Town is popular summer resort and the location of the headquarters for Rocky Mountain National Park

How to Get There

Fronm Denver, CO (66 mi): Take N Broadway to W Colfax Ave. Take US-36 W to MacGregor Ave in Estes Park. Continue on MacGregor Ave. Drive to Park Ln.

Overview

Estes Park is a town in Larimer County, Colorado, and is popular summer resort and the location of the headquarters for Rocky Mountain National Park. Estes Park lies along the Big Thompson River. Landmarks include The Stanley Hotel and The Baldpate Inn. The town overlooks Lake Estes and Olympus Dam.

Estes Park's outskirts include The Stanley Hotel, built in 1909. An example of Edwardian opulence, the building had Stephen King as a guest, inspiring him to change the locale for his novel The Shining from an amusement park to the Stanley's fictional stand-in, the Overlook Hotel. Olympus Dam, on the outskirts of the town, is the dam that creates Lake Estes, a lake which is the site for boating and swimming in Estes Park. There are some hotels on the shore, including the Estes Park Resort.

Sarbjit Bahga, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons ; Image Size Adjusted

Estes Park sits at an elevation of 7,522 feet (2,293 m) on the front range of the Rocky Mountains at the eastern entrance of the Rocky Mountain National Park. Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous highway in the United States, runs from Estes Park westward through Rocky Mountain National Park, reaching Grand Lake over the continental divide.

Three million tourists visit Rocky Mountain National Park each year; most use Estes Park as their base.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Estes Park, Colorado", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0