At the Harmony Library:
Isabella Bird talks about her trip to Estes Park
In 1873 Isabella Bird took a trip to Estes Park and the Rocky Mountains. In her 800 mile journey she passed through the little town of Fort Collins and later wrote “By the time we reached Fort Collins I was sick and dizzy with the heat of the sun, and not disposed to be pleased with a most unpleasing place. It was a military post, but at present consists of a few frame houses put down recently on a bare and burning plain. The settlers have ‘great expectations’ but of what? The mountains look hardly nearer than from Greeley; one only realizes their vicinity by the force of their higher peaks”. Then of course 1873 was the year of the great locust plague, so who could blame her? But compare it unfavorably to Greeley? What a bitch!