Flattop Mountain Trail

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

From the record

“The Flattop Mountain Trail, also known as the Grand Trail or the Big Trail, was built in 1925 in Rocky Mountain National Park in the Larimer County portion of the U.S. state of Colorado. Built in 1925, and rehabilitated in 1940 with Civilian Conservation Corps labor, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”
Wikipedia article Flattop Mountain Trail, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 110 National Register listings published here for Larimer County · listed in 2007 · category: Structure.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Rocky Mountain Park, Estes Park, 80517
When was it listed? September 2007
Category. structure
Also known as. Rocky Mountain National Park MPS
Census division. Estes Park
Architect. Civilian Conservation Corps, National Park Service
National Register reference number. 07000999 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

39 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 39 fires within 5 miles of Flattop Mountain Trail between 1992 and 2018, burning about 4 acres in total. 20 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	20
Recreation and ceremony	16
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
8 August 1996	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	MOSQUITO
7 August 1994	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	SKI SLOPE
26 August 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	MATTERHORN
23 August 1992	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	STEEP MT
11 August 2016	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	EAST PORTAL
8 July 2018	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	SHEEP
8 July 2008	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	BIER FIRE
8 July 2001	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	WUH

Every fire recorded in Larimer County

Storms near this property

20 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Estes Park, the town this property stands in, in 20 storm reports between 1996 and 2023: 11 hail, 6 lightning, 1 flash flood, 1 tornado. The reports record 2 deaths and 13 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 1999	Lightning	Estes Park	1 killed, 2 hurt	Lightning killed a 35-yr old man and seriously injured his wife and young daughter. The family was hiking near the Gore Range Overlook along Trail Ridge Road when the thunderstorm developed, at an elevation of 11,700 feet.
August 1999	Lightning	Estes Park	1 killed, 2 hurt	Lightning killed one hiker and injured two others, while they were hiking a remote drainage in Rocky Mountain National Park.
August 1998	Lightning	Estes Park	6 hurt	Six people received minor injuries when lightning struck a nearby scenic overlook atop Trail Ridge Road. The charge apparently travelled across the ground and shocked the group.
October 2000	Lightning	Estes Park	2 hurt	Two people were injured when they were struck by lightning at the Forest Canyon Overlook, at nearly 12,000 feet elevation along Trail Ridge Road. The thunderstorm formed rapidly overhead. One of the victims was badly burned, the other had no visible injuries.
August 2019	Lightning	Estes Park	1 hurt	A hiker was seriously injured by lightning while hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park.
July 2011	Lightning	Estes Park	$5,000	Lightning sparked three fires.
July 2022	Hail	Estes Park	-	Torrential hail and rain occurred in the town of Estes Park. The hail piled up to a foot deep and snowplows were called in to remove it.
June 2021	Heavy Rain	Estes Park	-	Moderate to heavy rainfall associated with a thunderstorm produced minor flooding along Trail Ridge Road.
May 2018	Tornado (EF0)	Estes Park	-	A weak tornado touched down briefly near Bear Lake with no observable damage.
September 2013	Flash Flood	Estes Park	-	Heavy rain caused five very small dams in the Big Elk Meadows area to fail. As a result, a family became trapped when a county road was washed out and floodwaters damaged their home. Road closures included: U.S. 34 east/west, between Loveland and Estes Park; CO14 east/west, between Walden and Ted's Place. Larimer County Roads 27E, 25E, 52E and 54E were all closed near La Porte due to flash flooding. Several roads were also washed out southwest of Loveland and north of Fort Collins.
June 2023	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
June 2016	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
July 2010	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
July 2007	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
June 2006	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
July 2005	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
June 2004	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
June 1999	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
June 1996	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed
June 1996	Hail	Estes Park	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Larimer County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Lake Haiyaha Trail	0.8 miles	2008
Bear Lake Comfort Station	1.2 miles	1988
Fern Lake Patrol Cabin	1.8 miles	1988
Fern Lake Trail	2.2 miles	2005
Trail Ridge Road	3.9 miles	1984
Glacier Basin Campground Ranger Station	4.0 miles	1987

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 07000999 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Larimer County	All 110 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.