METROPOLIS of BEAVERLAND

HE visitor will not forget the aspens in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Their white trunks and branches and their luxuriant bright green foliage are never out of sight. A trail through an aspen thicket is a path of delight.

Because of the unusual aspen growths, the region is the favored home of beavers, who make the tender bark their principal food. Beaver dams block countless streams and beaver houses emerge from the still ponds above. In some retired spots the engineering feats of generations of beaver families may be traced in all their considerable range.

Nowhere is the picturesqueness of timber-line more quickly and more easily seen. A horse after early breakfast, a steep mountain trail, an hour of unique enjoyment, and one may be back for late luncheon.

Eleven thousand feet up, the winter struggles between trees and icy gales are grotesquely exhibited.

The first sight of luxuriant Engelman spruces creeping closely upon the ground instead of rising a hundred and fifty feet straight and true as masts is not soon forgotten. Many stems strong enough to partly defy the winters' gales grow bent in half circles. Others, starting straight in shelter of some large rock, bend at right angles where they emerge above it. Many succeed in lifting their trunks but not in growing branches except in their lee, thus suggesting great evergreen dust brushes.

AN ASPEN THICKET TRAIL Is A PATH OF DELIGHT Copyright by Wiswall Brothers, Denver

BEAVER DAMS BLOCK COUNTLESS STREAMS Photograph by Enos Mills

WIND-TWISTED TREES AT TIMBER-LINE Photograph by Enos Mills