1.
Trail Ridge Road
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Trail Ridge Road is the name for a stretch of U. S. Highway 34 that traverses Rocky Mountain National Park from Estes Park, Colorado in the east to Grand Lake, Colorado in the west. It requires access to Rocky Mountain National Park even for local residents, from Kawuneeche Visitor Center at the parks Grand Lake Entrance, Trail Ridge Road follows the North Fork of the Colorado River north through the Kawuneeche Valley. There are several trailheads along this section of the road, notably the Colorado River Trailhead, the road crosses the Continental Divide at Milner Pass and reaches a maximum elevation of 12,183 ft, near Fall River Pass. Near the highest point on the road is another pass, Iceberg Pass, according to construction contracts and park maintenance files the east end of the road is located at the Fall River Entrance, however some guides state that earlier - at Deer Ridge Junction. Trail Ridge is a flat spur range extending east from the main range of the Rockies between Fall River in the North and the Big Thompson River in the South. The road follows Trail Ridge from the Fall River Pass near Alpine Visitor Center to the Deer Ridge Junction, Fall River Road was the first road into the parks high country. It opened in 1921 and quickly proved inadequate for motor travel as a road with steep grades, tight curves. Construction began in 1929 and was complete to Fall River Pass by July 1932, the road was complete through the Kawuneeche Valley to Grand Lake in 1938. The route followed what was known to local Arapaho Indians as the Dog Trail, internal opposition to the construction of a road through the parks alpine tundra was overruled by National Park Service director Horace Albright, who wished to encourage park visitation. The road was designed to intrude as little as possible into the landscape, hidden Valley was a local ski area attraction from 1955 -1991, off of Trail Ridge Road, now in defunct status. Trail Ridge had been used by Native Americans to cross the mountains between their lands in the west and hunting areas on the east side. Arapahoe Indians called the trail located on the ridge as taienbaa because it was so steep that children could not be carried, the Ute tribe crossing the mountains at Forest Canyon Pass marked their route with stone cairns. The present park Ute Trail follows partially that ancient route, on the west side, about 1880, a wagon road was constructed along the Kawuneeche Valley from the town of Grand Lake to the mining camps of Lulu City and Gaskil. The camps were abandoned after a few years when short-lived mining boom ended and later the road was used occasionally by hunters
2.
Summit
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A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a maximum in elevation. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak, and zenith are synonymous, the UIAA definition is that a summit is independent if it has a prominence of 30 metres or more, it is a mountain if it has a prominence of at least 300 metres. This can be summarised as follows, A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top, Summit may also refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route. In many parts of the western United States, the term refers to the highest point along a road, highway. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit while the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit, geoid Hill List of highest mountains Maxima and minima Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder
3.
Topographic prominence
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It is a measure of the independence of a summit. A peaks key col is a point on this contour line. By convention, the prominence of Mount Everest, the Earths highest mountain, is taken to equal the elevation of its summit above sea level, if the peaks prominence is P metres, to get from the summit to any higher terrain one must descend at least P metres. Together with the convention for Mount Everest, this implies that the prominence of any island or continental highpoint is equal to its elevation above sea level, for every ridge connecting the peak to higher terrain, find the lowest point on the ridge. The key col is defined as the highest of these cols, the prominence is the difference between the elevation of the peak and the elevation of the key col. The following mental exercise may illustrate the meaning of topographic prominence, imagine you are standing at the top of a peak and imagine that an imaginary sea level rises to your feet. Now slowly lower the sea level and an imaginary island appears beneath your feet. Your island will grow and will merge with other islands that emerge, the parent peak may be either close or far from the subject peak. The summit of Mount Everest is the parent peak of Aconcagua at a distance of 17,755 km, the key col may also be close or far from the subject peak. The key col for Aconcagua is the Bering Strait at a distance of 13,655 km, the key col for the South Summit of Mount Everest is about 100 m distant. Prominence is interesting to many mountaineers because it is a measurement that is strongly correlated with the subjective significance of a summit. Peaks with low prominences are either subsidiary tops of some higher summit or relatively insignificant independent summits, peaks with high prominences tend to be the highest points around and are likely to have extraordinary views. Only summits with a sufficient degree of prominence are regarded as independent mountains, for example, the worlds second-highest mountain is K2. While Mount Everests South Summit is taller than K2, it is not considered an independent mountain because it is a subsummit of the main summit, many lists of mountains take topographic prominence as a criterion for inclusion, or cutoff. John and Anne Nuttalls The Mountains of England and Wales uses a cutoff of 15 m, in the contiguous United States, the famous list of fourteeners uses a cutoff of 300 ft /91 m. Also in the U. S.2000 feet of prominence has become a threshold that signifies that a peak has major stature. This generates lists of peaks ranked by prominence, which are different from lists ranked by elevation. Such lists tend to emphasize isolated high peaks, such as range or island high points, one advantage of a prominence-ranked list is that it needs no cutoff, since a peak with high prominence is automatically an independent peak
4.
