Download Free Natural History Of Trail Ridge Road Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Natural History Of Trail Ridge Road and write the review.

Constructed from 1929 to 1932 and opened to tourists and drivers the following year, Trail Ridge Road earned immediate inclusion among the scenic wonders of the world. The new path through the park followed the ancient trail across Tombstone Ridge and offered visitors breathtaking views and a privileged glimpse at unique ecosystems. Today, Trail Ridge Road endures as a truly otherworldly place. It is the country's highest continuous paved road, peaking at over twelve thousand feet and running forty-eight miles. Join author Amy Law on a tour across the Continental Divide and through the history of Colorado's most famous byway.
Trail Ridge Road, constructed from 1929-1932, travels through Rocky Mountain National Park and follows the ancient trail across Tombstone Ridge. It offers visitors breathtaking views and a privileged glimpse at unique ecosystems. It is the country's highest continuous paved road, peaking at over twelve thousand feet and running forty-eight miles. Author Amy Law takes the reader on a tour across the Continental Divide and through the history of Colorado's most famous byway.
Following the establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915, promotional campaigns generated by the railroads lured wealthy travelers to the park with images of the great outdoors and the many luxuries offered by the finest hotels. Postcards were circulated proclaiming the park as the "Playground of the World." The gateway communities of Estes Park and Grand Lake became vibrant hospitality centers, and in 1920, when the two towns were connected with the opening of Fall River Road, a new era of tourism was introduced that continues today. More than 200 postcards are used in this book to provide a chronology of the early hotels, ranches, and other settings that have shaped the park's history for more than a century.
With this newly updated, colorful, and lively guide, Glacier National Park visitors can take a self-guided tour of the fascinating geologic events that created the park's majestic scenery. Complete with an easy-to-read foldout map that offers a three-dimensional perspective on the area's geology, Geology Along Going-to-the-Sun Road gives lay readers and geologists alike a unique opportunity to get behind-the-scenery at 21 stops along this famous highway.
On September 4, 1915, hundreds of people gathered in Estes Park, Colorado, to celebrate the creation of Rocky Mountain National Park. This new nature preserve held the promise of peace, solitude, and rapture that many city dwellers craved. As Jerry Frank demonstrates, however, the park is much more than a lovely place. Rocky Mountain National Park was a keystone in broader efforts to create the National Park Service, and its history tells us a great deal about Colorado, tourism, and ecology in the American West. To Frank, the tensions between tourism and ecology have played out across a natural stage that is anything but passive. At nearly every turn the National Park Service found itself face-to-face with an environment that was difficult to anticipate—and impossible to control. Frank first takes readers back to the late nineteenth century, when Colorado boosters—already touting the Rocky Mountains’ restorative power for lung patients—set out to attract more tourists and generate revenue for the state. He then describes how an ecological perspective came to Rocky in fits and starts, offering a new way of imagining the park that did not sit comfortably with an entrenched management paradigm devoted to visitor recreation and comfort. Frank examines a wide range of popular activities including driving, hiking, skiing, fishing, and wildlife viewing to consider how they have impacted the park’s flora and fauna, often leaving widespread transformation in their wake. He subjects the decisions of park officials to close but evenhanded scrutiny, showing how in their zeal to return the park to what they understood as its natural state, they have tinkered with its features—sometimes with less than desirable results. Today’s Rocky Mountain National Park serves both competing visions, maintaining accessible roads and vistas for the convenience of tourists while guarding its backcountry to preserve ecological values. As the park prepares to celebrate its centennial, Frank’s book advances our understanding of its past while also providing an important touchstone for addressing its problems in the present and future.
On January 1 of 2016, Stefanie Payne, a creative professional working at NASA Headquarters, and Jonathan Irish, a photographer with National Geographic, left their lives in Washington, D.C. and hit the open road on an expedition to explore and document all 59 of America's national parks during the centennial celebration of the U.S. National Park Service - 59 parks in 52 weeks - the Greatest American Road Trip. Captured in more than 300,000 digital photographs, written stories, and videos shared by the national and international media, their project resulted in an incredible view of America's National Park System seen in its 100th year. 'A Year in the National Parks, The Greatest American Road Trip' is a gorgeous visual journey through our cherished public lands, detailing a rich tapestry of what makes each park special, as seen along an epic journey to visit them all within one special celebratory year.
From an out-of-control wildfire that nearly destroyed a town to a serial spouse killer in Estes Park, It Happened in Rocky Mountain National Park looks at intriguing people and episodes from the history of Colorado’s largest national park. Learn how two teens’ attempt to scale the Diamond—a sheer granite cliff so dangerous that climbing it used to be outlawed—resulted in one of the most complicated rescues in the park’s history. Read about the life and untimely demise of Rocky Mountain Jim, who was badly scarred by a grizzly bear attack and earned a reputation as an eccentric but highly skilled wilderness guide. And meet Harriet Peters, an unusually tenacious girl who summited 14,259-foot-tall Longs Peak at the tender age of eight.
The dramatic journeys of the 19th century Gold Rush come to life in this geologist’s tour of the American West and the events that shaped the land. In 1848, news of the discovery of gold in California triggered an enormous wave of emigration toward the Pacific. The dramatic terrain these settlers crossed is so familiar to us now that it is hard to imagine how frightening—even godforsaken—its sheer rock faces and barren deserts once seemed to them. Hard Road West brings their perspective vividly to life, weaving together the epic overland journey of the covered wagon trains and the compelling story of the landscape they encountered. Taking readers along the 2,000-mile California Trail, Keith Meldahl uses settler’s diaries and letters—as well as his own experiences on the trail—to reveal how the geology and geography of the West shaped our nation’s westward expansion. He guides us through a landscape of sawtooth mountains, following the meager streams that served as lifelines through an arid land, all the way to California itself, where colliding tectonic plates created breathtaking scenery and planted the gold that lured travelers west in the first place. “Alternates seamlessly between vivid accounts of the 19th-century journey and lucid explanations of the geological events that shaped the landscape traveled.”—Library Journal
For thousands of years people have traveled across Washington’s spectacular terrain, establishing footpaths and roads to reach hunting grounds and coal mines high in the mountains, fishing sites and trade emporiums on the rivers, forests of old growth, and homesteads and towns on prairies. These traditional routes have been preserved in national parks, restored by cities and towns, salvaged from old railroad tracks, and opened to hikers by Indigenous communities. In this new, full-color edition of the first-ever hiking guide to the state’s historic trails, historian and hiker Judy Bentley teams up with veteran guidebook author Craig Romano to lead adventurers of all abilities along trails on the coast, over mountains, through national forests, across plateaus, and on the banks of the Columbia River. Features include: • 44 hikes, including 12 new additions • Full-color trail maps • A trails timeline that connects hikes to key events • Updated trail descriptions • Accounts from diaries, journals, and archives • Historical overviews of 8 regions of the state • Contemporary and historical photographs Bentley and Romano offer an essential boots-on-the ground history of some of the state’s most fascinating places.