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Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is home to some of the most spectacular sights in America, from its unique alpine wildlife and delicate tundra flowers to, of course, the majesty of its brilliant mountain peaks. The park encompasses 265,000 acres of land and more than 350 miles of hiking trails. It's one of the highest national parks in the country, and more than 60 mountains over 12,000 feet offer scenic vistas of the surrounding peaks, lakes and valleys. Among these dazzling summits, however, only one mountain in the park bears the distinction of being a "fourteener," or peaks over 14,000 feet high - Longs Peak, at 14,259 feet.
Longs Peak was named after the explorer Stephen Harriman Long, who documented the area in his 1820 expedition on behalf of the U.S. government. It's on the back of Colorado's state quarter and, as the highest peak in the park, gets a lot of attention and interest from climbers and hikers.
"Longs Peak is the most visibly prominent peak in the front range," Colorado native Ty Brookhart told Outside magazine in 2016. "You can see it from both Denver and Boulder, so much like Rainier to Seattleites, it's something any outdoorsman wants to check off their list."
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