Topographic isolation
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The topographic isolation of a summit is the minimum great-circle distance to a point of equal elevation, representing a radius of dominance in which the peak is the highest point. It can be calculated for small hills and islands as well as for major mountain peaks, the following sortable table lists the Earths 40 most topographically isolated summits. The nearest peak to Germanys highest mountain, the 2, 962-metre-high Zugspitze, the distance between the Zugspitze and this contour is 25.8 km, the Zugspitze is thus the highest peak for a radius of 25.8 km around. Its isolation is thus 25.8 km, because there are no higher mountains than Mount Everest, it has no definitive isolation. Many sources list its isolation as the circumference of the earth over the poles or – questionably, after Mount Everest the Aconcagua, highest mountain of the American continents, has the greatest isolation of all mountains. There is no land for 16,534 kilometres when its height is first exceeded by Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush. Mont Blanc is the highest mountain of the Alps, the geographically nearest higher mountains are all in the Caucasus. The Kukurtlu, which rises near the Elbrus, is the peak for Mont Blanc. com Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia peakbagger. com peaklist. org peakware. com World Mountain Encyclopedia summitpost. org
5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
6.
Colorado
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Colorado is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,540,545 on July 1,2016, the state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28,1861, Colorado is nicknamed the Centennial State because it became a state in the same year as the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado, residents of the state are properly known as Coloradans, although the term Coloradoan has been used archaically and lives on in the title of Fort Collins newspaper, the Coloradoan. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado, Colorado is the only U. S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County, Colorado and this point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state, is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. A little less than one half of the area of Colorado is flat, East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet. The Colorado plains were mostly prairies, but they have many patches of forests, buttes. Eastern Colorado is presently covered in farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches annually, corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. Irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, however, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as agriculture, eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches. Roughly 70% of Colorados population resides along the edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The Front Range includes Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley and other townships, on the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado are the cities of Grand Junction, Durango, and Montrose
7.
