Chronology
Type in maroon denotes events predominantly outside of Colorado.
10,000 to 35,000 years ago- People move into North America, perhaps moving through this area of the Rocky Mountains.
400-650 Bows and arrows introduced into Colorado area.
1755 Ute Indians retreat to western slope of the Rockies. They still cross the Divide over several passes, including over the Rocky area across Trail Ridge, Flattop Mountain and Fall River.
1790+/- Arapaho arrive in Colorado, shortly begin continuous war with Utes.
1803 Louisiana Purchase
1806 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike leads group for the U.S. Army into Colorado area, seeing but not scaling the mountain that would later bear his name.
1819-1820 Major Stephen Harriman Long leads expedition into Colorado. His party sights Longs Peak before heading south where three of the expediton party scales Pikes Peak.
1843 Rufus B. Sage may be first white to visit and report on the Estes Park valley.
1848 Mexican Cession.
1858 Gold is discovered in Colorado. While little is found in the Rocky/Estes area, it does provide the first large movement of white settlement to the area.
October, 1859 Joel Estes and twelve-year-old son Milton, on a hunting trip in the mountains, come upon the wide valley that would become Estes Park. The two explore the valley for a few days.
1860 Estes returns to the valley with his sons and claims ownership by simply sqautting on the land, building two log cabins on the east end of the park (near the intersection of today's Hwy 36 and Fish Creek Road).
February 28, 1861 Colorado Territory is created.
April, 1861 American Civil War begins.
1864 Congress grants Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of redwoods to the state of California for "public use, resort, and recreation." An example is thus set for setting aside large areas of undeveloped land for the sake of recreation.
August 1864 Rocky Mountain News editor William N. Byers and three companions visit the area in a bid to climb Longs Peak. Though unsuccessful, they manage to scale Mt. Meeker on August 20. It is Byers that names the valley "Estes' Park."
April, 1865 American Civil War ends.
1865 Jules Verne mentions Longs Peak in his science-fiction tale,_From the Earth to the Moon, as the site of a giant astronomical observatory.
April 15, 1866 The Estes family leaves the valley, having sold their claims to the land to a Michael Hollenbeck and a man named Buck.
August 23, 1868 A party that includes William N. Byers and John Wesley Powell reaches the summit of Longs Peak, the first whites known to have done so.
1871 A subdivision of Clarence King's U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel survey, authorized by the U.S. War Department, led by Arnold Hague, enters Estes Park.
1872 Yellowstone National Park is formed.
December, 1872 Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, the fourth Earl of Dunraven, first visits Estes Park.
1873 Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden's U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories moves into the area from Middle Park.
May, 1873 A member of the Hayden survey, photographer William Henry Jackson visits Estes Park. His photos would help publicize the area to cities in the East.
September, 1873 Hayden and James T. Gardner invite William T. Byers and lecturer and writer Anna Dickinson along on a climb of Longs Peak. Their successful climb makes Dickinson the first woman to reach the summit.
1873 Isabella Bird visits Estes Park. In September she reaches the summit of Longs Peak with the assistance of Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent.
1874 Between now and 1880, the Earl of Dunraven purchases 8,200 acres and controls another 7,000 acres of the Estes Park area through his Estes Park Company (or English Company).
1874 Abner Sprague climbs Longs Peak for his first time.
1874 Alexander Q. MacGregor buys land along the north side of the Estes Valley, forming MacGregor Ranch.
June 19, 1874 Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent is fatally shot. He lives for three more months, dying in September in Fort Collins.
1875 Joel Estes dies in Farmington, New Mexico.
May, 1875 Abner Sprague, with partner Clarence Chubbuck, builds a cabin in Moraine Park. Chubbuck is murdered a month later on the plains during a cattle roundup. Sprague, his brother Fred and their parents continue the homestead.
1876 Bald Mountain-Pole Hill Road is completed, connecting Loveland and Estes Park over rough hills and 11 percent grade. The road entered the mountains south of the Big Thompson Canyon and entered the Estes Valley to the south of Mount Olympus. A less torturous route won't be available until the road up the Big Thompson Canyon is opened in 1904.
