Rocky Mountain National Park

Understand

Evidence of Native American peoples visiting the park date back almost 10,000 years, mainly from the Ute and Arapaho communities. Several expeditions visited the area in the early to mid-19th century, including one by Joel Estes in 1859 after which he and his family established a homestead that would soon become Estes Park, the resort town on the east side of the park. After a small mining rush on the western side of the park in the early 1880s, a 14-year-old named Enos Mills moved to the area and began to document the region's geography and ecology extensively through essays and books.