The
Rocky Mountain Wonderland
[iii]
The Rocky Mountain
Wonderland
By
Enos A. Mills
With Illustrations from Photographs
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge
[iv]
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ENOS A. MILLS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published April 1915
[v]
To
George Horace Lorimer
[vi]
[vii]
Preface
Colorado has one thousand peaks that risemore than two miles into the sky. Aboutone hundred and fifty of these reach up beyondthirteen thousand feet in altitude. There aremore than twice as many peaks of fourteenthousand feet in Colorado as in all the otherStates of the Union. An enormous area is entirelyabove the limits of tree-growth; but theseheights above the timber-line are far from beingbarren and lifeless. Covering these mountainswith robes of beauty are forests, lakes, meadows,brilliant flowers, moorlands, and vine-likestreams that cling to the very summits. Thisentire mountain realm is delightfully rich inplant and animal life, from the lowest meadowsto the summits of the highest peaks.
Each year the State is colored with more thanthree thousand varieties of wild flowers, cheeredby more than four hundred species of birds, andenlivened with a numerous array of other wild[viii]life. Well has it been called the "Playgroundof America." It is an enormous and splendidhanging wild garden.
This mountain State of the Union has alwaysappealed to the imagination and hascalled forth many graphic expressions. ThusColorado sought statehood from Congress underthe name of Tahosa,—"Dwellers of the Mountain-Tops."Even more of poetic suggestivenesshas the name given by an invading Indiantribe to the Arapahoes of the Continental Divide,—"Menof the Blue Sky."
I have visited on foot every part of Coloradoand have made scores of happy excursionsthrough these mountains. These outings were inevery season of the year and they brought meinto contact with the wild life of the heights inevery kind of weather. High peaks by the scorehave been climbed and hundreds of miles coveredon snowshoes. I have even followed thetrail by night, and by moonlight have enjoyedthe solemn forests, the silent lakes, the whitecascades, and the summits of the high peaks.
The greater part of this book deals with na[ix]tureand with my own experiences in the RockyMountains of Colorado. Some of the chaptersin slightly different form have been printed invarious publications. The Saturday EveningPost published "The Grizzly Bear," "WildFolk of the Mountain-Summits," "Wild MountainSheep," "As