Historic Grand Lake is the western gateway into Rocky Mountain National Park. The townsite itself is between Grand Lake to the east and Shadow Mountain Lake to the south and southwest. The whole area is part of the Arapaho National Recreation Area. Grand Lake is the largest natural body of water in Colorado and is considered to be the source of the Colorado River. The nearby Shadow Mountain and Granby Lakes are man-made parts of the Colorado-Big Thompson project which diverts water to the Front Range cities through a tunnel beneath the Continental Divide. The first permanent settlers in the Grand Lake area arrived about 1866. Most of them were hunters and fishermen. There was a brief spurt of miners in the late 1870's when silver was discovered in the streams and mountains nearby. New bus