Pikes Peak Geol/History

A Mountain of Firsts

Many men had climbed the peak before a fashionable "must do" stampede to the summit was started by a member of the Women's Suffragettes. After walking across the Great Plains for five weeks with the Lawrence Gold Prospecting Party, Julia Anna Archibald Holmes, a daring twenty-year-old dressed in scandalous bloomers, threw her pack on her back, picked up her book of Emerson's essays and followed her husband to her destiny. On August 5, 1858, she became the first woman known to climb to the summit.

First Coloradans	The First Coloradans Long before Zebulon Pike "discovered" the peak that would be named for him, Colorado's Ute Indians followed trails along the front range and into the mountains during their seasonal hunting and gathering migrations. The Utes camped in the Garden of the Gods on their way to hunt buffalo on the plains. They watched for enemies from Pikes Peak slopes and searched the mountain for spirit rocks and vision quest sites.
Zeb Pike	Lt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike 1779 - 1813 Pike, born January 5, 1779 in Lamberton, New Jersey, began his army career at the age of fifteen. He was killed during the War of 1812 after a successful battle for York (now Toronto, Ontario), by a powder magazine explosion on April 27, 1813. He died on a ship returning to Sackets Harbor, New York where he was buried.
Pikes Peak or Bust	Pikes Peak or Bust Fourteen years after Pike's attempted climb, Dr. Edwin S. James, a botanist on Major Stephen Long's Expedition, would claim the honor of being the first man in North America to ascend a mountain more than 14,000 feet high. On July 14, 1820, James reached the weathered summit of Pikes Peak after a strenuous two-day climb. James is also credited with collecting the first descriptions of alpine flora and the discovery of the blue columbine, Colorado's state flower.
William Jackson Palmer	At the Foot of the Mountain Within sight of Pikes Peak, two other small settlements were growing on Cherry Creek near the first gold discovery. By the time Colorado Territory was carved from Kansas Territory in 1861, these two settlements had become Denver City. It wasn't until 1871 that General William Jackson Palmer would set up his surveying equipment on the summit of Pikes Peak and plot a town of the prairie. He named it Colorado Springs.
Homesteading	Homesteading and Road Building Some attempted homesteading on Pikes Peak where summer temperatures can fall below freezing at night and snow is not unusual in July. In days before air-conditioning a stream-side homestead in a valley of wildflowers and surrounded with beautiful views would be appealing but not an easy chore. Homesteaders were required to live on and improve their land as well as raise crops for five years.
Glen Cove	Glen Cove Lodge Glen Cove Lodge, at an elevation of 11,425 feet on the Pikes Peak Highway, is listed on the State Register of Historic Properties. The Tweed family successfully homesteaded the shelter valley known as Glen Cove in the 1880s.

Pikes Peak Carriage Road

The first road to the summit of Pikes Peak was a carriage road opened in the fall of 1888 by the Cascade and Pikes Peak Toll Road Company. The fourteen foot wide gravel wagon road was advertised as " the highest in the world, and a great advance in the field of western transportation".

Fact or Fiction??

Tales of a large, hairy, manlike creature (known as Bigfoot in the USA and Sasquatch in Canada) living in remote areas of the North American continent have been reported for many years.

Eyewitnesses describe the creature as being 6 to 8 feet tall, walking upright on two legs, weighing 500-800 pounds and being covered with hair.

Although a few individual scientists are studying this phenomenon, the possible existence of this creature has largely been ignored by mainstream science. Most of the serious investigators are laymen, who check sighting reports and gather data, hoping to prove that Bigfoot is real.

Several thousand people have claimed encounters with Bigfoot; huge unexplained footprints have been found in the forests. Could such a creature exist in modern day, hi-tech North American or even on Pikes Peak? You be the judge!

Sgt. O'Keefe told of rats being so abundant on the summit they completely covered the rocks at night. Fact or Fiction?? (Fiction)

One cold January night he and his wife and two month old daughter Erin were getting ready to eat when they were attacked by the rats. Mrs. O'Keefe got into a roll of roofing and the sergeant jumped into two joins of stove pipe. They tried clubbing the rats off but the rats were overcoming them when Mrs. O'Keefe made a loop of electric wire into a lariat. She twirled it around herself and her husband, causing it to spark. It scared the rats away, but not before they had eaten their baby daughter. O'Keefe carved a suitable grave marker and placed it inside a small fenced area on the summit where his little daughter was supposedly buried. Fact or Fiction?? (Fiction)