History of Estes Park

Estes Park at mail time, 1902.
It is the Moraine/Elkhorn intersection.

Thousands of years ago ancestors of today’s American Indians hunted big game animals above tree line in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park. When Joel Estes first visited the Estes valley on a hunting trip in October of 1859, he saw little evidence of the many people who had visited the valley before him. Thinking the valley held promise as a cattle ranch, he and his wife Patsy moved the family into two log cabins here.

Soon others came to trap, prospect, hunt, and view the scenery.  In 1864 William Byers, then editor of the Rocky Mountain News, named the area in honor of his hosts, the Estes family. Nine years later Isabella Bird, a traveler from the British Isles, wrote glowingly of her trip to Estes Park in letters later reprinted as A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. The Irish Earl of Dunraven visited the Estes valley and bought land for a private hunting preserve.  He also built a hotel in 1877 which catered primarily to visitors from Europe, and soon became the first well-publicized resort hotel in the area.

After the land was surveyed in 1874, settlers appeared in increasing numbers.  Graceful and rustic lodges soon dotted the hillsides. Ranching and tourism provided a livelihood for most of the 200 citizens recorded in the 1900 census.  By then the mail arrived daily by stage coach during the summer and the town’s first long distance telephone connection had been established. The downtown area was platted in 1905.  Businessman F. O. Stanley, “The Grand Old Man of Estes Park,” funded road improvements, helped organize a bank, sold electricity, and donated property for the growing town.  His stately Stanley Hotel, which opened in 1909, still stands watch over the community.

The town was incorporated in 1917, just two years after Rocky Mountain National Park was established.  Since that time, the Estes Park area has continued to grow.  The town served as construction headquarters for the Colorado-Big Thompson Reclamation Project, which transports irrigation water from the western side of the Continental Divide to the eastern plains.  The area has weathered two large floods: the Big Thompson flood of 1976, and the Lawn Lake flood of 1982. Cleanup efforts from the Lawn Lake Flood spurred a period of urban renewal and earned the town the nickname “Gutsiest Little Town in Colorado.”