The creation of Rocky Mountain National Park

Labeled “The Switzerland of America” by Springfield Republican Editor Samuel Bowles in 1869, the future Rocky Mountain National Park and the upland valley of Estes Park was already a tourist destination when traveler Isabella Bird published A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains 10 years later. In her 1879 travelogue, Bird waxed poetic about the area’s scenic wonders, tossing in the story of her ill-fated love affair with a mountain man for good measure. Another writer, Frederick Chapin, also visited the region in the 1880s and wrote Mountaineering in Colorado, detailing less vividly his adventures in the region. Thanks to these two, many avid readers decided to go West to see the grandeur for themselves.

The little town of Estes Park has long served as a gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, which now encompasses 265,769 acres bordered by the Arapahoe National and Roosevelt National forests. Shortly after Lady Isabella’s visit, an Irish aristocrat named Windam Thomas Wyndham Quin, Fourth Earl of Dunraven, sensed the tourist possibilities for this hunter’s paradise and attempted a land-grabbing scheme that almost succeeded. In 1877 he built the Estes Park Hotel, a three-story building with a 14 ft. veranda perfect for viewing Colorado sunsets. Although the Earl wearied of quarreling with the residents and left the area in 1886, his resort offered the finest accommodations in Estes until it burned down in 1911. By that time the incredible F.O. (Freelan Oscar) Stanley, co-inventor of the Stanley steamer automobile, had completed his wonderful Stanley Hotel, a landmark immediately recognizable to anyone who has ever read Stephen King’s The Shining.

The creation of a national park in the area would receive a major boost through the efforts of a Kansas native, naturalist Enos Abijah Mills. A lifelong sufferer from severe allergies, in 1884 Mills came to Colorado at age 14 at the suggestion of the family doctor. Moving to a ranch in the Tahosa Valley with his father’s cousin, Rev. Elkanah J. Lamb, he made Estes Park his new home. Mills did odd jobs on ranches, and then worked as a miner, machine driller, night foreman and plant engineer at the Anaconda Copper Co. in Butte, Mont. An accidental meeting with California naturalist John Muir in 1889 changed his life and set him on the path as a preservationist.

Returning to Estes Park to work as a forest ranger, Mills began to fear extinction of the park’s wildlife by overenthusiastic hunters and fishermen. He subsequently purchased the Longs Peak Inn, conducting nature walks and writing books about the natural history of the area. President Theodore Roosevelt later appointed him a government lecturer on Forestry.

Along with F.O. Stanley, Mills waged a critical six-year campaign to make the area a National Park, once telling his audience, “In years to come when I am asleep beneath the pines, thousands of families will find rest and hope in this park.” He lectured on the national circuit, wrote countless letters and articles and hounded Congress. His work would be supported by the Denver Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Rotary and the Colorado Mountain clubs and opposed by mining, logging, and agricultural lobbies.

More than 2,000 visitors attended the dedication of Rocky Mountain National Park on Sept. 4, 1915.

After years of struggle, the Rocky Mountain National Park Act, drafted by James Grafton Rogers, future assistant secretary of state and founder of the Denver Council of Boy Scouts, became law on Jan. 26, 1915. For Mills, it was not enough. He had originally envisioned a massive national park extending from the Mummy Range, past Longs Peak, down to Mt. Evans, including the mining region of Central City. Rogers knew that opposition would be fierce, so he included only the area encompassing present-day Rocky Mountain National Park, excluding the Never Summer Range. This constituted what Mills considered a breach of trust and ended their relationship permanently.

Rogers was not among approximately 2,000 visitors attending the Park’s dedication on Sept. 4, 1915. Ceremonies were held in Horseshoe Park near the new Fall River Road that was being built to link Estes Park to Grand Lake and Middle Park. According to the Rocky Mountain News, the contingent of vehicles was “the largest automobile demonstration ever seen in Colorado,” with approximately 267 cars vying for position in a rainbow of brightly painted Tin Lizzies.

Guests at the event received button souvenirs, box lunches and coffee, courtesy of the Estes Park Woman’s Club, while the children devoured ice cream cones despite the chilly weather. Concerned that Denver was taking the lion’s share of the credit, Ft. Collins sent a 25-piece concert band to entertain the crowd as newsreel cameramen filmed the proceedings for the movie-going public. Attending officials included Colorado Gov. George Carlson and Stephen Mather, assistant secretary of the Interior, who founded the National Park Service the following year.

A triumphant Enos Mills presided over the affair, which began with a rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, followed by a patriotic song by the elementary school children from Estes Park. Although Mills told visitors, “We should enlarge this park…to extend from Wyoming on the north to the Pikes Peak Highway on the south,” few took him seriously. If old timers nostalgically reflected on the days when the area was still a wilderness, no one commented. A drizzling rain, unusual for September in Colorado, broke up festivities early.

Interestingly, it took until 1929 for Colorado to cede jurisdiction of the park roads, along with the Never Summer Range, to the federal government. Today, Rocky Mountain National Park hosts nearly 3 million visitors a year, offering five drive-in campgrounds and 359 miles of trail for hiking. Replete with elk, mule deer, moose, bighorn sheep, black bears, cougars, hawks and other animals, the Park still reflects the natural beauty and pageantry of colors that inspired Lady Isabella Bird more than 130 years ago.

First 15 National Parks in the United States
Note that several national parks were created long before the National Park Service in 1916.  Two of the earliest parks, Rocky Mountain National Park and Mesa Verde, are located in Colorado.
1. Yellowstone, Wyo. (1872)
2. Mackinack Island, Mich. (1875), later returned to the state of Michigan.
3. Sequoia, Calif. (1890)
4. Yosemite, Calif. (1890)
5. General Grant, Calif. (1890), incorporated into Kings Canyon, 1940
6.  Mt. Rainier, Wash. (1899)
7. Crater Lake, Ore. (1902)
8. Wind Cave, S.D. (1903)
9. Sully’s Hill, N.D. (1904), converted to a game preserve 1931
10. Mesa Verde, Colo. (1906)
11. Platte, Okla. (1906) now part of Chicksaw National Recreation Area
12. Glacier, Mont. (1910)
13. Rocky Mtn. National Park, Colo. (1915)
14. Hawaii Volcanoes, Hawaii (1916)
15. Lessen Volcanoes, Calif. (1916)