Many Parks Curve looks out over Moraine Park, Upper Beaver Meadows and Horseshoe Park, with Longs Peak beyond. Westbound drivers use the upper lot, on the right, and cross at the crosswalk to reach the boardwalk. Eastbound drivers use the lower lot, the easier reach. There is no restroom; the nearest is at Hidden Valley. The 500-foot boardwalk has no flat resting spots, and the rocks around it are off limits. The overlook owes its shape to the road's own construction. Longs Peak rises over everything, and the stop opens the question of its older names, and of the 1914 pack trip that brought Arapaho elders into these mountains, a story the Sage family still stands behind.
Many Parks Curve has two lots, one for each way. Climbing, the upper lot is on your right. Coming down, the lower lot is on your right. Stay on the boardwalk, five hundred feet of it with no flat spots to rest, and stay off the rocks. Parks on this curve means mountain meadows. Moraine Park, Upper Beaver Meadows and Horseshoe Park all show from the overlook, with Deer Mountain behind them and, over everything, flat-topped and more than fourteen thousand feet high, Longs Peak. The long wooded ridges between them are moraines. The road runs through one, a glacier's side-dump, and its twin lies along the rim across the valley. That overlook is a quarry. The road's surfacing contractor moved its crushing plant to this curve, took the rest of its road rock from here, and built the parking area in the hole. So the floor was mined, and the crenelated wall came after. The government's chief topographer once told the Colorado Mountain Club that this country looked fit for a park, but it would appeal more to Congress with more named places. So in nineteen fourteen the Club arranged for Arapaho elders from the Wind River Reservation to give Arapaho names for the landmarks. Gun Griswold and Sherman Sage spent two weeks on a pack trip through this country, giving the old names, with Tom Crispin interpreting. The Estes Park basin was the Circle. Longs Peak and Mount Meeker, side by side, were the Two Guides in the park's telling, and the Arapaho Language Project hears the old name as meaning there are two mountains. To the Mouache Ute, Longs Peak is Pa-nah-kaav, the Shining Mountain, for its snow, and it marked the north end of their homelands. Sherman Sage's family stands behind the book that came out of that trip. They call it a rare written account from relatives who grew up on this land before removal, and they're proud to share it. So when Longs Peak shows, try it by its other names.
Photo: Jan Helebrant · CC0 1.0