Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park, established in 1915 in north-central Colorado, protects a stretch of the Front Range crowned by dozens of peaks above 12,000 feet, including 14,259-foot Longs Peak. The Continental Divide runs through it, and the park preserves a full sweep of mountain country — montane forest, glacier-carved valleys, alpine lakes, and broad expanses of treeless alpine tundra above the timberline.

The park's Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous paved road in the country, climbs above 12,000 feet across the tundra, putting the high alpine world within reach of ordinary visitors and helping draw more than four million of them a year. Elk, bighorn sheep, and moose roam the meadows, and the headwaters of the Colorado River rise on the park's western side.

• Colorado
  The highest state, crown of the Rocky Mountains located in
• The Rocky Mountains
  The backbone of western North America protects