Rocky Mountain National Park: Trail Ridge Road

Beaver Meadows Visitor Center is the east start of this 42-mile drive over Trail Ridge Road to the Kawuneeche Visitor Center. The building has flush toilets, drinking water, Wi-Fi and a Nature Store. Drivers download…

This stretch of Highway 36 links the park gate with Beaver Meadows Visitor Center and Estes Park. Eastbound drivers finish here, at a visitor center with flush toilets, drinking water, Wi-Fi and a Nature Store, in a N…

The entrance station checks passes and timed entry and takes cards only. Bear Lake Road leaves just past it, a nine-mile dead end with its own rules, and this tour stays straight on Highway 36. Both ends of the drive…

Past Bear Lake Road, Highway 36 runs beside a low pine ridge that marks where an ancient glacier stopped, long before the last ice age. Ponderosas and scarred aspens stand along the road through the meadows, home to e…

Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent keeps a cabin at the head of Muggins Gulch, on the main way into Estes Park, and the Earl of Dunraven has plans for the whole valley. What happens in June 1874 survives in at least five versi…

In about a quarter mile, at Deer Ridge Junction, keep left toward Grand Lake. The right fork drops to Horseshoe Park.

In about a quarter mile, at Deer Ridge Junction, keep right for Beaver Meadows and Estes Park. The left fork drops to Fall River. In just under three miles Bear Lake Road goes off to your right. Stay straight for the…

Past Deer Ridge Junction the climb reaches Beaver Boardwalk, on ground built by long-gone dams, and then Hidden Valley, with flush toilets and the only drinking water on the climb. This stretch hides two vanished attr…

In August 1917 the Denver Post announces that a young college woman from Ann Arbor is going into the new park alone for a week. The publicity is enormous, and so is the mail. Boone has both accounts of one of the stra…

Many Parks Curve looks out over Moraine Park, Upper Beaver Meadows and Horseshoe Park, with Longs Peak beyond. Westbound drivers use the upper lot, on the right, and cross at the crosswalk to reach the boardwalk. East…

January 1925, Longs Peak. Agnes Vaille and the Swiss alpinist Walter Kiener set out for a winter climb of the East Face after three failed tries the year before. Boone tells what the mountain did to the climbers and t…

Long before the pavement, this high corridor carried Ute and Arapaho people between Middle Park and the plains. The stop sets out what the Arapaho called the route, why the Utes left trails unnamed, and how the oldest…

Rainbow Curve sits on tree line at 10,829 feet, where wind-flattened trees up to a thousand years old give way to open tundra. The lot is on the right going west, with four vault toilets and a sidewalk around it. The…

On a July morning in 1982, an old earthen dam high in the Mummy Range gives out, and the first alarm comes from a man collecting trash. Boone follows the water down the valley, past the warnings that came before it. T…

Forest Canyon Overlook is the classic short walk on the high road, 660 feet of rough, uneven asphalt at about 11,700 feet. The park calls it a five-minute walk, and it is not designed for mobility devices. There are n…

Rock Cut has two lots at 12,110 feet. The north lot, on the right going west, has vault toilets and the Tundra Communities Trail, the one real walk at this height, 0.6 mile of asphalt that starts steep. The south lot…

William Currence, known as Miner Bill, fences off a stretch of the old Fall River Road and starts charging motorists to use it. The Park Service objects, for years. Boone tells a funny and finally rueful tale of a stu…

The highest point on Trail Ridge Road, 12,183 feet, has no name and no pullout, so most drivers cross it without knowing. It lies between Lava Cliffs and Gore Range Overlook, in the middle of about eleven miles above…

The Alpine Visitor Center, at 11,796 feet, is the highest visitor center in the park system, and it opens in summer only. The Trail Ridge Store next door holds the only food for sale in the park, and vault toilets sit…

Colonel W. A. Colt is seventy-three when he wins the eastern contract for Trail Ridge Road. Boone follows the crews, the blasting, the tundra that refuses to behave and the men who found the line, all the way to a fin…

Milner Pass is where Trail Ridge Road crosses the Continental Divide, at about 10,760 feet and well below the road's high point. The lot is on the left going west and on the right going east, with vault toilets, a sig…

Farview Curve opens on the Kawuneeche Valley, the young Colorado River and the Never Summer Mountains, the only volcanic range in the park. The lot is on the left going west, on the outside of the curve, and on the ri…

Squeaky Bob Wheeler runs a tent resort in Phantom Valley, at the foot of this descent, under the grand name of the Hotel de Hardscrabble. Famous names sleep there, and the amenities are a matter of record. Boone tells…

The Colorado River Trailhead lies on a short spur, on the right going south and on the left going north, with vault toilets and picnic tables at 9,010 feet. A half-mile walk reaches the river near the start of its run…

The Holzwarth Historic Site preserves a Kawuneeche Valley homestead that became a dude ranch. The lot, on the right going south and on the left going north, has vault toilets, and no vehicles go farther. The walk is a…

July 4, 1883, in Grand Lake. A fight over a county seat ends in a morning of gunfire, and one of the bodies in the road is wearing a mask. Boone tells a dark day in the valley's history, and who was left to answer for…

The Kawuneeche Valley was once so full of beaver water that the Colorado River had no clear channel. This stretch explains what emptied it, from trapping to browsing elk and moose, with the distance to keep from a moo…

The Kawuneeche is Ute homeland. This stop follows Ute bands from their winters in Middle Park through the treaties that took central Colorado and the removal to Utah, told from the tribal side, and ends with the three…

Annie and Kitty Harbison come to the valley in the 1890s, file on adjoining homesteads and build one house across the line between them. Boone tells how two sisters held a ranch against the weather, a lazy brother and…

This last stretch of Highway 34 links the Grand Lake entrance station with the Kawuneeche Visitor Center, on the left going south, with flush toilets, the Nature Store and the park movie. Grand Lake town sits about a…

Kawuneeche Visitor Center is the west start of this 42-mile drive, one mile north of Grand Lake and just below the entrance station. Flush toilets sit outside by the lot, with a Nature Store and park movie inside. Dri…