Rocky Mountain National Park
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The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The eastern and westerns slopes of the Continental Divide run directly through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the northwestern region. The main features of the park include mountains, alpine lakes, the Rocky Mountain National Park Act was signed by then–President Woodrow Wilson on January 26,1915, establishing the park boundaries and protecting the area for future generations. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the main route, named Trail Ridge Road. In 1976, UNESCO designated the park as one of the first World Biosphere Reserves, in 2016, more than four and a half million recreational visitors entered the park, which is an increase of about nine percent from the prior year. The history of Rocky Mountain National Park began when Paleo-Indians traveled along what is now Trail Ridge Road to hunt, Ute and Arapaho people subsequently hunted and camped in the area. In 1820, the Long Expedition, led by Stephen H. Long for whom Longs Peak was named, approached the Rockies via the Platte River. Settlers began arriving in the mid-1800s, displacing the Native Americans who mostly left the area voluntarily by 1860, lulu City, Dutchtown, and Gaskill in the Never Summer Mountains were established in the 1870s when prospectors came in search of gold and silver. The boom ended by 1883 with miners deserting their claims, the railroad reached Lyons, Colorado in 1881 and the Big Thompson Canyon Road—a section of U. S. Route 34 from Loveland to Estes Park—was completed in 1904. The 1920s saw a boom in building lodges and roads in the park, prominent individuals in the effort to create a national park included Enos Mills from the Estes Park area, James Grafton Rogers from Denver, and J. Horace McFarland of Pennsylvania. The national park was established on January 26,1915, Precambrian metamorphic rock formed the core of the North American continent during the Precambrian eon 4. 5–1 billion years ago. During the Paleozoic era, western North America was submerged beneath a sea, with a seabed composed of limestone. Concurrently, in the period from 500–300 million years ago, the region began to sink while lime, eroded granite produced sand particles that formed strata—layers of sediment—in the sinking basin. About 300 million years ago, the land was uplifted creating the ancestral Rocky Mountains, fountain Formation was deposited during the Pennsylvanian period of the Paleozoic era, 290–296 million years ago. Over the next 150 million years, the uplifted, continued to erode. Wind, gravity, rainwater, snow, and glacial ice eroded the mountains over geologic time scales. The Ancestral Rockies were eventually buried under subsequent strata, the Pierre Shale formation was deposited during the Paleogene and Cretaceous periods about 70 million years ago. The region was covered by a deep sea—the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway—which deposited massive amounts of shale on the seabed
8.
Larimer County, Colorado
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Larimer County is one of the 64 counties in the U. S. state of Colorado. As of the 2010 census, the population was 299,630, the county seat and most populous city is Fort Collins. The county was named for William Larimer, Jr. the founder of Denver, Larimer County comprises the Fort Collins, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is located at the end of the Front Range. Larimer County was created in 1861 as one of seventeen counties in the Colorado Territory, however. Controversy existed as to whether Larimer County ended at the Medicine Bow Range or at the Continental Divide thirty miles farther west. An 1886 Colorado Supreme Court decision set the boundary at the Continental Divide, the mining boom almost entirely passed the county by. It would take the introduction of irrigation to the region in the 1860s to bring the first widespread settlement to the area, in 1828 William H. Ashley ascended the Cache la Poudre River on his way to the Green River in present-day Utah. The river itself received its name in the middle 1830s from an incident in which French-speaking trappers hid gunpowder along its banks. In 1848 a group of Cherokee crossed through the county following the North Fork of the Poudre to the Laramie Plains on their way to California along a route that became known as the Cherokee Trail. The first U. S. settlers arrived that year in a party led by Antoine Janis from Fort Laramie. Nearly simultaneously, Mariano Medina established Fort Namaqua along the Big Thompson River just west of present-day Loveland, the first irrigation canals were established along the Poudre in the 1860s. In 1861, Laporte was designated as the first county seat after the organization of the Colorado Territory, in 1862, the United States Army established an outpost near Laporte that was designated as Camp Collins. A devastating flood in June 1864 wiped out the outpost, forcing the Army to seek a better location, at the urging of Joseph Mason, who had settled along the Poudre in 1860, the Army relocated its post downstream adjacent to Masons land along the Overland stage route. The site of the new post became the nucleus of the town of Fort Collins, by that time, Mason and others had convinced the Colorado Territorial Legislature to designate the new town as the county seat. Cameron and other members of the Greeley Colony established the Fort Collins Agricultural Colony, one of the primary goals of the early citizens of the county was the courting of railroads. County residents were disappointed when the Denver Pacific Railroad bypassed the county in 1870 in favor of Greeley, the first railroad finally arrived in the county in 1877 when the Colorado Central Railroad extended a line north from Golden via Longmont to Cheyenne. The town council of Fort Collins designated right-of-way through the center of town for the line, along the new railroad sprung up the new platted towns of Loveland and Berthoud, named respectively after the president and chief surveyor of the Colorado Central
9.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
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