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Get your Homepage Free!It all started when Major Stephen H. Long came to the mountains on an official government scientific expedition in the summer of 1820. The first recorded American traveller to enter into the region was Rufus Sage. He spent 3 years roaming the Rockies. His travels are recorded in his book "Scenes in the Rocky Mountains" which was published in Philadelphia in 1846.
The first settler was a Kentuckian named Joel Estes. In 1859 he brought his family to the Rockies as part of the gold rush. While he and his son were on a hunting trip, he found a beautiful valley, which he made his family estate. The winters were too harsh for the cattle, so in 1866, the family left for a warmer climate.
Griff Evans, a Welshman, took possession of the land within a year of of the Estes' departure. He added an extra cabin and took in guests, making the first tourist accommodation in Estes Park.
In December of 1872, a man by the name of Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, the Fourth Earl of Dunraven came to the park looking for game to hunt. The hunting was so remarkable that he decided to acquire as much land in the area as he could, sometimes illegally. In 1877, in the middle of the wilderness, he built a hotel. Officially it was called the Estes Park Hotel, but locally it was known as the "English Hotel". The Earl tired of fighting the homesteaders who had moved into the area and stopped coming to his park.
Lulu City, in the Colorado Valley, become a hot spot for the gold rush by 1880. For a while the possiblity of having good ore, some being gold, but mostly silver , was great and the town boomed. In 1881 the sale of lots had doubled. The town had several stage lines, 2 sawmills, a general store, a mining supply store, a grocery store, a barbershop, a clothing store, an assay office, a hotel and restaurant. By the end of the summer there were 40 houses in Lulu. Then the decline began. Businesses that were to open in 1882 never came and by 1883 the town was nearly deserted. On November 26 the U.S. Government officially acknowledged that the town was dead and closed the post office.
With the prospects of mineral wealth gone and the climate not to good for ranching, most of the ranches converted to the tourist business. Dude ranching became the primary occupation by the 1930's.
A giant boost was given to the tourism in Estes Park after the turn of the centery by the coming of F. O. Stanley. Stanley was the co-inventor with his brother of the Stanley Steamer. After seeing the park and talking with Burton D. Sanborn, he decided to co-invest his money with Sanborn's in the future of the park. Together they bought a 12,000 acre plot from Dunraven. In 1909, on his 6,000 acres, Stanley opened the Stanley Hotel, a first class hotel. Then he built an electric plant on the Fall River for the electric needs of the hotel, donated a large amount of money towards improving the roads. When everything was ready, he transported visitors from the railroad into Estes Park by Stanley Steamer buses.
Due to his efforts, the Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association was established in 1906 to protect the wildlife and to improve the roads and trails.
Then came Enos Mills. He was born in Kansas and came to Longs Peak when he was only 14 years old. He later bought the Longs Peak Inn and conducted nature walks from it. He also wrote the earliest books about the natural history of the area.
In 1909, the Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association started discussing a game preserve, and Enos Mills proposed the idea of a national park. The park was originally called Estes National Park and Game Preserve, but Rocky Mountain National Park was finally settled on. The local leaders (F.O. Stanley, C.H. Bond, and Abner Sprague) as well as the Denver Chamber of Commerce and the Colorado Mountain Club supported the park. The opposition came from the mining, logging, irrigating and grazing groups.
Robert B. Marshall, the Chief Geographer of the U.S. Geological Survey, was assigned to study the area and prepare a report and in 1913, he submitted the report. The proposed national park covered roughly 700 square miles, all of today's park plus the Indian Peaks in the south. On February 6, 1913 the bill to create Rocky Mountain National Park was submitted to the House of Representatives by Representative Rucker of Colorado and in the Senate the next day by Senator Thomas of Colorado
For the next two years, Mills made many speeches, wrote articles, and worked to gain support for the park from groups local and national. Mills was not willing to compromise his vision of a park extending all the way from Mummy Ridge to Mt. Evans, so James Grafton Rogers took the job of making the compromises. When Rogers drafted the bill, he included the lands that make up Rocky Mountain National Park today, except for the Never Summer Mountains which were added in 1929. This act angered Mills, who accussed Rogers of consorting with the "enemy." The park bill passed the Senate on October 9, 1914, and the House on January 12, 1915. President Wilson signed it on January 26, 1915.
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