Photograph of Wild Basin Ranger Station — Photograph by Unknown, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Wild Basin Ranger Station and House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

From the record

“The Wild Basin Ranger Station is located in the southeastern portion of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Built in 1932, the ranger station is an example of National Park Service rustic architecture, built to plans by the National Park Service Branch of Plans and Design.”
Wikipedia article Wild Basin Ranger Station, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 92 National Register listings published here for Boulder County · listed in 1988 · category: Building.

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 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. Wild Basin, Estes Park, 80510
When was it listed? January 1988
Category. building
Also known as. Rocky Mountain National Park MRA
Census division. Upper St. Vrain
Architectural style. National Park Service rustic
Architect. National Park Service
National Register reference number. 87001126 - 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

127 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 127 fires within 5 miles of Wild Basin Ranger Station and House between 1992 and 2020, burning about 20 acres in total. 16 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	82
Recreation and ceremony	20
Natural	16
Power generation/transmission/distribution	3
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Debris and open burning	2
Smoking	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
6 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	TAYLOR MOUNTAIN
6 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	not named
26 September 1992	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	not named
24 September 2019	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	ST. VRAIN
24 September 2002	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	LONE PEAK
20 September 1994	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	ALLENSPARK #1
2 September 1993	Natural	under an acre	Rocky Mountain National Park	CHICKADEE
19 September 2015	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Allenspark Fire Protection District	UNKNOWN

Every fire recorded in Boulder County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Wild Basin Ranger Station and House: 2 occurrences, 2 past producers. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Gold, Beryllium, Zinc, Silver. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Old Town	Gold, Zinc, Silver	Past Producer
Twin Sister	Beryllium	Past Producer
Unknown	Gold	Occurrence	Gold
Unknown	Gold	Occurrence	Gold

Every working recorded in Boulder 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
Wild Basin House	under 500 feet	1988
Sandbeach Lake Trail	0.7 miles	2008
Longhurst Lodge	2.1 miles	2017
Thunder Lake Trail-Bluebird Lake Trail	2.7 miles	2008
Thunder Lake Patrol Cabin	4.3 miles	1988
Bunce School	5.7 miles	1986

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 87001126 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Boulder County	All 92 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.