Rocky Mountain National Park is the most spectacular mountain range in America. Its 265,727 acres or 414 square miles park, and was established by Congress on January 26, 1915, and located about 70 miles North-West of Denver in North-Central Colorado. This National Park is recognized internationally as one of the world’s most outstanding natural treasures. The park’s landscape inspires 3 millions visitors per year with its immense size and beauty. Rocky Mountain National Park weather always is changing, and sometimes extreme. Temperatures drop and precipitation increases as elevation is gained, so there are chilly conditions year round. The Continental Divide runs the length of the park, making a climatic division. The western slope, due to prevailing winds, receives more precipitation than the eastern slope. In spring, you can go biking or searching for wildflowers, like tulips, yellow sage, buttercups to bud and bloom, and also looking for nests of falcons, golden eagles, hawks on the sunny cliffs. Summers are cool and mild, and it is a great time for fishing or camping. Marmots and ground squirrels are easily seen during this time, and pristine forests are fill with colorful wildflowers. In the fall, canyons echo with the bugling of elk, bulls and many more animals, and visitors are also enjoying visiting museums, local art galleries, or hiking and rock climbing. Winters are cold and windy, so ice-skating, snowmobile, cross- country skiing are the fun things to do. The sights of animals hunting in the snow are unforgettable images. Millions of years ago, the entire region was covered by sea. During the Paleozoic Era, the mountains submerged, lifted up, and eroded. Temperatures and high pressure below the surface forced the sedimentary rock to metamorphism, and transform into metamorphic rocks, gneiss and schist, forming the tops of the mountain. Occasionally, molten rock seeped into the layers of sedimentary rock as they were metamorphosed, cooled down and hardened into igneous rocks, granites and pegmatite, forming the basement of the mountain. Today, Precambrian granites and metamorphic rocks predominate the central and eastern areas of this national park. Some sedimentary rocks still remain along the west boundary of the park. Different movement of faults and erosion make up 147 mountain peaks, 78 lakes, waterfalls and large valleys of the park. It was an inhospitable land, until some 10,000 years ago that early Native Indians reached the vicinity of the park.