Narration for Procession
75th Anniversary Program, September 3, 1990
D. Ferrel Atkins

In the beginning there was the land. It was a magnificent panorama of forests and valleys, prairies and deserts -- inhabited by a menagerie of wildlife. And then came the people. Crossing on a land bridge long since buried by the sea, they moved south dispersing in all directions, developing a diversity of cultures, displaying skills which even now astonish the mind. Probably they came as hunters: even as glaciers still swept down some of these valleys, Indian feet followed game trails into these mountains where the Ute and Arapaho came in the summer to hunt deer, to fight, to search out the elk.

But one day -- 400 years ago -- a band of Indians looked out across the high plains to see men dressed in metal suits, riding astride animals such as they had never seen before. To the Indians the horse was a discovery as revolutionary as any we have seen in the twentieth century, one which was to overturn their lives as they developed a culture centered on the horse as an aid to hunting and to warfare.

Though the Spanish came seeking gold -- and abandoned most of their settlements when they found none -- the next intruders came from the east.

It was often said -- and truly so -- that the map of the west was drawn on a beaver skin. And so there was a clash of empires as the English, the French -- but most notably the Americans -- converged here in these Rocky Mountains.

Thus the fabled Mountain Man. Their relationships with the Indians were ambiguous -- some fought the Indians, others married into Indian tribes. They were so few and they traveled so far they left little trace of where they had been. Though some came for financial gain, many came simply to satisfy their wanderlust -- the yearning to find valleys yet unseen, to conquer mountains yet unclimbed. When Rufus Sage came here in 1843, he came to a place where he could test "the varied sweets of solitude" in the "Domain of Silence and Loneliness". And then they vanished...

Settlers turned their faces to the west. They came through the woodlands of the Mississippi valley, and finally they stepped out upon the Great Plains where Nature had cleared the lands -- where a furrow could be plowed for a hundred miles -- and thus began yet another chapter in our history.

The settlement of the Great Plains they left for later. Now they rushed westward to the gold fields of Colorado. But many like Joel Estes, discouraged in their search for gold, settled as farmers and ranchers along the streams and valleys of the South Platte River.

Joel Estes, while tracking a bear in October of 1859, found the most beautiful valley he had ever seen -- so he settled here in 1860. He and his sons hunted the elk, the deer, and the bighorn sheep -- as had the Indians before them. They tried also to raise cattle here, in a land too high, in a climate too severe. And so they left. But Joel Estes left his name, left his mark on this valley and on these hills.

Other settlers followed Joel Estes -- Abner Sprague, Horace Ferguson, Elkannah Lamb, the James family, the MacGregors -- intending to become farmers and ranchers, but in this inhospitable land they soon turned to building hotels and resorts.

W. N. Byers, the famous editor of the Rocky Mountain News who came to climb Longs Peak in August of 1864, may have been the first visitor we could label a "tourist". But others followed.

In 1872 an English peer of the realm, Wyndham Thomas Windham-Quin, the fourth Earl of Dunraven, came to this valley. He came as a sportsman to hunt the wild game, but Albert Bierstadt tutored him in the beauties of this land -- so he stayed to build a hotel, perhaps the first truly resort hotel in the Colorado Rockies. But there were too many tourists -- sometimes 200 a summer swarming all over these mountains -- and so he left.

In 1873 Isabella Bird rode into Estes Park which became her land of romance and adventure. Long afternoons she spent riding into the mountains with Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent discussing literature, spiritualism and philosophy. If it had not been for his drinking she -- this cultured daughter of an Anglican clergyman might have married him -- but it could not be, so it was better to leave.

Frederick Chapin came in the 1880s, climbed these mountains with his friends Otis and Hallett, and went home to write a book about it.

And Abner Sprague, surveyor and earliest mapmaker, put their names on the land.

With the establishment of the Medicine Bow Forest Reserve in May of 1905, local leaders began to appreciate the scenic values of wildlife, forests, and wildflowers. F. O. Stanley, the co-inventor of the Stanley Steamer -- impressed by the beauty of the valley and grateful for the recovery of his health -- began to invest his money -- and himself -- in Estes Park. Largely through his efforts the Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association was established in 1906 for the purpose of protecting wildflowers and wildlife and improving roads and trails.

But there were others who had an even larger vision of the future. Enos Mills and James Grafton Rogers, first president of the newly organized Colorado Mountain Club, began to work toward the establishment of a national park, and their efforts came to fruition in January of 1915 when the Rocky Mountain National Park bill was signed by President Wilson.

As they gathered here on the afternoon of September 4th, 1915, it began to rain just as Enos Mills rose to open the ceremonies. But as the program continued, the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and Longs Peak -- resplendent in a new coat of snow -- came into view. Somehow it seemed symbolic of that glorious afternoon when 2000 people gathered in this meadow to dedicate this land -- and to dedicate themselves to its preservation.

