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Rocky Mountain National Park not only provides visitors with beautiful scenery,
wildlife, and wildflowers, it also contains the headwaters, or beginnings, of two
large river systems that are important to Colorado. The Colorado River has
its beginnings on the west side of the park, and the Cache la Poudre, Big Thompson, and
St. Vrain Rivers are headwaters of the South Platte River to the east.
The area that supplies water to a particular river system is called its watershed. Most
of the water in the Western United States comes from snow that falls on mountain
ranges. In Rocky Mountain National Park up to 80% of the annual moisture supply starts as
snow. The snow that builds up over the winter melts in springtime to provide runoff that
fills rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. It is the snow that falls in the mountains that provides
the water used by nearly all Coloradans for recreation, irrigation, municipal, and
industrial purposes.
With its headwaters protected from development by Rocky Mountain National Park,
the Big Thompson River is especially valuable as a source of clean water now and into
the future. |
