National park’s centennial year celebrated

In late April, the Colorado Mountain Club, 103 years old, celebrated its strongly influential role in establishing Rocky Mountain National Park by planning special hikes during the centennial year.

The club is leading 100-mile hike packages and a series of wildflower hikes in RMNP this year, according to CMC communications/marketing associate Jeff Golden. Members can sign up to accumulate 100 miles of hiking within the park during the year, and the organization will help lead shorter wildflower hikes for members and park visitors at various locations.

Information on wildflower hikes will be available at the east and west park entry points, according to CMC volunteer Linda Lawson, of Greenwood Village.

Lawson’s special centennial year contributions include a talk on how founding mountain club members, including Enos Mills, helped to establish the park’s existence.

Others involved included Roger Toll, who was superintendent of Yellowstone and Mount Rainier national parks and Carl Blaurock, who with William Ervin was first to climb all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks, according to a History Colorado release.

The CMC is housed in the historic former Golden High School, which also functions as the Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The History Colorado Center has a new exhibit on the beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park and encourages visits to the Mountaineering Museum.

Local efforts led to park

Lawson is co-chair of the mountain club’s Centennial Committee and is presenting information to groups throughout Colorado, with illustrations.

She begins with the story of the aforementioned Enos Mills, an Estes Park resident who had been lecturing about the area’s wonderful features and history for a number of years. In 1909 the name “Estes Park Improvement Association” was preferred over “Estes Valley Game Preserve.”

“At this point, there were already 12 national parks,” Lawson said.

In 1911, Mills wrote to prominent Coloradan James Grafton Rogers, president of the American Alpine Club, about starting a Colorado Mountain Club, which Rogers agreed to undertake “as soon as the climbers return to town.” In April 1912 his first invitation yielded seven responses, followed by an announcement in the local newspaper. Twenty-five showed up and signed as charter members.

They started to educate the public with lectures, walks and longer outings and Mills initially proposed a park of 1,000 square miles stretching from Pikes Peak to the Estes Valley (later reduced).

The first draft of a bill sent to Congress met with no action in 1913, and a Rocky Mountain National Park Committee was appointed to help with Congress. They made lantern slide presentations and went to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming (in Stanley Steamers, Lawson said) to interview tribal elders who had lived in the Estes Valley area about specific place names.

The bill was redrafted and the area downsized to 379 square miles when the sixth revision was submitted in August 1914. On Jan. 26, 1915, it passed the Senate and was signed into law.

Lawson said she came from Iowa and Oklahoma with energy company business experience and found the Colorado Mountain Club when she moved to Colorado.

Hikes near 100-mile total

In this “Year of the Mountaineer,” the club will coordinate members’ 100 miles of hikes, visits to 100 of 125 peaks, and special wildflower hikes with Plant Masters, which are open to physically fit park visitors.

Ownership of a year-round cabin in Allenspark, a small town bordering Rocky Mountain National Park’s eastern edge, means that hiking in the park is very much a way of life for glass artist Sally Van Der Kamp and her husband, residents of Centennial.

They recently tallied up their miles for the past year and found they are both close to the 100-mile goal they set in 2014 to honor the park’s centennial year.

“We started when we saw the suggestion on Facebook,” she said, and they have hiked through the winter with snow shoes and/or cleats. Winter is her husband’s favorite time. “It makes you feel rough and rustic.”

Does Van Der Kamp have a favorite hike? “That’s like asking a parent to name a favorite child,” she replied. They have enjoyed new hiking buddies and will probably finish the 100 miles in late May or early June.

They need to agree on a really special spot for attaining the 100-mile mark: “Twin Sisters for sunrise or Bluebird Lake in August” (though not in the one-year time frame) for wildflowers.

They are recreational hikers, she said, and she is keeping a photo chronicle/journal. “We started out on a three mile hike and ended up covering nine miles …”

A member of the Littleton Fine Arts Guild, she exhibits her art at the Depot Art Gallery. It is stained and fused glass, which sometime incorporates broken glass pieces she finds in the mountains, as well as branches from their property.

“We won’t stop at 100 miles,” she concluded.

Author creates sweeping history

Another south-metro resident with strong Rocky Mountain National Park connections is Mary Taylor Young of Castle Rock, who started spending summers in the park with her grandparents as a very small child.

She has grown up to become a nature writer with 15 books to her credit, and recently won first place in nonfiction in the Colorado Authors’ League annual competition.

“Rocky Mountain National Park: the First Hundred Years” is a large, beautifully illustrated coffee-table book that talks about the park from prehistoric times to today.

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