James Pickering

Jim Pickering, a retired Professor of English and administrator, served as director of the Honors College at Michigan State University and as dean, provost and president at the University of Houston. The author/editor of more than thirty books on Estes Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and the American West, in 2006, Jim was appointed Historian Laureate of the Town of Estes Park. In addition to serving as president of the Rocky Mountain Conservancy (and as a Conservancy board member since 2014), he serves as chair of the board of directors of the Estes Park Economic Development Corporation, as a member of the editorial board of the Estes Park Trail Gazette, on the board of the Estes Park Museum Foundation, as a member of the Estes Valley Community Fund Committee of the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado. Jim also is a member of the Constantinian Military Order of St. George, a philanthropic knighthood. His relationship with Rocky Mountain National Park began when, as a boy of 11 from suburban New York, he spent two weeks in a rustic 1917 log cabin on the slopes of the Twin Sisters looking out at the East Face of Longs Peak. A graduate of Williams College, he received his graduate degrees from Northwestern University.