Colorado: Where the Rockies Define Everything
Colorado’s identity is inseparable from its mountains. The state contains 58 peaks above 14,000 feet — more than any other US state — and the Rocky Mountains that bisect Colorado from north to south define its climate, culture, economy, and outdoor lifestyle in ways that are visible in everything from Denver’s fitness culture to the seasonal rhythms of the ski towns to the water law that has governed the entire American West for 150 years. The mountains are not a backdrop to Colorado life; they are the organizing principle around which everything else arranges itself.
But Colorado is more than mountain scenery. Denver has emerged as one of the most dynamic mid-size cities in the United States, with a cultural infrastructure, restaurant scene, and tech economy that have attracted more domestic migrants than almost any other metro. The Eastern Plains stretch toward Kansas in an agricultural landscape of surprising beauty during storm season. Mesa Verde preserves the most significant ancient cliff dwellings in North America. The Great Sand Dunes rise impossibly from the flat floor of the San Luis Valley. Colorado’s diversity — geological, ecological, and human — is greater than its mountain reputation suggests.
Rocky Mountain National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the most visited national parks in the United States and, on a clear day in September when the elk are bugling in the meadows and the aspen groves are turning gold, one of the most beautiful. The park encompasses 415 square miles of Rocky Mountain terrain, from the montane forests of its lower elevations to the alpine tundra above treeline where weather can change from sunshine to snowstorm in under an hour.
Trail Ridge Road — the highest continuous paved road in the United States, cresting at 12,183 feet — crosses the park from east to west and provides access to the tundra environment without requiring hiking. The views from the road’s high points encompass the Continental Divide, the Mummy Range, and (on clear days) the distant peaks of Wyoming to the north. The road is open from late May through mid-October when snowpack allows.
Hiking in the park ranges from the 0.5-mile Bear Lake loop (accessible for all ages and fitness levels) to the 8.8-mile Loch Vale trail to Sky Pond, a glacial lake beneath an imposing granite headwall. The Flattop Mountain trail provides access to the Continental Divide at 12,324 feet. Permit-required wilderness camping opens the park’s interior to multi-day trips that most day visitors never experience.
Aspen and the Elk Mountains
Aspen is Colorado’s most glamorous mountain town — a ski resort and summer destination of international reputation where the combination of exceptional skiing, world-class music (the Aspen Music Festival, now in its eighth decade, is one of the premier classical music events in the world), cultural events, and an extraordinary landscape of 14,000-foot peaks has attracted wealthy residents and visitors since the 1940s. The Maroon Bells — two 14,000-foot peaks rising above the reflective surface of Maroon Lake 12 miles south of Aspen — are the most photographed mountain scene in North America.
Aspen’s skiing spans four mountains (Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk, and Snowmass) and covers over 5,500 acres of terrain with vertical drops exceeding 3,000 feet. The skiing quality — long runs on genuine mountain terrain, reliable snowpack enhanced by snowmaking, excellent grooming — justifies the resort’s top-tier price point. Snowmass, the largest of the four mountains, offers a village atmosphere separate from Aspen proper.
Telluride and the San Juan Mountains
Telluride is the most dramatically situated town in Colorado — a Victorian mining town built at the end of a box canyon in the San Juan Mountains, surrounded on three sides by vertical cliffs and connected to the adjacent Mountain Village by gondola. The skiing at Telluride is excellent and, unlike Aspen or Vail, retains a local character and manageable scale that larger resorts have lost. The summer festival season — Telluride Film Festival (September), Telluride Bluegrass Festival (June), Telluride Jazz Festival (August) — has made the town a summer destination of national significance.
Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde preserves the most extensive cliff dwellings in North America — the architectural legacy of the ancestral Puebloan people who inhabited the Colorado Plateau between approximately 600 and 1300 CE. Cliff Palace, the park’s centerpiece, is a 150-room apartment complex carved into a natural sandstone alcove 100 feet above the canyon floor — an engineering achievement of extraordinary sophistication for a culture without metal tools, wheels, or domestic animals larger than a dog. The park’s 5,000 archaeological sites — cliff dwellings, mesa-top villages, petroglyphs, and kivas — represent the most concentrated collection of ancestral Puebloan heritage sites in existence.
Denver: Colorado’s Urban Heart
Denver has transformed dramatically over the past 20 years from a mid-size Western city into one of the most attractive urban destinations in the United States. The combination of a dynamic food and craft brewery scene, outstanding art and music infrastructure (the Denver Art Museum, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the Colorado Symphony), a technology and energy economy that draws young professionals, and the Rocky Mountain lifestyle available within 45 minutes of downtown has made Denver a primary destination for domestic migrants from both coasts.
The 16th Street Mall pedestrian corridor, the River North (RiNo) arts district with its extraordinary concentration of street art and gallery spaces, the restaurants of Highland and LoHi, and the mountain views visible from almost anywhere in the city create an urban environment that is genuinely distinctive. The Denver Botanic Gardens and Denver Zoo are among the best of their respective types in the Mountain West. Red Rocks Amphitheatre — a natural outdoor concert venue formed by two 300-foot sandstone monoliths 15 miles west of downtown — is consistently rated the best concert venue in the United States by industry publications.
Colorado Springs and Garden of the Gods
Colorado Springs sits at the foot of Pikes Peak — the most visited mountain in North America — and contains Garden of the Gods, a city park of 300-foot red sandstone fins rising from the valley floor in formations of extraordinary visual drama. The park is free to enter and provides world-class rock climbing and hiking within the city limits of Colorado’s second-largest city. The Pikes Peak Summit Road and cog railway (one of the highest in the world) reach the 14,115-foot summit, where the view inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write “America the Beautiful” in 1893.
