Escape to North Park

Not facing any major problems on the farm this trip, I decided to visit North Park, my favorite area in Colorado. Drained by the North Platte River and its high country tributaries, this broad basin, covered with sage grasslands, hay fields and cattle ranches, is laced with ribbons of willow thickets and riparian woodlands. Indeed, North Park is known to many Coloradans as the site where moose were reintroduced in the late 1970s; since that time, those large herbivores have thrived, spreading across the Continental Divide to the Upper Colorado and Fraser River Valleys (and beyond) and transplanted to other areas of Colorado by Division of Wildlife biologists.

Offering scenic, uncluttered landscape, broad vistas, abundant wildlife and traffic-free roadways, North Park takes the visitor back to an earlier period in the history of the Mountain West, before large, congested cities, interstate highways and tourist resorts changed the character of the region. Bordered by the high walls of the Medicine Bow Mountains and Never Summer Range to the east, the Rabbit Ears Range to the south and the Park Range to the west, this glacial basin is relatively unknown to most Colorado residents and visitors, reserving its fabulous landscape for those who have a keen interest in its bounty: naturalists and hunters.

Of special interest to naturalists is the presence of the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge, the highest refuge (8200 feet) in the lower 48 States. Encompassing over 23,000 acres of the Illinois River watershed, a tributary of the North Platte, this spectacular preserve is a mosaic of sage grasslands, ponds, wetlands, and riparian woodlands. Resident and migrant wildlife of note include moose, pronghorn, wintering elk, coyotes, badgers, greater sage grouse, prairie falcons, northern harriers, Swainson's hawks, golden eagles, white-tailed prairie dogs, a wide diversity of waterfowl and shorebirds, American white pelicans and a host of grassland sparrows; the refuge Headquarters & Interpretive Center, east of Route 125 between Rand and Walden, provides an excellent introduction to the North Park ecosystem and its varied wildlife.