Indian Peaks Wilderness is a 73,931-acre protected mountain area in north-central Colorado spanning the Continental Divide within the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and part of Rocky Mountain National Park. Close to Denver, it is one of Colorado’s most visited wilderness areas, with more than 50 lakes, 28 trails, glaciers, and seven summits above 13,000 feet, including North Arapaho Peak. People have crossed and used these mountains for thousands of years, from Paleo-Indians and the Arapaho to nineteenth-century miners. After long efforts at preservation, Congress designated the area as wilderness in 1978. Its landscape also preserves Native-inspired peak names, surviving glaciers, and remnants of mining and a 1948 plane crash.