ving been arbitrarily drawn
through the range at a point of sublimity, throwing out of the park the
St. Vrain Glaciers which form one of the region's wildest and noblest
spectacles, and Arapaho Peak and its glaciers which in several respects
constitute a climax in Rocky Mountain scenery.

Thus carelessly cropped, despoiled of the completeness which Nature
meant it to possess, nevertheless the Rocky Mountain National Park is a
reservation of distinguished charm and beauty. It straddles the
continental divide, which bisects it lengthwise, north and south. The
western slopes rise gently to the divide; at the divide, the eastern
front drops in a precipice several thousand feet deep, out of which
frosts, rains, glaciers and streams have gouged gigantic gulfs and
granite-bound vales and canyons, whose intervening cliffs are
battlemented walls and monoliths.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by Wiswall Brothers_

ESTES PARK PLATEAU, LOOKING EAST

Showing the village and the foothills, which are remnants of a former
great range, now almost washed away by erosion; Rocky Mountain National
Park]

[Illustration: _From a photograph by Wiswall Brothers_

FRONT RANGE OF THE ROCKIES FROM BIERSTADT LAKE

From right to left: Flattop Mountain, Tyndall Glacier, Hallett Peak,
Otis Peak, Andrews Glacier]

As if these features were not enough to differentiate this national
park from any other, Nature has provided still another element of
popularity and distinction. East of this splendid rampart spreads a
broad area of rolling plateau, carpeted with wild flowers, edged and
dotted with luxuriant groves of pine, spruce, fir, and aspen, and
diversified with hills and craggy mountains, carved rock walls, long
forest-grown moraines and picturesque ravines; a stream-watered,
lake-dotted summer and winter pleasure paradise of great size, bounded
on the north and west by snow-spattered monsters, and on the east and
south by craggy wooded foothills, only less in size, and no less in
beauty than the leviathans of the main range. Here is summer living room
enough for several hundred thousand sojourners from whose comfortable
camps and hotels the wild heart of the Rockies may be visited afoot or
on horseback between early breakfast and late supper at home.

This plateau has been known to summer visitors for many years under the
titles of several settlements; Moraine Park, Horseshoe Park, and Longs
Peak, each had its hotels long before the nati