Your National Parks, with Detailed Information for TouristsMills, Enos A.
Philosophy
Your National Parks, with Detailed Information for Tourists
Mills, Enos A.
National parks and reserves -- Canada; National parks and reserves -- United States; West (U.S.) -- Guidebooks
The Rocky Mountain Park is glorified with transcendent forms of the
beautiful and the sublime. In it bees hum and beavers build; birds
give melody to the forest depth, and butterflies with painted wings
circle the sunny air. Mountain sheep in classic poses watch from the
cliffs, eagles soar in the blue, speckled trout sprinkle the clear
streams, and the varied voice of the coyote echoes when the afterglow
falls. From top to bottom the park is beautified with dainty,
exquisite wild flowers of brightest hues; they crowd the streams, wave
on the hills, shine in woodland vistas, and color snow-edges
everywhere.
This Park has an area of about three hundred and sixty square miles.
Its terraced alpine heights are about equally divided between the
Atlantic and the Pacific slopes. It is twenty-five miles long, from
twelve to twenty miles wide, and about one mile high from lowest to
highest altitudes.
The greater part of the Park lies above the altitude of nine thousand
feet. Its southeast corner is within forty miles of Denver; the
northeast corner about the same distance from Cheyenne. A number of
railroads run close to it, and the Lincoln Highway is about twenty
miles away. The Park is only thirty hours from Chicago, and its
accessibility adds to its invitingness as a playground.
Side by side in it are two dominating peaks. These are Long's Peak,
14,255 feet high, and Mount Meeker, 14,000 feet above the sea. These
great summits were a landmark for the primitive red man who saw them
from the plains. For generations the plains Indians spoke of them as
the "Two Guides."
Viewed as a whole from a neighboring mountain-top, either on the
eastern or the western side, the Park presents an imposing appearance.
My favorite near-by view-point is the summit of the Twin Sister Peaks.
In commenting on the appearance of the eastern slope Dr. Ferdinand V.
Hayden, the celebrated geologist, wrote as follows:--
Not only has Nature amply supplied this with features of rare
beauty and surroundings of admirable grandeur, but it has thus
distributed them that the eye of an artist may rest with perfect
satisfaction on the complete picture represented. It may be said,
perhaps, that the more minute details of the scenery are too
decorative in their character, showing, as they do, the irregular
picturesque groups of hills, buttes, products of erosion, and the
finely moulded ridges--the effect is pleasing in the extreme.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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