Estes Park's Rocky road: despite disagreements in plans for the town, mountain gateway is still a family getaway.

• Author: Lewis, David

Growth in Estes Park is perking along according to plan, with the Estes Valley, now nearing a population of about 12,000, due to contain as many as 20,000 people in the next 15 to 20 years.

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Yet it can be hard to keep that steady, containable growth in perspective when you're caught up in the roiling tourist crowds along Elkhorn Avenue in peak summer season. Estes Park, after all, is best known as gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. It's true that some years ago the town and its environs had a reputation for tackiness, but Estes Park has grown beyond its kitsch, even if it remains a family getaway and too much fun to be considered a sophisticated resort a la Beaver Creek or Aspen.

Perhaps the town's new maturity was best symbolized by the 2005 dismantling of Estes Park's last trailer park, hard by the town center, in favor of the Fall River Village development. Fall River Village, now about halfway built, will comprise six buildings and 84 condominiums, plus seven estate lots along the Fall River.

As icing on the cake, developer Noel West Lane III neatly turned around a brewing controversy with trailer park residents. Lane "recycled" 20 trailers and then spurred a local fundraising effort that filled the trailers with donated building materials, boots, coats and such. Then he formed a trucking company and shipped it all to Pine Ridge Reservation, S.D., easing a housing shortage for Oglala Souix residents there and reaping untold publicity for his new development.

About once a decade it seems a real or symbolic pivotal event takes place in the development of Estes Park. In 1982, the disastrous Lawn Lake Flood killed three campers and devastated the town. One result was the 1983 formation of the Estes Park Urban Renewal Authority (EPURA), which paved the way (literally) for today's long, pedestrian-friendly central district. EPURA built the Estes Park Riverwalk, Kayak Course, and eight-block Streetscape, all the while quietly buying enough land to keep parking under control.

"The flood was a disaster, but if it did have a silver lining, I guess you would have to say that it was the final catastrophe that spurred the town fathers into action," says Bob Joseph, community development department director.

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In 1996, the big change was the pact between the town and Larimer County that created the Estes Valley Comprehensive Plan, the document that predicts the valley's carrying capacity of roughly...