The first glimpse of the park never fails to arouse the dullest traveler; and those who frequently behold it from the entrance find the scene as welcome as an old song.
 Estes Park has a length of twelve miles and a varied width from one to three miles. Its outline is beautifully irregular–being broken by invading ridges, between which the park swells out into glades, basins and glens.
 It is an artistic realm. From the entrance one looks down on an irregular depression surrounded by high, forest-walled mountains–this depression an undulating green meadow with great pines sprinkled over it. Some spaces are without a tree and others covered with a grove. A few rocky points and cliffs picturesquely arise in the midst; lines of aspen and willow trim the brooks; and the Big Thompson River, sweeping in great folds from side to side, goes majestically across it.
 The continental divide forms the western boundary, and for several miles the great, jagged snowy range stands splendidly above it. Great ridges covered with a dark green plush of pines, comes down into the park from the range. One of these ridges, Cathedral, is royally crowned with nature’s statuary–domes, cliffs, spires and far-reaching granite columns.
 At the southwest corner of the park–the Glacier Gorge country–is a section destined to become as famous as the Yosemite. Now it is an almost untrodden wild. This region consists of several canyons lying between the vertebra of the high, broken and snowy continental divide.  Lock Vale is the most noted one. The lower portion of this canyon is ice-sculpted–and the upper portion, deep and rough, contains alpinic lakes, silken meadows, snow banks, ice fields, colored cliffs, tree clumps and wild cataracts that “leap in glory”.
 The park has the beautiful and the sublime. In it bees hum and beavers build; the wood thrush, unseen, gives a silvery melody to the forest depth, and butterflies with painted wings circle the sunny air. Mountain Sheep with classic pose watch from the cliffs, eagles soar the blue, speckled beauties sprinkle the clear streams and the varied voice of the coyote echoes when the afterglow falls.
 Beautiful wild flowers flourish and are mostly of bright color. Each season nearly a thousand varieties perfume the air and open their “bannered bosoms to the sun”. They crown the streams, wave on the hills, shine in woodland vistas and color the snow edge. Daisies, orchids, tiger lilies, blue fringed gentians, wild red roses, mariposas, adorn every space and nook.
 Up between the domes on top of Cathedral Ridge is Gem Lake. It is only a little crystal pool set in ruddy granite with a few evergreens on its rocky shore. It is one of the rare gems of lake world.
 Albert Bierstadt used to paint and dream on the shores of a lake which now bears his name. Bierstadt Lake has twenty acres of clear, elliptical surface in the midst of great woods. Between golden pond lilies its enameled surface splendidly reflects clouds and sky, peak and snow field.
 Chasm Lake is in a deep canyon with 3,000 feet of Long’s Peak granite standing over it. The lake is a quarter of a mile in length and is deep, clear and cold. It is 11,000 feet above sea level. Its shores are piled with ice, snow and great fragments that gravity has torn from above. About the lake conies, ptarmigan–Arctic Quail–live, and many beautiful varieties of sub-Arctic flora grow. On the whole, the scene is awesome and sublime. There are not many places where one can gaze up a natural 3,000 foot wall.
 Many glaciers have left their mark on the Park mountains. Some canyons are polished or eroded. There is much glacial debris, scores of lateral, medial and terminal moraines. There are moraines 500 feet high and a mile in length composed entirely of debris and boulders–the flotsam and jetsam of a glacier. Those interested in the Ice Age will find not only an excellent variety of remains and records here–but glaciers also. Hallett and Sprague glaciers, with their masses of greenish crevassed ice sliding slowly down their slopes, are worth long journeys to behold.
 A mention of Wind River Canyon may suggest some of the delights that are stored in and around a score of other canyons and gulches. Down this gulch comes a clear, cool stream–leaping, sliding, splashing and reposing in fern-fringed pool. For a distance the stream will pass through grassy, flowery opens, then through an Aspen grove or Willow thicket, between high, rusty cliffs, and beneath beautiful, stately shining clumps of silver Spruce.
 There is a wonderful fascination in scaling mountain peaks. The park mountains offer a variety of forms for those who, for pleasure, glory of learning, indulge in the gymnastics of mountain climbing.
 Rugged Long’s Peak is a perpetual challenge to those who go up to the sky on mountains–and there are not many peaks which require more effort from the climber; and few, indeed can reward him with so far-spreading or such a magnificent view.
 The summer climate is cool and refreshing. It is an excellent place for the weak to get strong–or the weary to rest. To all, it offers strength, calm, hope, beauty and grandeur.
 He who in Estes Park spends time by peak and stream, breathing the rosiny air, drinking the pure water–holding communion with nature–seeing the bright sun and the blue sky lingering over scenes and sunsets, listening in shadowy forests of the melodious tones of the Wood Thrush; or who feels a strong longing when the lonely moon gives light, mystery and shadow, or sleeps under the wide and starry sky–he who thus, for a time, enriches existence, will go away from its pictures to hate less, with existence extended–and life sweetened and intensified. 

Copyright 2000 by Enos Mills Cabin, Temporal Mechanical Press.
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