The Roof of the Rockies

The Roof of the Rockies. . , “The Colorado Rockies were once a great barrier to Western travel; then they became a great goal of Western travel.” , , William M. Butler, , Roof of the Rockies, Of the 68 "fourteeners" , 14,000-foot-high mountains , in the continental United States, 54 are in Colorado, and 15 stand in the Sawatch Range between here and Leadville. Miners swarmed over this line of Olympian alps from 1860 on; oblivious to altitude, they went where the paydirt took them. , With the rise of recreational mountaineering, the fourteeners themselves became the prize, and the Sawatch Range (which includes the three highest peaks in the Rockies) represented the ultimate hiking and climbing experience. Over time, however, the steadily increasing backpacking and hiking traffic began to cause erosion, soil compaction, and vegetation damage, and land managers began warning of environmental degradation. With hundreds of thousands of hikers a year, the fourteeners are in danger of being loved to death. , During the great mining booms of the late nineteenth century, the Arkansas River nearly went bust. Miners ate most of the fish, deforested the banks, and fouled the waters with tailings and raw sewage. It took decades for the stream to recover; as late as 1930, fishermen were complaining of meager catches. Depression-era conservation projects aided the river's recovery. , In 1990 the federal government created the 148-mile-long Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area to care for the natural resources and manage recreational opportunities. The river became so popular that it again began to suffer from overuse; with its robust brown trout and whitewater rafting opportunities, the Arkansas became one of Colorado's busiest tourist draws. , Today, the Arkansas River has 102 of Colorado's 322 miles of Gold Medal trout waters, stretching from Leadville to Pueblo. This is the highest rating given to trout fisheries. , “A river is never quite silent; it can never of its very nature, be quite still; it is never quite the same from one day to the next. It has its own life and its own beauty, and the creatures it nourishes are alive and beautiful also.” , , Roderick Haig-Brown, , A River Never Sleeps , [photo caption] Brown Trout Courtesy Colorado Parks and Wildlife , . Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area