August 1, 1876 Colorado gains statehood.
1877 The Estes Park Hotel, known locally as The English Hotel as it was owned by the Earl of Dunraven, opens, the first such accommodation in Estes Park.
1878 Griff Evans sells his holdings tin the Earl of Dunraven, which become incorporated into the Dunraven ranch.
1879 A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, Isabella Bird's letters to her sister is published in book form, publicizing Estes Park to a wider audience.
1879-1885 Lulu City is formed near the headwaters of the Grand (now Colorado) River amidst a boom of silver mining that within years turns to bust as nothing but low-grade ore is ever found and, without a smelter to concentrate, is too expensive to continue.
Early 1880s John T. Cleave starts a store at the confluence of the Big Thompson and Fall Rivers, the site becoming the nucleus of the future village of Estes Park.
1881 The Larimer County Ditch Company is formed to create the Grand Ditch along the Never Summer Mountains to divert water across the Continental Divide to the parched eastern plains.
1885 Enos Mills makes the first of over 250 ascents of Longs Peak in his life. That year he was working at Lamb's Ranch (run by Carlyle Lamb).
1889 During a trip in California, Enos Mills meets well-known naturalist John Muir, making a big impact on Mills. Muir inspires MIlls to become a spokesman for conservation.
October 15, 1890 First water is diverted by the Grand Ditch across the Continental Divide at the La Poudre Pass. Work continues on the Ditch, extending it ever southwestward along the Never Summer Mountains, catching more and more water, through September, 1936.
1902 Wind River Lodge opens. In 1910 it's acquired by the Western Conference of the YMCA.
1902 Enos Mills purchases Lamb's Ranch from Carlyle Lamb. The property becomes the Longs Peak Inn.
1903 F.O. Stanley first visits Estes Park. Stanley, suffering from tuberculosis, was advised by his doctor to visit Colorado and given little hope to live past the end of the year. His visit to Estes Park restores him to health, encouraging him to think about creating an Estes Park resort.
1904 Abner Sprague sells his Moraine Park homestead to James D. Stead. He later starts a smaller lodge in Glacier Basin at the site of today's Sprague's Lake (in fact, the lake was created by Sprague damming the river).
1904 A road is carved along the Big Thompson canyon, creating better travel conditions between Estes Park and the towns of Loveland and Fort Collins below. The road remains single-tracked until 1919.
1905 Burton D. Sanborn of Greeley and F.O. Stanley of Massachusetts purchase the remaining Estes Park holdings of the Earl of Dunraven.
1905 Enos Mills publishes the first of his sixteen books, The Story of Estes Park and a Guide Book.
May 17, 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt signs into law the extention of Wyoming's Medicine Bow Forest Reserve southward, including land that would become Rocky Mountain National Park.
August, 1905 Cornelius H. Bond and four associates form the Estes Park Town Company, buys the 160 acres at the confluence of the Fall and Big Thompson Rivers from John T. Cleave for $8,000, hires Abner Sprague to survey the land and then sold the resulting lots. 25-foot frontage on Elkhorn Avenue went for fifty dollars with sites farther east going for thirty-five dollars.
September 23, 1905 Eugenia Mine opens on the slopes of Battle Mountain, near the Longs Peak Trail. By 1910 the shaft that was drilled reportedly reached a depth of 1,500 feet. Ore was said to run 14 percent copper with amounts of gold. The mine was closed in 1912 and has since been collapsed by the National Park Service.
1906 Enos Mills rebuilds the Longs Peak Inn after a fire.
1906 Eleven-passenger Stanley Steamers are used by F.O. Stanley's Loveland-Estes Park Transportation Company to bring people up and down the Big Thompson Canyon. The trip took about five hours.
1906 Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association is formed. Publicizing Estes Park, improvement of roads and trails, a fish hatchery and protection of the environment become the group's concerns, foreshadowing the formation of the national park.
1907 "Squeaky Bob" Robert L. Wheeler opens Camp Wheeler, known also as "Hotel de Hardscrabble" along the North Fork, one of the first dude ranches in the region.
