Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
From the record
“The Old Fall River Road, sometimes referred to as "The Old Road" by park staff in Rocky Mountain National Park, was the first automobile road to penetrate the interior of the park. The road linked the east side of the park near Estes Park with Grand Lake on the west side.”
Wikipedia article Fall River Road, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 110 National Register listings published here for Larimer County · listed in 2018 · category: Structure.
National Register reference number.87001129- 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
23 since 1994
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 23 fires within 5 miles of Fall River Road
between 1994 and 2018, burning about 10 acres in total. 6 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
11
Natural
6
Arson/incendiarism
2
Smoking
1
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
1
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
14 August 2006
Natural
under an acre
Rocky Mountain National Park
BIGHORN
10 August 2012
Natural
under an acre
Rocky Mountain National Park
BIGHORN MOUNTAIN
9 July 2010
Equipment and vehicle use
under an acre
Rocky Mountain National Park
FOREST CANYON
21 July 2005
Recreation and ceremony
under an acre
Rocky Mountain National Park
CHASM FALL
21 July 1994
Arson/incendiarism
under an acre
Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
1 working within 5 miles of Fall River Road: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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