Estes Park, CO
Estes Park, CO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Estes Park at the 97th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 4,217 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Estes Park at the 95th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Estes Park's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Estes Park: 57.9% of its 4,217 buildings, versus 42.1% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Estes Park compares
Estes Park scores 97th nationally and 88th within Colorado — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Estes Park ranks 999 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,042 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 60 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Estes Park and the insurance market
Estes Park's 97th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Estes Park
Because Direct exposure dominates in Estes Park (57.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Estes Park's 999-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Estes Park, see the exposure-zones guide.