1907 F.O. Stanley donates money for the improvement of the North St. Vrain road to Lyons (roughly paralleling the current Highway 36 route).
1907 Estes Park's second schoolhouse is built, situated just north of the current Bond Park. Built of logs, it will be replaced on the same site in 1916 with a building of stream-cobble-and-stucco.
July 20, 1907 H.N. Wheeler takes charge of Medicine Bow National Forest. A government headquarters is established in Estes Park. Later, Wheeler would move his office to Fort Collins.
September 10, 1907 Work begins on the Stanley Hotel. F.O. Stanley was to call the luxury hotel "The Dunraven," but such ill feelings in the area remained in the area towards the Earl of Dunraven that he was convinced by area residents to name it "The Stanley."
1907 H.N. Wheeler addresses the Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association on the subject of wildlife protection. Wheeler advises the group that one of the biggest assets of any recreation area is the wildlife and, if they wanted to improve the value of their area, they should create a game refuge.
Spring, 1907 Estes Park Fish Hatchery opens, built by the Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association to raise trout.
December, 1907 Soon after being completed atop the Knoll overlooking town, the Birch home burns, the result of a carpenter having run the floor joists under the fireplace with only 4 inches of cement above the timbers. The home burns, leaving the stone work as an empty husk that remains today. Its owner, Denver Post writer Al Birch builds another summer home, a log cabin above Black Canyon Creek.
1908 Timberline and Horseshoe Inn open.
1908 About this time Enos Mills was proposing a game refuge or national park of over a thousand square miles, forty-two miles east to west and twenty-four miles from north to south, containing not just Estes Park at its center but reaching all the way over the foothills to the plains to the east.
June 16, 1908 The Estes Park Bank first opens its doors to business. It is the first brick structure in Estes, built on the site of the town's first schoolhouse. The building was located on Elkhorn Avenue and what is now Big Horn Drive, the current location of Western 1-Hour.
1909 The Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association votes unanimously to support a game refuge plan for the Estes area. Later it would support the idea of a national park.
1909 F.O. Stanley has the Stanley Power Plant on the north bank of Fall River to supply power to his "all-electric" Stanley Hotel and, later, to the town as well.
1910 Moraine Lodge opens.
1910 The Western Conference of the YMCA acquires the Wind River Lodge and work begins on expanding operations.
September, 1910 The Stanley Hotel opens.
July, 1910 The section of Medicine Bow Reserve that is within Colorado becomes the Colorado National Forest.
1911 Brinwood opens.
1911 Even as momentum builds for a national park (until about then thought of as Estes National Park), opposition also builds against it by the Forest Service amongs others.
August 4, 1911 The Estes Park Hotel (or English Hotel) is destroyed in a fire.
September, 1912 Robert B. Marshall of the United States Geological Survey is sent to the area to evaluate the worthiness of the proposed national park. His report early the next year was positive. Still, rather than endorsing Enos Mills' dream of a thousand-square-mile preserve, he endorses a plan that was about seven hundred square miles.
1913 Elk are reintroduced to the area, relocated from Montana.
1913 The Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association convinces the state to construct Fall River Road across the Continental Divide, making possible travel to Grand Lake. The project starts in September of that year, taking seven years to complete.
February 6, 1913 The first bill is presented to Congress for the formation of Rocky Mountain National Park. The size of the proposed plan was smaller still than Enos Mills' and Robert B. Marshall's proposals.
1914 Estes Park Post Office is built.
June 29, 1914 A third bill on the national park is presented to Congress. The bill was spearheaded by Congressman Edward Taylor in the House and Senator Charles S. Thomas in the Senate.
January 18, 1915 Final legislation on creating Rocky Mountain National Park passes Congress.
January 26, 1915 President Woodrow Wilson signs legislation creating Rocky Mountain National Park. The park is 358.5 square miles, a third of the size first envisioned by Enos Mills. Thirty-one parks and monuments had previously been created since
July 1, 1915 Charles R. Trowbridge arrives in Estes, taking charge as Acting Supervisor of Rocky Mountain National Park.
