George Pingree, an early settler in the canyon in the 19th century. Near Pingree Park is Sky Ranch Lutheran Camp, a summer camp affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The national forest in the vicinity of the canyon is laced with numerous trails that follow side gulches into the surrounding mountains. The trails serve double seasonal duty, as hiking trails in the summer and as cross-country skiing trails in the winter. One such trailhead at Long Draw Reservoir leads over La Poudre Pass along the Never Summer Mountains to the headwaters of the Colorado River in Rocky Mountain National Park. The most popular species for fishing in the river are various species of trout which are stocked in the river annually by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The United States Forest Service maintains a series of picnic areas and campgrounds along the river, including one campground facility named for local historian Ansel Watrous, whose 1911 history of the area is the standard early reference about the canyon itself. The canyon was inhabited by Utes in the 19th century and was the site of trapping expeditions by early settlers. The relative lack of mineral resources in the surrounding area spared the canyon from intense population increases during the Colorado mining boom (see Colorado Gold Rush). In the early 1880s, the canyon was surveyed for a railroad by archrivals, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, with the intention of completing a transcontinental line through the Rockies. The canyon was never the site of a railroad, however, during the 1920s a road was constructed through the narrows. Canyons and gorges of Colorado Landforms of Larimer County, Colorado Rocky Mountain National Park Roosevelt National Forest