Echo Lake Park is a

park A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are urban green space, green spaces set aside for recreation inside t ...

located along the

Mount Evans Scenic Byway The Mount Evans Scenic Byway is a National Forest Scenic Byway and Colorado Scenic and Historic Byway located in Clear Creek and Jefferson counties, Colorado, United States. The byway ascends to of elevation near the summit of Mount Evans, ma ...

about west of

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

. The park provides a stone shelter with picnic tables and barbecue grills on one end of the lake, and the 1926 Echo Lake Lodge (gift shop and restaurant service only) and an

Arapaho National Forest Arapaho National Forest is a National Forest located in north-central Colorado, United States. The region is managed jointly with the Roosevelt National Forest and the Pawnee National Grassland from the United States Forest Service office in ...

campground are found at the other. Access to backpacking trails, including the Chicago Lakes trail and Lincoln Lakes trail, can be found adjacent to the lake. The park is part of the

Denver Mountain Parks The Denver Mountain Parks system contains more than of parklands in the mountains and foothills of Jefferson, Clear Creek, Douglas, and Grand counties in Colorado, west and south of Denver. Owned and maintained by the City and County of Denver ...

system.

Historic designation

Echo Lake Park was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1995. The listing included two

contributing buildings In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

, two

contributing structures In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

, and a

contributing site In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

on . It included the Echo Lake Lodge, built in 1926, which was designed by Denver architect

Jacques Benedict Jules Jacques Benois Benedict (April 22, 1879 – January 16, 1948) was one of the most prominent architects in Colorado history, whose works include a number of well-known landmarks and buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Place ...

, a two-story octagonal log building on a base of local granite that resembles a Native American earth lodge. With Echo Lake, along with

Mount Evans Mount Evans is the highest peak in the Mount Evans Wilderness in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The prominent 14,271-foot (4,350 m) fourteener is located southwest by south ( bearing 214°) of Idaho Springs in Clear C ...

, was designated as a historic site by the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

in 2017, in honor of many

cosmic-ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...

physics experiments conducted at the lake and on the mountain between 1935 and 1960. The historic plaque is outside the Echo Lake Lodge.Mount Evans and Echo Lake, Colorado
part of th
APS Historic Sites Initiative
accessed Oct, 2019.

Echo Lake

Echo Lake is a shallow,

oligotroph An oligotroph is an organism that can live in an environment that offers very low levels of nutrients. They may be contrasted with copiotrophs, which prefer nutritionally rich environments. Oligotrophs are characterized by slow growth, low rates of ...

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

situated at above sea level near

in the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

. It formed during the latest period of

glaciation A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betw ...

roughly 10,000 years ago. As glaciers retreated in the Chicago Creek valley, lateral

moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice shee ...

s formed a natural dam to drainage, forming the lake. The ecosystem around the lake is dominated by

Engelmann Spruce ''Picea engelmannii'', with the common names Engelmann spruce, white spruce, mountain spruce, and silver spruce, is a species of spruce native to western North America. It is mostly a high-altitude mountain tree but also appears in watered canyon ...

(''Picea engelmannii'') and

Subalpine Fir ''Abies lasiocarpa'', the subalpine fir or Rocky Mountain fir, is a western North American fir tree. Description ''Abies lasiocarpa'' is a medium-sized evergreen conifer with a very narrow conic crown, growing to tall, exceptionally , with a ...

(''Abies lasiocarpa''), with some

Limber Pine ''Pinus flexilis'', the limber pine, is a species of pine tree-the family Pinaceae that occurs in the mountains of the Western United States, Mexico, and Canada. It is also called Rocky Mountain white pine. A limber pine in Eagle Cap Wildernes ...

(''Pinus flexilis'') on exposed sites.

References

External links

Denver Mountain Parks - Echo Lake
* * Lakes of Colorado Denver Mountain Parks Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in Colorado Protected areas of Clear Creek County, Colorado Bodies of water of Clear Creek County, Colorado National Register of Historic Places in Clear Creek County, Colorado Protected areas established in 1921 1921 establishments in Colorado {{Colorado-NRHP-stub

Historic designation

Echo Lake

See also

References

External links