July 10, 1915 Rocky Mountain National Park office opens in Estes Park on Elkhorn Avenue.
September 4, 1915 Dedication ceremony for Rocky Mountain National Park.
1916 Supervisor Trowbridge estimates that 51,000 people entered the National Park that year.
1916 F.O. Stanley, Thomas B. Stearns and Frank L. Woodward buy 120 acres in order to create a new golf course. The three men turned the land over to local golfers who formed the Estes Park Country Club. With the investment of thirty golf enthusiasts in the area, the 18-hole club was ready two years later.
1916 Estes Park's third schoolhouse is rebuilt on the same site as the second one, replacing the building of logs with a two-story building of stream-cobble-and-stucco, located across the street from Bond Park (where today's First National Bank is now).
1916 Josie Hupp builds the Josephine Hotel (current site of The Wheel Bar).
August, 1916 Congress organizes the National Park Service. The goals mandated for the National Parks: "to conserve the scenery, the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
September 19, 1916 Supervisor Trowbridge hands Park administration over to Louis Claude Way, designated "Chief Ranger in Charge."
1917 Chief Ranger Way estimates that some 120,000 visitors arrived in the National Park that year, bringing with them nearly 20,000 automobiles.
1917 Estes Park is incorporated.
1917 Rocky Mountain National Park boundaries are expanded to include Gem Lake, Deer Mountain and Twin Sisters.
April, 1917 U.S. enters World War I.
November 11, 1918 World War I ends.
1919 Chief Ranger Way estimates 170,000 visitors to the National Park that year.
1919 Stemming from a desire by National Park Service Director Stephen Mather to provide more reliable public transport within the parks, Roe Emery's Rocky Mountain Park's Transportation Company is given a virtual monopoly within Rocky. This causes a great deal of controversy. Naturalist and lodger Enos Mills, involved with his own transportation interests, is one of those finding himself pitted against the National Park he helped to create.
1919 Between now and 1938 the Big Thompson Road goes through a series of road improvements, the most notable being a general widening from its original single track.
1919 Harriet Rogers Byerly opens the National Park Hotel on Elkhorn Avenue.
1920 Fall River Road is completed. Visitation to the Park jumps to 240,966 visitors.
1921 Frank H. Cheley opens his Bear Lake Trail School along the southern shore of Bear Lake. He would relocate his operation to the current location of Cheley Colorado Camps above Fish Creek six years later.
October 24, 1921 Chief Ranger Wray resigns, succeeded by Roger Wescott Toll.
1923 National Park moves its administrative offices from Elkhorn Avenue to a new building on Davis Hill, where Moraine Avenue swings westward.
July 4, 1923 Riverside Amusement Park opens, built by Ted Jelsema and Frank Bond. The combination dance hall, ice cream and lunch parlor and swimming pool area was an immediate success. Later, after the end of Prohibition, the Dark Horse Inn is added, a tavern that featured merry-go-round hoses for bar stools.
January 12, 1925 Agnes Vaille becomes the first woman to scale the east face of Longs Peak in winter. Accompanied by Walter Kiener, they made the summit by way of the Couloir, Broadway and a chimney just west of Notch Chimney. On the summit, the temperature was fourteen below zero with gale-like winds. They descended down the north side, but Vaille succumbed to low-temperature induced fatigue. Kiener went for help but by the time a rescue party found her, Vaille had already frozen to death. A volunteer member of the rescue team, Herbert Sortland, disappeared while returning to Longs Peak Inn, his body not being found until February 27. As a result of the incident, a stone shelter cabin is built at the Boulderfield (since removed) and a smaller shelter named for Vaille built at the Keyhole.
1926 "Squeaky Bob" Wheeler sells Camp Wheeler along the North Fork of the Colorado . The new owners of the dude ranch rename it Phantom Valley Ranch.
August, 1926 Six years after the narrow, winding Fall River Road is completed, an alternate route is surveyed across Trail Ridge by the Bureau of Public Roads.
1928 The Public Service Company of Colorado buys the Stanley Power Plant on Fall River.
1929 256,000 people enter the Park this year.