As more and more automobiles came into the mountains, it became obvious a trans-mountain road was necessary. And so in 1913 they began this road up the Fall River. When it was completed in late 1920, it inaugurated a new way to see national parks. It brought families with picnic baskets, children, cameras and a new spirit of adventure. That year 241,000 people were counted entering the Park.

The 1920s might be counted the Park's "Golden Age". Lodges -- Stead's Ranch, the Moraine Lodge, Sprague's Lodge, the Bear Lake Lodge, the Fern Lake Lodge, the Horseshoe Inn, the Fall River Lodge -- many with tea rooms and dance floors dotted the landscape. Horseback riders, hikers, and bicyclists invaded the land -- along with more motorists.

Even before the completion of the Fall River Road, repairs and reconstruction were needed. But most heart-rending of all were the efforts of the Superintendent to clear the road of snow before the arrival of the first tour buses of summer. Men with shovels, then tractors, a steam shovel, even a crude rotary-type snow plow was used. In desperation, they set dynamite in places of snow accumulation in the fall so it could be detonated in the spring. Clearing of the road was further complicated by avalanches which thundered down the chutes on the south side of Mt. Chapin.

Obviously the Superintendent was overjoyed to find that construction of another road -- Trail Ridge -- was to begin in the late fall of 1929. No longer need he worry about the falling rock walls; no longer need he lie awake in the spring worrying about clearing the Big Drift below Fall River Pass.

The joy of the opening of Trail Ridge Road was tempered as the Great Depression settled over the land. But even adversity has its benefits. As one of the events of the First Hundred Days, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed "An act for the relief of unemployment through the performance of useful public work" and by mid-May of 1933, NP1-C -- the first CCC camp west of the Mississippi River -- was established here in Little Horseshoe Park. Important as their contributions were to this Park, even more important was the restoration of the self-respect of workers who had been defeated by the Great Depression. Even now, as we drive the roads, visit the museums, and hike the trails, we enjoy the benefits of a magnificent concept, conceived of economic desperation and brought to fruition here in the valleys and forests of Rocky Mountain National Park.

As the lights went out all over the world, the Park took a recess as uniforms of ranger-green were exchanged for uniforms of khaki and navy blue. The Superintendent reported in 1943 that the year was "marked by changes in personnel, decline in travel ... with essential activities being carried on by fewer employees with greater responsibility for the preservation of the area". Only 130,000 visitors entered the Park in 1943, 1/3 as many as the previous year. With the end of hostilities, however, there was an explosion of travel as people, eager to forget the hardships of war, descended on our national parks. This Park set a new record of 1,032,000 visitors in 1948.

In the late 1940s the Superintendent had observed that visitors were no longer interested in American Plan accommodations, typical of those provided by most lodges in the Park. So in the 1950s the Park now resumed a program -- initiated in the 1930s -- of acquiring lodges in the Park: Fern Lake Lodge, Bear Lake Lodge, Fall River Lodge, the Brinwood Sprague's Lodge so that their sites could be restored to wilderness.

And finally someone listened to our complaints that our physical plant -- our roads, bridges, campgrounds, trails -- had been overwhelmed by the wave of post-war visitors, and Mission 66, a ten-year program for the rebuilding of our national park system, was born.

For years untold -- from the days of the mountain men -- people had pitched their tents at will upon the mountain landscape. But with the coming of the 1960s, our eyes opened by research into the effect of human impact upon fragile ecosystems, we came reluctantly to the conclusion that visitor use of the back country must be regulated. And so the back country permit/reservation system of designated campsites replaced the old routinely-given fire permit. And just in time, for with the advent of the environmental movement a flood of new backpackers engulfed the Park.

Visitation fluctuated with the energy problems of the 1970s. Gasoline shortages and long lines at the pumps characterized visits to this and other national parks. Gradually we became aware -- in fact the view was forced upon us -- that energy problems and ecological problems were no longer local, and we gradually gained a global view of problems related to flurocarbons, the "greenhouse effect", and acid rain. Here in these magnificent national parks of the west, one of our greatest concerns is the contamination of the atmosphere which year by year degrades the visibility of the mountains and canyons.

In our last decade, we have had the delightful experience of welcoming rapidly increasing numbers of foreign visitors to our national parks. Americans for over a century have derived inspiration from these landscapes and panoramas, and we can hope that international friendship and understanding may result from the intermingling of many nationalities along the roads and trails of this national park.

And now we stand on the threshold of a new decade, of a new century, and we look to the future.

Those of us who have been privileged to spend a night under the stars in an isolated mountain valley know that the wilderness transforms each of us, in subtle ways which linger long after the glow of the campfire and the smell of the pine needles are gone. Better, more effective, more useful citizens result from such a primeval reunion with the source of our biological heritage. With the knowledge of the effect the wilderness has had upon us we must work to bring that experience within easy reach of generations to come.

By D. Ferrel Atkins
September 1, 1990

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