Estes Park, Colorado

Estes Park sits in a broad mountain valley at about 7,522 feet, ringed by peaks and fed by the Big Thompson and Fall rivers, in Larimer County. It takes its name from Joel Estes, a Kentucky-born rancher who came upon the valley in 1859 and ran cattle here with his family into the mid-1860s before the long winters pushed them out. The name stuck thanks to William Byers, the founding editor of the Rocky Mountain News, who visited in 1864 and christened the valley in his host's honor. After Estes left, Griff Evans took over the homestead and began putting up cabins for travelers — an early dude ranch that pointed the valley toward the business it has run on ever since: showing people the mountains.

What turned that scattering of ranches and cabins into a real town was a national park and a steam-car millionaire. Freelan Oscar Stanley, who with his brother had invented the Stanley Steamer automobile, arrived in 1903 hoping the dry mountain air would cure his tuberculosis. It seemed to work, and he threw himself into the place. In 1909 he opened the grand Stanley Hotel and, on the Fall River, built a hydroelectric plant to power it — billed as the country's first all-electric hotel, wired for heat, cooking, and light. The Town of Estes Park soon asked Stanley for electricity for its streetlights, and residents wired their homes; he'd earlier built a water system, too. Estes Park incorporated in 1917, two years after Rocky Mountain National Park was established on January 26, 1915, an effort led by local naturalist Enos Mills.

Today Estes Park is, first and foremost, the eastern gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park — the town most visitors pass through on their way to Trail Ridge Road and the high country. That role defines everything: a compact downtown of shops and taffy and outfitters along the Big Thompson, elk that wander the streets and golf course in fall, and a summer population many times the winter one. The Stanley Hotel still stands white and gabled on the hillside above town, drawing visitors for its history and its fame as the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining. It is a small mountain town whose whole life is organized around the park at its back door and the seasons that fill and empty its valley.

Estes Park is the kind of place where the wild comes right into town — bull elk bugle across the golf course and the riverwalk every fall, and bighorn sheep turn up on the ridges. The heart of it is a walkable downtown along the Big Thompson River, full of candy shops, galleries, outfitters, and patios, with the peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park filling the western skyline just up the road. Most days here bend toward the outdoors: a drive over Trail Ridge Road, one of the highest paved through-roads in the country; a hike to Bear Lake or Emerald Lake; fly-fishing the rivers; or just watching the light change on Longs Peak. The Stanley Hotel anchors the town's history and its ghost-story fame, and the whole valley has a friendly, seasonal, mountain-town rhythm — busy and buzzing in summer, quiet and snowy come winter.