Taking a Drive Through Rocky Mountain National Park
Dates
1915 - Opening of Rocky Mountain National Park
1916 - First attendance tally
1917 - First car tally
1920 - Attendance tally; Fall River Road Opens
1932 - Trail Ridge Road Opens
1940 - 1955 - Attendance Increases
Context
Rocky Mountain National Park was massively popular from its opening day in 1915, and the age of the automobile meant that visitation increased rapidly from its earliest years. In 1916, the park admitted roughly 51,000 visitors, and only four years later 240,966. This rapid increase is at least partly due to rising automotive use, with about 20,000 cars entering the park in 1917 alone (Buchholtz, 1983). Although the park has a notable history of focusing on natural preservation, it always catered to car travel with its extensive road system (NPS, 2015). Enos Mill, one of Rocky Mountain's founding figures, predicted that the dominant way for people to experience the park would be by automobile (Louter, 2006). Car culture shaped the layout of Rocky Mountain National Park, and the openings of Fall River Road in 1920 and Trail Ridge Road in 1932 allowed for extensive vehicle access to the interior. Visitors often embarked on two-to-three hour drives along these roads to view the natural scenery in comfort (Buchholtz, 1983).
Although World War II led to the first decline in visitation since the opening day, a massive surge in post-war patronage exacerbated crowd problems beyond any immediately practical solution. The infrastructure of Rocky Mountain National Park proved increasingly unable to handle large numbers of guests, approximately 1.6 million of whom visited in 1956 (Buchholtz, 1983).
Automobile ownership rapidly grew in America after the war, and families increasingly used their new vehicles to visit parks. Annual attendance throughout the entire National Park System doubled in fifteen years from 25 million visitors in 1940 to 50 million by 1955, and the trend showed no sign of slowing down.
Rocky Mountain National Park’s tiny staff lost fourteen of its twenty-four members to conscription in World War II and was slow to meet the post-war boom in visitation and car travel (Bzdek, 2010). By 1950, ninety percent of National Park guests arrived via automobile. Road upkeep was a perennial challenge even before the war, and Rocky Mountain National Park’s antiquated system grew increasingly unable to accommodate the rising numbers of drivers.
The large numbers also took their toll on the park’s rustic facilities and the delicate wilderness areas themselves. Narrow, decayed roads led to heavy traffic, and visitors’ tendencies to drive their cars wherever they pleased disrupted the flow of the park and destroyed the natural landscape. Park planners and supervisors had to improve visitor mobility in order to mitigate further degradation. Although Rocky Mountain National Park had long touted itself as an “outdoor museum with unsurpassed accessibility,” the unfortunate reality was that the park needed a massive overhaul of its existing roads and buildings if it was going to continue to uphold its preservationist philosophy with any credibility (Buchholtz, 1983).
