What Most People Don’t Know About Rocky Mountain National Park

Since its founding in 1915, Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park has been a favourite amongst Individuals. Typically showing in top ten lists of the most popular national parks in the U.S., this nationwide park receives hundreds of thousands of holiday makers yearly. Vacationers come for the jagged mountain views, the beautiful waterfalls, and the incredible wildlife viewing that this national park has to offer.

It is arduous to think about a time when hordes of vacationers weren’t clamoring to get into this scenic and delightful nationwide park, however when the park first opened, it truly had an issue with tourism. Through the first 12 months of operation, the park solely had round 31,000 visitors. To spice up nationwide curiosity within the park, one thing needed to be carried out.

The park’s superintendent cooked up a advertising scheme: the park would host a publicity stunt the place a girl named Agnes Lowe would spend every week alone within the huge wilderness, dressed solely in a leopard’s pores and skin and possessing no instruments. This stunt would go down in historical past as one of the crucial iconic hoaxes to happen in a U.S. nationwide park.

Who Spent A Week Alone In Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park

On August sixth, 1917, Agnes Lowe, a 20-year-old school pupil from Ann Arbor, Michigan, set out into the wilds of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Dressed solely in a cavewoman costume (which consisted of a leopard pores and skin draped throughout her physique), she deliberate to spend every week surviving alone within the open air.

The purpose was for her to outlive with out fashionable clothes, with no weapons of any form, with no meals, and with no entry to shelter past what she may discover for herself. If profitable, this is able to have been no imply feat, because the park is thought for its tough mountain terrain.

This was the second time she’d tried such an outside journey in Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park’s backcountry. Only a month prior, she had made one other try and exit into the woods. Nasty climate, together with thunderstorms and chilly temperatures, prevented her from engaging in her intention (if solely she had recognized how to weather a Rocky Mountain storm!).

Earlier than she set off on her second journey, she was given a goodbye by a crowd of two,000 those who included reporters, photographers, and vital dignitaries from native establishments. Vacationers to the park tried to identify her and even efficiently did, seeing her ingesting from streams and foraging for meals.

Some vacationers developed a wierd fascination together with her that crossed the road into being inappropriate; one vacationer was so adamant about becoming a member of her that she needed to run away from him. He even needed to be escorted out of the park–during which he fought the rangers.

All through her journey, she wrote messages on tree bark utilizing charcoal. These messages had been meant for rangers to search out and publicize, similar to “tempted to give up but didn’t” and “nearly froze last night.”

Whereas she was out within the wilderness, the newspapers went ballistic together with her story, with essentially the most notable model showing in The Denver Put up. She was dubbed the “fashionable Eve.” By the top of the week, her story grew to become so well-known that she had obtained 60 marriage proposals by letter.

A throng of individuals awaited her when she emerged from the wilderness, wanting to find out about her experiences. Agnes would then go on to write down her personal newspaper article concerning the expertise, and even gave talks about her wilderness journey.

The Fact Is Revealed About Agnes Lowe’s

After the initial hype around Agnes and her incredible feat died down that week, a horrible revelation about Agnes’ journey got here out. It seems that her story was an elaborate hoax. And this wasn’t only a hoax by some random individual on the lookout for consideration; the park itself orchestrated it.

Newspapers revealed that an vital determine within the park was concerned: a person named L. Claude Means, the superintendent. As a substitute of braving the weather within the wilderness of Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park, Agnes had been staying in a pleasant, comfy cabin.

She did not put on her cavewoman costume, both. She as a substitute wearing common garments supplied by the rangers. Even earlier than the revelation, indicators had been there that Agnes hadn’t spent the week working across the woods. Upon returning to civilization, it was found that she hadn’t misplaced any weight, regardless of supposedly consuming solely foraged meals. Actually, she gained weight throughout her journey.

Why Did The Park Orchestrate This Hoax?

“Why would the park do that?” some could be questioning. It looks as if a fairly wild factor to do from the surface; why would somebody deliberately lie a few story like that? Though it would not justify the hoax and intentional deceptive of vacationers, the park had a compelling cause for its actions.

Within the early twentieth century, the nationwide park system was nonetheless in its infancy. Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park itself had solely been established two years prior, in 1915. Parks on this place had been determined to draw guests and vacationers.

In some half, plainly the stunt labored. Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park’s visitorship did enormously enhance in 1917 (although it is unattainable to inform how a lot Agnes’ journey performed a job on this). Agnes herself has a extra mysterious destiny.

Regardless of the publicity surrounding her, she disappears from the historic report after this occasion. It is doubtless that “Agnes Lowe” was only a pseudonym, and that she returned to her actual life and job after the occasion. Some have prompt that she’s a girl named Hazel Eighmy, a Denver-based receptionist, however that is nonetheless debated. Who is aware of what she thought when the complete story got here to gentle years later!

In the summertime of 1917, to garner publicity for the newly established Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park, a 20-year-old girl from Michigan named Agnes Lowe was to spend every week alone within the backcountry of Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park, with no meals, instruments, and even garments, aside from a leopard pores and skin. There was a variety of media protection and cheer for Lowe as she set out on her seven-day journey into the wilderness.

Nevertheless, on her return, the park’s superintendent confessed that in Lowe’s week within the wilderness, one in all his rangers met her commonly to offer road garments. Moderately than roughing it, Lowe relaxed in a cabin that was organized for her.