To those who study it, the park reveals stories of great natural dramas of earth forces that made its deep gorges and lofty peaks, and of once-mighty glaciers that carved its remote lakes. Its forests and wildflowers tell a story of struggle and adjustment to environments that differ with altitude and exposure. Its native populations—deer, elk, bear, beaver, birds and the myriad lesser creatures of the wild—can be seen in their natural habitats. Its streams attract the hopeful fisherman; its unmodified natural compositions enthrall the artist; its cool, green setting appeals to all summer travelers.
Enos Mills, “father” of Rocky Mountain National Park, wrote about 40 years ago:
A National Park is a fountain of life.... Without parks and outdoor life all that is best in civilization will be smothered. To save ourselves—to enable us to live at our best and happiest, parks are necessary. Within National Parks is room—glorious room—room in which to find ourselves, in which to think and hope, to dream and plan, to rest, and resolve.
His words are even more significant to our generation than they were to his. This booklet is an attempt to provide a concise summary of some of the park’s important natural values and to arouse your appetite for further pursuit of the enjoyment they offer. The basic experience in this National Park, as in most, is to capture some of the inspiration and spiritual qualities of the landscape which Enos Mills felt so keenly.
THE MOUNTAINS ARE MADE
The geological story of Rocky Mountain National Park is a long one. Most of its details are lost in the passage of hundreds of millions of years. Some of the story has been put together by scientists from bits of evidence scattered here and there. The evidence strongly indicates a certain chain of events, but no eyewitnesses are available to confirm the deductions. Few of these events can be proved to everyone’s satisfaction; we can but pass on to you some determinations that geologists have made.
Most of the rocks which you see in the park are crystalline and very ancient. The gneiss and schist were, in part, once sediments formed in seas, perhaps a billion years ago, under conditions about which there is little knowledge or general agreement. These sediments were buried beneath thousands of feet of other sediments, cemented and hardened into layers of sedimentary rock and later squeezed, crushed, and elevated by slow, ceaselessly working earth forces that produced mountains even in that ancient time. During this period the sedimentary rocks were changed to harder metamorphic rocks, probably because of deep burial under tremendous pressure and considerable heat. Masses of molten rock welled up into these earlier deposits and hardened under the earth’s surface. This later (though still very ancient) intrusive material is now exposed granite in many parts of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Rocks once buried miles deep are now exposed on Longs Peak, at an altitude of more than 14,000 feet.
These ancient mountains were gradually worn away by wind, rain, and other agents of erosion, which must have attacked the surface of the earth as vigorously then as now. With the passage of millions of years, these mountains were reduced to a lowland. Another sea gradually lapped over the land where mountains had been, and once again sediments were dropped in its bottom. This new invasion of the ocean affected the park region during many millions of years in which the dinosaurs dominated the earth.