January, 1929 Superintendent Roger Toll accepts apointment to Yellowstone National Park. Edmund Rogers becomes the new superintendent of Rocky.
April, 1929 Congress appropriates $450,000 for the first phase of Trail Ridge Road.
October, 1929 Work begins on Trail Ridge Road.
October 29, 1929 Stock Market Crash, signaling the beginning of the Great Depression.
1931 Rocky Mountain National Park Ski Club forms. Members propose the building of ski and toboggan facilities at Hidden Valley.
1932 Colorado National Forest is renamed the Roosevelt National Forest after President Theodore Roosevelt.
July, 1932 The eastern half of Trail Ridge Road opens to traffic.
1933 The entire Trail Ridge Road is open to traffic, making it the highest continuous highway in the continental United States. This year, the visitor total reaches 292,000 in 83,000 automobiles.
May 12, 1933 The first contingent of members of the Civilian Conservation Corps arrives in Rocky Mountain National Park. Created as part of the national goverment's attempt to combat the Depression, the CCC camps based out of Little Horseshoe Park, Grand Lake, Mill Creek and several other temporary backcountry locations had men working at chopping away at beetle-infested trees, landscaped government buildings, improved campgrounds and dozens of other tasks from 1933 to 1942.
1937 David Canfield becomes Superintendent of the National Park.
December 27, 1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves a bill (submitted that October by Senator Alva B. Adams for whom the tunnel would subsequently be named) authorizing a tunnel to be built between Grand Lake and Estes Park as part of a Colorado-Big Thompson water diversion project.
1938 Nearly 660,000 visitors enter the Park with 200,000 automobiles.
1936 Stead's Ranch in Moraine Park is sold to Will and Myra Lewis.
June 16, 1940 Work begins on the Alva B. Adams Tunnel, continuing through late 1942 when the War Production Board orders it to a halt, citing it not being essential to the war effort.
1941 Concerned by an elk overpopulation, the National Park holds a special hunting season along the Park's eastern boundary, resulting in 97 elk being culled from the herd.
December, 1941 U.S. enters World War II.
1942 393,000 visitors enter the National Park.
July 29, 1942 Last enrollees to the Civilian Conservation Corps leaves the Mill Creek Camp.
1943 Visitation to the National Park decreased for the first time, mainly due to wartime national gasoline rationing, resulting in only 130,000 visitors this year and next.
September, 1943 Drilling into the mountains for the Adams Tunnel continues.
1944 Another culling is done within the Park of 300 elk and 100 deer in an attempt to control overpopulation.
July 10, 1944 The Adams Tunnel is holed through, with eastern crews meeting western. The 13.1-mile tunnel is claimed to be off its alignment only seven-sixteenths of an inch.
1945 The Town of Estes Park purchases the Stanley Power Plant.
August, 1945 World War II ends.
1947 Almost 900,000 visitors enter the National Park.
June 23, 1947 The first water flows eastward from Grand Lake through the Alva B. Adams Tunnel.
1948 Over a million visitors enter the National Park this year.
1950 Stead's Ranch in Moraine Park is sold to Will and Myra Lewis by Edgar and Dorothy Stopher.
1954 Olympus Dam, creating Lake Estes from the Big Thompson River, is completed.
1956 1.6 million visitors enter the National Park this year.
December 18, 1955 Hidden Valley Winter Use Area opens with a ski lodge and two T-bar lifts.
1962 National Park Service acquires the Stead's Ranch in Moraine Park, soon razing the buildings to the ground in the pursuit of returning the area to as pristine condition as is possible.
1973 Ripley's Believe It or Not opens a museum in the National Park Hotel building on Elkhorn Avenue, operating there for about a decade.
1978 Over 3 million visitors enter the Park this year.
August 9, 1978 Ouzel Fire begins in Wild Basin, caused by lightning.
July 15, 1982 The dam at Lawn Lake in the Park fails, sending a torrent of water down the Roaring and Fall Rivers into Estes Park. At least three people are killed and millions of dollars results.
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