Estes Park was reachable only by a single precarious horse trail

Evidence

As I have written before, Estes Park is thirty miles from Longmount, the nearest settlement, and it can be reached on horseback only by the steep and devious track by which I came, passing through a narrow rift in the top of a precipitous ridge, 9,000 feet high, called the Devil’s Gate. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 128

Categorization

• QUESTION: What became of the Devil’s Gate route — is it still a trail or a road today? Worth checking how the access to Estes Park changed.
• SEED: An essay angle on how famous landscapes were once nearly unreachable, and how a single narrow passage shapes who gets to see a place.
• XREF: connects to: Estes Park in 1873 had only two settler families and no surveyed land — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 282; South Park’s rarefied air causes lung oppression and nosebleeds in new arrivals — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 413

Broader Connections

• Estes Park in 1873 had only two settler families and no surveyed land #qualifies (1.00) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 282
• South Park’s rarefied air causes lung oppression and nosebleeds in new arrivals #responds-to (1.00) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 413