Trail Ridge Road is the name for the stretch of U.S. Highway 34 that traverses

Rocky Mountain National Park Rocky Mountain National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States located approximately northwest of Denver in north-central Colorado, within the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The park is s ...

from

Estes Park, Colorado Estes Park () is a statutory town in Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 5,904 at the 2020 United States census. Estes Park is a part of the Fort Collins, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range Urb ...

in the east to

Grand Lake, Colorado The Town of Grand Lake is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Statutory town, statutory town located in Grand County, Colorado, Grand County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 410 at the 2020 United States census. History Estab ...

in the west. Together with the connecting Beaver Meadow Road ( U.S. Highway 36), Trail Ridge Road forms the Trail Ridge Road/Beaver Meadow National Scenic Byway, an

All-American Road A National Scenic Byway is a road recognized by the United States Department of Transportation for one or more of six "intrinsic qualities": archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and scenic. The program was established by Co ...

. With a high point at elevation, Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuous paved road in North America. The higher portion of Trail Ridge Road is closed from October to May.

Route description

From Kawuneeche Visitor Center at the park's Grand Lake Entrance, Trail Ridge Road follows the North Fork of the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

north through the

Kawuneeche Valley Kawuneeche Valley, also known as Kawuneeche or Coyote Valley, is a marshy valley of the Colorado River near its beginning. It is located on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The axis of the valley runs almost directly no ...

. There are several trailheads along this section of the road, notably the Colorado River Trailhead, which is the western terminus of the road segment closed during the winter. The road crosses the

Continental Divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...

at Milner Pass (elev. ) and reaches a maximum elevation of , near

Fall River Pass Autumn, also known as fall (especially in US & Canada), is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March ( Southern Hemispher ...

(elev. ). Near the highest point on the road is another pass, Iceberg Pass (elev. ). According to construction contracts and park maintenance files, the east end of the road is located at the Fall River entrance, however some guides list Deer Ridge Junction as the east end. Trail Ridge is a high, flat spur range extending east from the main range of the Rockies between Fall River in the North and the

Big Thompson River The Big Thompson River is a tributary of the South Platte River, approximately long, in the U.S. state of Colorado. Originating in Forest Canyon in Rocky Mountain National Park, the river flows into Lake Estes in the town of Estes Park and ...

in the South. The road follows Trail Ridge from the Fall River Pass near Alpine Visitor Center to the Deer Ridge Junction.

Climate

History

Trail Ridge had been used by Native Americans to cross the mountains between their home lands in the west and hunting areas on the east side. Arapahoe Indians called the trail located on the ridge as "taienbaa" ("Where the Children Walked") because it was so steep that children could not be carried, but had to walk. The

Ute tribe Ute () are an Indigenous people of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau in present-day Utah, western Colorado, and northern New Mexico.Pritkzer''A Native American Encyclopedia'' p. 242 Historically, their territory also included parts of Wyomi ...

crossing the mountains at Forest Canyon Pass marked their route with stone

cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...

s. The present park Ute Trail follows partially that ancient route. On the west side, about 1880, a

wagon A wagon (or waggon) is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by Working animal#Draft animals, draft animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people. Wagons are i ...

road was constructed along the

from the town of Grand Lake to the mining camps of Lulu City and Gaskill. The camps were abandoned after a few years when short-lived mining boom ended and later the road was used only occasionally by hunters and tourists. Trail Ridge Road map north

Fall River Road was the first road into the park's high country. It opened in 1921 and quickly proved inadequate for motor travel as a single-track road with steep grades (up to 16%), tight curves and a short annual season due to snowpack. Construction began in 1929 and was complete to Fall River Pass by July 1932, with a maximum grade of 7%. The road was complete through the Kawuneeche Valley to Grand Lake in 1938. The route followed what was known to local

Arapaho The Arapaho ( ; , ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho bands formed t ...

Indians as the Dog Trail. Internal opposition to the construction of a road through the park's

alpine tundra Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high elevation, with an associated harsh climate. As the latitude of a location approaches the poles, the threshold elevation for alpine tundra gets ...

was overruled by

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

director Horace Albright, who wished to encourage park visitation. The road was designed to intrude as little as possible into the landscape, in accordance with Park Service design principles. Hidden Valley (or Ski Estes Park) was a local ski area attraction from 1955 – 1991, off of Trail Ridge Road, now defunct.

References

External links

Rocky Mountain National Park

Trail Ridge Road/Beaver Meadow Road Overview
on the National Scenic Byways website
Trail Ridge Road
on the Colorado Scenic Byways website * {{coord, 40.4177, -105.7467, dim:50000_region:US-CO_type:pass, name=Trail Ridge Road Summit, Colorado, USA, display=title Colorado scenic drives Transportation in Grand County, Colorado Transportation in Larimer County, Colorado All-American Roads National Register of Historic Places in Rocky Mountain National Park Toll roads in Colorado U.S. Route 34 Roads on the National Register of Historic Places in Colorado Estes Park, Colorado Historic American Engineering Record in Colorado National Register of Historic Places in Larimer County, Colorado

Route description

Climate

History

See also

References

External links