North Park is a high, sparsely populated basin (approximately in elevation) in the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico ...

in north central

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It encompasses a wide valley in Jackson County rimmed by mountain ranges at the headwaters of the

North Platte River The North Platte River is a major tributary of the Platte River and is approximately long, counting its many curves.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed March 21, 2011 In a ...

and several smaller tributaries, including the Michigan River, Illinois River, and

Canadian River The Canadian River is the longest tributary of the Arkansas River in the United States. It is about long, starting in Colorado and traveling through New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, and Oklahoma. The drainage area is about .Middle Park and South Park respectively. The basin opens out northward into

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the s ...

, in the direction of flow of the North Platte. On the east side, it is rimmed by the Medicine Bow Mountains, the

Never Summer Mountains The Never Summer Mountains are a mountain range in the Rocky Mountains in north central Colorado in the United States consisting of seventeen named peaks. The range is located along the northwest border of Rocky Mountain National Park, forming t ...

and Rabbit Ears Range to the south, and the Park Range to the west. The continental divide rims the Park along the south and west. The valley along the Illinois River is the location of the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge. The largest community in the valley is

Walden ''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...

, the Jackson County seat, that sits near the middle of the valley near the confluence of the Michigan and Illinois rivers. Smaller communities in the valley include the unincorporated hamlets of Gould and

Rand The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is finan ...

. The primary economic activities in the valley are

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...

ranching and

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...

harvesting, although the latter has declined substantially in recent decades. In the 1940s, wolves were nearly extirpated from the conterminous United States. Wolves were reintroduced in the northern Rocky Mountains in the 1990s and since at least 2014, solitary wolves have entered Colorado. Wolves have migrated in from Wyoming and in 2021, a pack began killing cattle. The valley is crossed east-west by State Highway 14, which enters from the east over Cameron Pass, providing a link to the

Poudre Canyon The Poudre Canyon is a narrow verdant canyon, approximately 40 mi (64 km) long, on the upper Cache la Poudre River (called the "Poudre" for short, which locals pronounce as "Pooder") in Larimer County, Colorado in the United States. Th ...

and

Fort Collins A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

. Highway 14 enters from the west over

Muddy Pass Muddy Pass may refer to: * Muddy Pass (Continental Divide) Muddy Pass (el. 8772 ft.) is a high mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado in the United States. The pass straddles the continental divide along the boundary betw ...

which provides access to Steamboat Springs, and to Middle Park in the valley of the

Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. s ...

. It is crossed north-south by State Highway 125, which enters from the north (from Wyoming) along the course of the North Platte. It enters from the south over Willow Creek Pass, providing access to the upper end of Middle Park near Granby.

Geology and mineral resources

The valley floor is underlain by

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...

sedimentary rocks that form a structural basin. The stratigraphy is similar to that in adjacent basins such as the

Green River Basin Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combina ...

to the west and the

Denver Basin The Denver Basin, variously referred to as the Julesburg Basin, Denver-Julesburg Basin (after Julesburg, Colorado), or the D-J Basin, is a geologic structural basin centered in eastern Colorado in the United States, but extending into southeast W ...

to the east. Information provided on

Fish and Wildlife Service The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or FWS) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats. The mission of the agency is "working with othe ...

plaques at an overlook southeast of

indicates that the area was formerly a shallow sea, and that fossilized shark teeth can be found in the area. Petroleum has long been produced from anticlinal traps of the Muddy Sandstone (

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

) at North McCallum and South McCallum oil fields. In 2007, North Park produced 96 thousand barrels of oil and 1.3 billion cubic feet (BCF) of natural gas from 153 wells. In 2008

EOG Resources EOG Resources, Inc. is an American energy company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. It is organized in Delaware and headquartered in the Heritage Plaza building in Houston, Texas. The company is ranked 186th on the Fortune 500 and 337th on t ...

announced great success in drilling and completing horizontal oil wells in the Cretaceous

Niobrara Formation The Niobrara Formation , also called the Niobrara Chalk, is a geologic formation in North America that was deposited between 87 and 82 million years ago during the Coniacian, Santonian, and Campanian stages of the Late Cretaceous. It is com ...

."EOG expands North Park horizontal program," ''Rocky Mountain Oil Journal'', 27 June 2008, p.4.

Industrial city

In 1914 Rev Hiram Vrooman proposed the establishment of a

utopian community An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork from the start. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, relig ...

in North Park. It was a co-operative project in which it was envisioned that all the various industries and businesses would be united in a single management, with the "coworker citizens" receiving equitable recompense for their work. They owned the rights on 7,000 acres, 3,000 acres in Sedgwick County and a further 800 acres at Ute Pass. They also owned a pickling factory in

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

References

External links

Visit North Park
{{coord, 40.81, N, 106.30, W, display=title Geologic provinces of Colorado Valleys of Colorado Landforms of Jackson County, Colorado

Geology and mineral resources

Industrial city

See also

References

External links