Things to do / Travel Guide
The eastern Colorado and Wyoming Rockies region pretty much mirrors the contours of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, which stretches from south-central Colorado to southeast Wyoming. The Front Range, the first section of the Rockies to the west of the Great Plains of Kansas and eastern Colorado, boasts five Fourteeners, as mountains over 14,000 feet high are referred to. It features year-round snow-tipped peaks, beautiful golden aspens in the fall, lush fields with multi-luminous wildflowers in the spring, and crystal-clear streams and rivers.
In mid-Colorado, the Front Range thrusts up abruptly from the creeping plains to the east, forming a line running north-south. On the east side is the Great Plains as far as Kansas and on the west side are mountain ranges belonging to the great Rockies that continue through to Utah. The most important and well-known of the Front Range peaks are Pikes Peak and Mt. Evans in the south, and Grays Peak and Longs Peak in the north.
The region as a whole is rocky, mountainous, and at a high elevation. The simplest description of its shape would be of a rectangle whose four points are at Colorado's Colorado Springs and Canon City in the south, and Wyoming's Laramie and Cheyenne in the north. The region is rather small, about the same size as Vermont.
At the eastern foot of the Front Range, towards the middle of the region, is Denver; capital city of Colorado, gateway to the Rockies. Northwest of the city are the cities of Boulder, Longmont, Lovelace, and Fort Collins. About 100 miles farther north, in Wyoming, are the cities of Cheyenne, the state capital, and Laramie. South of Denver is Colorado Springs, and to the southwest sits Canon City.
On the western side of the region is Rocky Mountain National Park. The Great Divide, where on one side North America's water flows east eventually towards the Atlantic Ocean and on the other side all water flows west towards the Pacific Ocean, snakes along these mountain ridges. Farther south are the towns of Granby, Silver Plume, and Black Hawk. Black Hawk is a few miles north of I-70, while south of I-70 is Pike National Forest. Continuing south still are mining towns such as Cripple Creek, directly north of Canon City.
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