"In years to come when I am asleep beneath the pines, thousands of families will find rest and hope in this park." -- Enos Mills
In the years before 1915, when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Rocky Mountain National Park our nation's tenth park, the area had already been witness to several changes in human history. The area of the park, sometimes called RMNP by locals, had been occupied by Native tribes as far back as the Clovis culture around 10,000BC. The ancestors of the modern Ute, Apache, and Arapaho tribes all roamed the mountain passes of the region, hunting the abundant Elk population that remains a signature of the park today. As European settlers moved in to the area in search of gold and homesteading, they found something of greater value - the waters of the Colorado River, which they diverted in part back to the plains cities developing on Colorado's eastern Plains, setting up a struggle for control of water that also continues to this day.
And so it was that in 1909 Enos Mills, now legendary local guide and naturalist, began a tireless campaign to lobby for the creation of Rocky Mountain National Park, to protect it from the seemingly inevitable development that was encroaching on the area.
Now a World Biosphere Reserve, the park showcases the changing face of our parks while serving as a natural laboratory for biodiversity due to its range of climate zones.
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