This Blue Hollow is the first comprehensive account of the early history of Estes Park, Colorado, the "gem of the Rockies." In this enthralling narrative, James H. Pickering traces the development of Estes Park as a mountain resort community, from the time of its first recorded discovery by Joel Estes in 1859 to the establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915. Though Estes and his family stayed only briefly, others quickly followed: hunters, homesteading settlers, lumbermen, mountaineers, artists, writers, and vacationers. They came for many reasons: first for settlement,...

Rocky Mountain National Park owes its existence to the tenacity and vision of Enos Mills. The straightforward stories Mills told of his wilderness adventures with snowslides, wild beasts, and even wilder weather are exciting and fun. James Pickering, a foremost expert on the life and writing on Enos Mills, has collected the stories that truly express Mills' experiences in Colorado. The reader is transported to the turn of the 19th century as Enos Mills guides them through the Rocky Mountain wilderness.

Writer Wallace Stegner once wrote that No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered. This collection celebrates one of America s most loved places, Rocky Mountain National Park, which marks its 100th birthday in 2015. Engagement with place and the events that loom large in park history are the underlying themes that connect the thirty-three selections that make up this anthology.
Representative both in subject and approach, the selections reach back to Arapaho and pioneer times before the park was established and move forward to span its entire first century....