Rocky Mountain National Park - Time Line of Historic Events (U.S. National Park Service)

10,000 BC	Clovis Paleoindian hunters enter the park as the glaciers retreat.
6,000 BC to 150 AD	Archaic hunter-gatherers occupy park in the spring and summers. These are probably Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples who are the ancestors to many tribes in the western United States (Ute, Comanche, Goshiute, Shoshone).
1200-1300	Ute enter North Park and Middle Park and Rocky Mountain National Park.
1500	Apache are in the high country, including the park.
1800?	Arapaho make first appearance in the park.
1803	Louisiana Purchase includes land that would become the park.
1806	Zebulon Pike explores southern part of state, Lewis and Clark up the Missouri to Oregon – they do not explore Colorado.
1820	Stephen A. Long Expedition on the plains and are first non Indians to see Longs Peak. Records of his expedition provide some information about the park.
1840	Kit Carson and other fur trappers go up the Grand (Colorado) River possibly as far as La Poudre Pass. He also may have been in the Tahosa Valley in the 1860s.
1843	Rufus B. Sage is first explorer to enter east side of park and write about it.
1858	Joel Estes enters what is now Estes Park and starts a ranch.
1858	Philip Crawshaw builds a cabin in what is now Grand Lake on the west side of the park.
1868	John Wesley Powell, William Byers (Rocky Mountain News) and others make the first ascent of Longs Peak.
1870?	The Pole Hill stage road connects Estes Park with Loveland – all day trip one way.
1871	First woman to climb Longs Peak was Addie Alexander in August, followed by a Miss Jane Bartlett a few weeks later, and then by well-known lecturer and author Anna E. Dickinson in 1873.
1871	Clarence King’s “U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel” enters the park.
1872	Yellowstone becomes first National Park in Wyoming and Montana.
1873	MacGregor Ranch is established north of the town of Estes Park.
1874	Stage line brings visitors from Lyons via a road up the North St Vrain River. U.S. Highway 36 now parallels the route.
1874	Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden’s “U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories” enters the park.
1874	Abner Sprague homesteads in Moraine Park and builds Sprague’s Ranch (later Stead’s Ranch) and establishes tourism and dude ranching in the park.
1874	John Hupp Homesteads in Upper Beaver Meadows.
1876	State of Colorado created by Congress - "The Centennial State."
1874 – 1886	Mining on the west side of the park; Lulu City and Gaskill Towns established
1880	McGraw Ranch aka Indian Head Ranch established
1880	Greeley, Salt Lake & Pacific Railroad survey a route through the park.
1895 – 1935	Grand Ditch is built to bring water from Never Summer Range across La Poudre Pass and down the Cache La Poudre to the plains for agriculture.
1896 – 1902	Mining on the east side of the park (Eugenia and Meeker Mines)
1906	Antiquities Act passed protects archeological sites and allows the president to declare National Monuments
1906	Road up the Big Thompson River (now Highway 34) completed.
1905	Stanley Hotel constructed in Estes Park.
1906	Colorado & Grand River Railroad surveys a line in the Kawuneeche Valley.
1907	Squeaky Bob Wheeler opens the Hotel de Hardscrabble (later known as the Phantom Valley Ranch) in the Kawuneeche Valley for tourists.
1907	Enos Mills, James Grafton Rodgers, and others begin lobbying for the establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park.
1914	Arapaho pack trip provides 30 Indian names for mountains and other topographic features in the park – trip published by Oliver Toll in 1962.
1915	September 4, 1915 - Rocky Mountain National Park dedicated.
1916	Organic Act establishing the National Park Service is enacted by Congress.
1919	Grand Lake Lodge built on moraine above town.
1913 – 1920	Fall River Road constructed as first road over Continental Divide between Estes Park and Grand Lake. Replace by Trail Ridge Road; closed 1932.
1926 – 1929	Bear Lake Road of 1910 rerouted and improved to current right-of-way.
1929 – 1933	Trail Ridge Road constructed.
1933 – 1942	CCC Camps in Hollowell Park, Little Horseshoe Park, Kawuneeche Valley.
1936	Hidden Valley becomes a ski area; closed in 1992 and removed by 2002.
1936	CCC crews remodel Moraine Park Lodge into the Moraine Park Museum and build the nearby amphitheater that ushered in a new era of park interpretation and education programs.
1937 – 1947	Colorado-Big Thompson Project and Alva B. Adams tunnel completed under park.
1939	Abner Sprague becomes first park visitor to pay entrance fee. Amount unknown.
1955	National Park Service Director Conrad Worth announces Mission 66, a construction program designed to bring the National Parks into modern conditions for increasing amount of visitors.
1960	New bridge over the Big Thompson River is completed as part of Mission 66 to provide for a continuous Bear Lake Road from Trail Ridge Road to the lake, and the present Beaver Meadows Entrance is opened.
1964	Wilderness Act passed which later allows for further protection of the park.
1966	National Historic Preservation Act protects historic and prehistoric resources on federal lands.
1968	Beaver Meadows Headquarters building finished; declared National Historic Landmark in 2002 as the only building in the NPS designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright school of architecture.
1982	Lawn Lake dam collapses – flood kills 3 people and severely impacts Estes Park.
1983	NPS purchases conservation easement for MacGregor Ranch.
1987	Entrance fee increased from $2.00 to $5.00; annual passes cost $15.00
1988	McGraw Ranch purchased and buildings are remodeled and turned into a research center by 2001.
1992	Lily Lake area purchased and popular handicapped trail constructed.
1996	Entrance fee increased to $10.00.
2000	New Fall River Visitor Center opens. Congressional act required to allow private company to build visitor center outside the park, with NPS staff.
2001	Entrance fee increased to $15.00. Bear Lake Shuttle Bus system expanded
2003	Grand Ditch breach occurs.
2004	Hidden Valley reopens for winter sledding and summer picnics.
2005	Entrance fee increased to $20.00, annual pass to $35.00.
2007	Final Elk and Vegetation Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement released. The initial phase of the preferred alternative relies on a variety of conservation tools including fencing, redistribution, vegetation restoration and lethal reduction (culling). In future years, the park will, using adaptive management principles, reevaluate opportunities to use wolves or fertility control as additional tools. Record of Decision signed February 2008.