View of the Gore Range from along Trail Ridge Road/Rebecca Latson

Editor's note: This is a special advertiser-supported article from the Essential Park Guide, Fall 2014.

I don'€™t usually look to elk for hiking companions, but as I worked my way from Nymph Lake to Dream Lake towards my final destination at Emerald Lake, I couldn'€™t ignore the cow elk and her young calf. We didn't share the trail, but they paralleled my travels and stuck close to the cascading creek that wore the lakes like gems on a necklace. They enjoyed the succulent vegetation while I enjoyed the Rocky Mountain grandeur.

Spend any time in Rocky Mountain National Park and you'€™ll agree that the elk are an integral part of the landscape. I found them cavorting in Horseshoe Park just inside the Fall River Entrance, grazing at 12,000 feet alongside Trail Ridge Road, and even moseying down the roads into Estes Park, which anchors the park's front door. Their healthy populations in the park, and surrounding national forest, no doubt are an offshoot of Enos Mills'€™ efforts a century ago to see this Colorado landscape preserved as a national park.

Mills understood the purpose and meaning of a national park as he started lobbying for Rocky Mountain National Park. He had admired John Muir's push for Yosemite National Park, and had been encouraged by the Scotsman to immerse himself in nature. He quickly came to see a national park's worth.

"A National Park is a fountain of life,"€ he wrote in Your National Parks, his guidebook to the fledgling National Park System. "Within National Parks is room -- €”glorious room -- €”room in which to find ourselves, in which to think and hope, to dream and plan, to rest and resolve."

As a teenager he arrived in Estes Park struggling with tuberculosis and, after the mountain air healed him, he found his way to the top of Longs Peak as a 15-year-old, no small feat.

Mills, certain that the Rocky Mountain vistas above Estes Park were worthy of national park status, took his message of rejuvenation and the glory of the outdoors and spread it far and wide to anyone who would listen. It didn'€™t happen overnight: it took him nearly 20 years. But he persevered and discussed the proposed park in newspaper and magazine articles, lectured on the topic, and even fought opposition from the U.S. Forest Service. But he was tenacious. In January 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed Rocky Mountain National Park into existence.

Elk are highly visible grazing in the meadows of Rocky Mountain National Park in the fall/Rebecca Latson

Today Mills'€™ vision is nearly a century old and Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the true icons of the National Park System. Longs Peak at 14,259 feet is the park's centerpiece, as it presides over the Mummy and Never Summer ranges. Pine, spruce, and aspen forests are threaded with hiking trails, and strings of emerald lakes are still fed by icy streams.

Some things have changed since Mills'€™ days. There'€™s more access to the park. Construction on Trail Ridge Road, which climbs up and over the Continental Divide at 12,183 feet, didn't begin until seven years after his death, and the road wasn'€™t completed from Estes Park to Grand Lake on the other side of the divide until 1933. There's also a wonderful road leading from the Beaver Meadows Entrance to Moraine Park and on to Bear Lake. There, you can pick up the trail to Nymph Lake and beyond. Estes Park has also expanded to offer dozens of lodges and restaurants, the growth supported by the increase in park visitation from 31,000 in 1925 to more than 3 million a year today. (Of those 3 million, Estes Park welcomes about 2.2 million).

While Rocky Mountain'™s official birthday isn'€™t until January, the park's celebration begins this September 3rd and runs a year and a day, until September 4, 2015. For a year, you'€™ll be treated to talks, hikes, and mountaineering treks, art shows and park history. There will be ice cream socials, seminars, profiles of scientists, photography clinics, and ranger-led programs. They'll be supplemented by programs offered by the Rocky Mountain Conservancy, which will touch all aspects of this incredible national park.

Catch an elk-watching bus tour durng the 17th Annual Elk Fest in October/VisitEstesPark

Come to Estes Park this October and join in the centennial celebration, and celebrate the elk at the 17th Annual Elk Fest. The event takes place from October 4-5, and features elk viewing excursions, elk bugling contests, American story-telling, music, even a mountain-man rendezvous.

The haunting bugles of a bull elk mark the fall rut, or mating season. Some bulls bugle to attract mates, others to warn their mates that they'€™ve strayed too far. Spot some elk as they bugle to build their harems during an afternoon bus excursion ($5/person), where a naturalist will explain this behavior.

You can, of course, head out on your own. Take advantage of the colorful fall foliage and generally mild weather to pack a picnic basket for a late afternoon, or an early evening, tailgating jaunt in the national park. Pull over at Horseshoe Park, Moraine Park, Upper Beaver Meadows, Harbison Meadow and Holzwarth Meadow, set up some lawn chairs, picnic while they serenade you. If you can't make the Elk Fest this year, schedule your own personal wildlife watching adventure in the months to come.