A 1914 pack trip recorded Arapaho place names near Estes Park

The land around Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park carried Arapaho names long before the towns and the park existed, and one effort to record that knowledge is worth knowing about.

In 1914, the Colorado Mountain Club organized a pack trip through the Estes Park region and invited three Arapaho men — Gun Griswold, Sherman Sage, and Tom Crispin — to travel the valley and the nearby mountains. As they rode, they shared Arapaho names, trails, and stories tied to specific places. A recorder, Oliver Toll, wrote it all down, and the record was later published as “Arapaho Names and Trails.”

The trip did not create those names. It preserved a written record of knowledge the Arapaho already held. That is an important and sensitive thread in the area’s history. The Arapaho and other Indigenous peoples were connected to this land long before settlement, and the 1914 record was made only after they had been forced from the region.

For a newcomer, it is a respectful reminder that the modern map sits on top of much older names and routes. To learn this history from official sources, see the National Park Service account of the 1914 pack trip and History Colorado.