Beatrice Willard Alpine Tundra Research Plots

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

From the record

“The Beatrice Willard Alpine Tundra Research Plots were established in 1959 along Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, above the treeline in an alpine tundra habitat. The plots were used by Beatrice Willard of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado from 1959 to about 1999 in a long-term study of the alpine ecosystem.”
Wikipedia article Beatrice Willard Alpine Tundra Research Plots, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 2 sitess, 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Willard, Beatrice, Alpine Tundra Research Plots - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. US 34 at Rock Cut and Forest Canyon, Estes Park, 80517
When was it listed? October 2007
Category. district
Census division. Estes Park
National Register reference number. 07001101 - 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

16 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 16 fires within 5 miles of Beatrice Willard Alpine Tundra Research Plots between 1994 and 2019, burning about 8 acres in total. 5 started naturally. 2 were 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
Recreation and ceremony	7
Natural	5
Arson/incendiarism	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1

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
7 August 1994	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	SKI SLOPE
30 August 2018	Natural	6.0 acres	Rocky Mountain National Park	FOREST CANYON
30 August 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	FALL RIVER
9 July 2010	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	FOREST CANYON
25 July 2019	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	JACKSTRAW
21 July 2005	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	CHASM FALL
21 July 1997	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	GDNGHTIREN
21 July 1994	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	BEAVER'S

Every fire recorded in Larimer County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Beatrice Willard Alpine Tundra Research Plots: 1 occurrence. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Iron, Titanium, Metal. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Iron Dike	Iron, Titanium, Metal	Occurrence

Every working 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
Willow Park Patrol Cabin	1.5 miles	1987
Willow Park Stable	1.5 miles	1987
Fall River Road	1.9 miles	2018
Fall River Pump House and Catchment Basin	1.9 miles	2006
Fall River Pass Historic District	2.2 miles	2021
Fall River Pass Ranger Station	2.3 miles	1988

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 07001101 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.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
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.