Contact Information
Old Federal Building
Ninth St and Grand Ave
P.O. Box 948
Glenwood Springs, CO 81601
970-945-2521
Perhaps more than any other national forest, White River is dedicated to outdoor recreation. Aspen and Vail, two towns that exemplify basecamps at their most glamorous, nestle in its rugged folds. Trapper Lake and the surrounding Flat Tops Wilderness, is widely recognized as the birthplace of the modern concept of wilderness. The Maroon Bells, a collection of granite peaks near Aspen, signify the Rocky Mountains in the same way the Eiffel Tower does Paris.The 2-million-acre White River National Forest is one of the largest and oldest national forests in the Rocky Mountains. It's located in north central Colorado, west of the Continental Divide. Interstate 70 splits the forest into north/south sections. And guess what, I-70 is a major corridor for ski resorts. Much of the White River is designated wilderness - - and there's a history to this. In 1920, Arthur Carhart, a landscape architect for the Forest Service, balked at his assignment of surveying property along Trappers Lake for vacation homes. He wrote a memo to his superiors that recommended leaving the area wild. The eventual result was the fabled Flat Tops Wilderness. The southern section of the forest has even more wilderness, most notably Maroon Bells-Snowmass and Holy Cross, which at one time was on its way to becoming a national park. More wilderness may be in White River's future. A recent land inventory of the forest revealed many roadless areas ripe for wilderness designation. You would have to be a vacuum-skulled zombie to be bored in the White River National Forest. The region is calculated to get you outdoors.
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