Rocky Mountain National Park, established in 1915 in north-central Colorado, protects a dramatic stretch of the Rocky Mountains including over 100 named peaks exceeding 3,300 metres, its terrain ranging from montane forest to alpine tundra found nowhere else in the contiguous United States at such accessible elevation. Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous paved highway in the country, climbs to over 3,700 metres within the park, its construction beginning in 1929 and requiring years of painstaking work at high altitude before finally opening in 1932, engineering that remains impressive given the technology available at the time.
The park sits directly on the Continental Divide, the ridge line separating rivers flowing toward the Pacific from those flowing toward the Atlantic, a single point of high ground from which rainfall’s ultimate destination diverges entirely depending on which side it happens to fall.
A Landscape Still Being Carved by Ice and Water
Rocky Mountain National Park’s dramatic valleys were substantially carved by glaciers during past ice ages, and a small number of glaciers remain active within the park today, their slow retreat over recent decades offering a visible, ongoing record of changing climate conditions at high altitude. The park’s alpine tundra, found above roughly 3,500 metres, covers about a third of its total area, an ecosystem more commonly associated with Arctic latitudes than the American West, supporting plant life adapted to genuinely extreme, short growing seasons.
Rocky Mountain National Park is home to substantial elk herds, their autumn mating season, when bulls bugle loudly to attract mates and warn off rivals, drawing visitors specifically to witness the dramatic seasonal display each September and October.
Painting Peaks Above the Treeline
Rocky Mountain National Park’s jagged peaks rising above alpine tundra give a watercolourist dramatic elevation and crisp mountain light to work with. We’ve captured that character in our own Rocky Mountain National Park Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Colorado for a wall at home.
Split by a single ridge deciding which ocean its water eventually reaches, Rocky Mountain National Park remains a landscape where geography still visibly does its work.