As if these features were not enough to differentiate this national park from any other, Nature has provided still another element of popularity and distinction. East of this splendid rampart spreads a broad area of rolling plateau, carpeted with wild flowers, edged and dotted with luxuriant groves of pine, spruce, fir, and aspen, and diversified with hills and craggy mountains, carved rock walls, long forest-grown moraines and picturesque ravines; a stream-watered, lake-dotted summer and winter pleasure paradise of great size, bounded on the north and west by snow-spattered monsters, and on the east and south by craggy wooded foothills, only less in size, and no less in beauty than the leviathans of the main range. Here is summer living room enough for several hundred thousand sojourners from whose comfortable camps and hotels the wild heart of the Rockies may be visited afoot or on horseback between early breakfast and late supper at home. This plateau has been known to summer visitors for many years under the titles of several settlements; Moraine Park, Horseshoe Park, and Longs Peak, each had its hotels long before the national park was created; Estes Park and Allen's Park on the east side, and Grand Lake on the west side lie just outside the park boundaries, purposely excluded because of their considerable areas of privately owned land. Estes Park, the principal village and the distributing centre of all incoming routes from the east, is the Eastern Gateway; Grand Lake is the Western Gateway. And still there is another distinction, one which will probably always hold for Rocky Mountain its present great lead in popularity. That is its position nearer to the middle of the country than other great national parks, and its accessibility from large centres of population. Denver, which claims with some justice the title of Gateway to the National Parks, meaning of course the eastern gateway to the western parks, is within thirty hours by rail from Chicago and St. Louis, through one or other of which most travellers from the east find it convenient to reach the west. It is similarly conveniently located for touring motorists, with whom all the national parks are becoming ever more popular. From Denver several railroads lead to east-side towns, from which the park is reached by motor stages through the foothills, and a motor stage line runs directly from Denver to Estes Park, paralleling the range. The west side is reached through Granby. III