With elevations ranging from 8,000 feet in the wet, grassy valleys to over 14,000 feet at the top of Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park provides visitors with endless sightseeing and outdoor opportunities. Learning a bit about the park's history will help you look at the Rockies through different perspectives.
Massive glaciers shaped the meadows and peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park. During these early ages, the Rockies were uninhabitable.
It wasn't until 10,000 B.C. that Clovis Paleo-Indian hunters entered the park. Between 6,000 B.C. and 150 AD, springs and summers brought archaic hunters into the park, and even though it was never their year-round home, the Ute Indian tribe dominated the area until the late 1700s.
With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the U.S. government acquired the land now known as the Rocky Mountain National Park.
Although Spanish explorers and French fur trappers skirted the area in their wilderness forays, it wasn't until the Pikes Peak gold rush of 1859 that hopeful miners and speculators flocked to the Rocky Mountains.
The miners, ranchers and hunters brought tourism into the park. With Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir and Gifford Pinchot movement advocating nature appreciation, curious tourists flocked to the Rocky Mountains from all over the country. In January 26, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Rocky Mountain National Park Act.
Rufus Sage wrote "Scenes in the Rocky Mountains," which is considered the first written account of the wonders of the Rockies, in 1843.
