accessibility, and the perishable nature of many of its 

 attractions, all tell that its resources should be used and 

 perpetuated in a National Park. 



One corner of the proposed park is only fifty miles 

 from Denver, and the area named for it measures forty- 

 two miles east and west by twenty-four miles north and 

 south. The greater portion of the region lies above the 

 altitude of 7,000 feet, and in it is the great Long's Peak, 

 and, says Hayden, *'one of the most rugged sections of 

 the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains." Within 

 the boundary proposed also is the Mummy Range, 

 together with short sections of the Rabbit Ear and the 

 Medicine Bow ranges. 



Standing within the proposed area are eighteen peaks 

 that rise above the altitude of 13,000 feet, the highest 

 being Long's Peak, which rises 14,259 feet above the 

 tides. There are numerous short, deep, rugged cafions; 

 the longest, most poetical and best known of these is the 

 Big Thompson and the North St. Vrain. 



Timber-line, in this region, is about 11,000 feet, and 

 downwards from this altitude many of the mountains 

 wear purple robes of forest primeval. In these forests 

 there are numerous fire scars. The most common species 

 of trees are yellow pine, Douglas spruce, silver spruce, 

 sub-alpine fir, lodge pole pine, Engelmann spruce and the 

 merry, childlike aspens. 



The Grand River drains the Pacific slope of this section, 



