The generic term used to describe this tremendous tide of humanity - the Pike’s Peakers - could not have been better chosen. It was short, alliterative, and easily remembered. It surfaced early on in the gold rush, the first time in the 5 November 1858 issue of the Missouri Statesman. Use of the term spread quickly, especially after frontier newspapers began printing weekly reports about “the new discovered gold regions near Pike’s Peak.” By early 1859, even the large eastern dailies were labeling as Pike’s Peakers any and all even remotely connected with the gold rush.
Frontier merchants further imprinted the name on the public consciousness by hawking their wares as especially designed for use by Pike’s Peakers. They sold Pike’s Peak hats and Pike’s Peak boots, Pike’s Peak picks and Pike’s Peak shovels, Pike’s Peak pistols and the inevitable Pike’s Peak guidebooks. Every clothing store along the Missouri River seems to have laid in a stock of Pike’s Peak outfits. Barbershops made a business of giving haircuts in the Pike’s Peak style. And every other hotel cooked its beef a la mode Pike’s Peak or topped its puddings with Pike’s Peak sauce.
Despite its widespread use, the name Pike’s Peak had at first very little meaning for the general public. It was said that, early on, most would-be gold seekers did not know “whether the earthly elevation called Pike’s Peak was in Kansas or Kamtochotha.” In fact, one newspaperman claimed “ninety-nine out of every one hundred persons in the country did not know that there was such a topographical feature as Pike’s Peak"
But as gold reports continued to pour in, Pike’s Peak seemed to become the one subject in everyone’s thoughts and on everyone’s mind, the one constant in everyone’s dreams. By early 1859, anyone going anywhere appeared to be headed “Pike’s Peakward.” The cry became “Pike’s Peak or Bust,” and many a Peaker felt compelled to print this slogan in bold letters on his wagon cover.
Had things been different, had Pike’s Peak not already been the best-known landmark along the front range of the Rockies, the Pike’s Peakers might perhaps have been called Russelites in honor of argonaut Green Russell or Cherry Creekers after the stream where gold was first found. Instead, they were named for a mountain that lay more than sixty miles distant from the main diggings. This fact of geography caused a great deal of confusion among the gold seekers when they finally did reach the mountains. It seemed as incomprehensible then as it does now that not until a quarter of a century after the great Pike’s Peak Gold Rush was gold found anywhere near Pike’s Peak, and then only on its backside at a place called Cripple Creek.
Not only did the gold seekers not find any gold on Pike’s Peak, but also many soon came to realize that this mountain was by no measure the tallest of the Colorado Rockies. Thirty others soared higher, including four along the Front Range. Zebulon Pike had early on overestimated the Peak’s elevation by more than 4,000 feet. Lieutenant Swift of the Long Expedition had underestimated it by nearly as much, calculating its height at only 11,507 and a half feet above sea level. Pike’s Peak was in fact 14,110 feet high, still high enough to make many gold seekers agree with the early trappers that a cloud could not pass between its top and the sky.
The mountain so dominated the horizon that Zebulon Pike claimed it was “known to all the savage nations for hundreds of miles around,” and was “spoken of with admiration by the Spaniards of New Mexico.”
The plains Arapahoes called it simply the long mountain. They cut lodgepoles on its slopes, made offerings to its soda springs, and told stories of their ancient chief who still roamed above timberline in company with a white buffalo bull of enormous size. The mountain Utes were said to have referred to it as mountain of the sun. They laid out a trail around its northern edge, spending many a winter in the warm valleys at its base. When the Spanish arrived, they called the mountain “Los Ojos Ciegos,” (The Blind Eyes), probably in reference to the two glacial scars that marked its eastern face.
Pike himself referred to the mountain as the “high point,” the “north mountain,” and the “Grand Peak;” on his map he identified it as the “Highest Peak.”
Zebulon Montgomery Pike, son of a soldier and himself a twenty-seven year old army lieutenant, first sighted what he thought was “a small blue cloud” while heading his fifteen-man expedition west along the Arkansas River, near the later site of Bent’s Old Fort. He studied the cloud through his spyglass. It did not move. Half an hour later, the dim outlines of other peaks came into view, and Pike joined his men in giving “three cheers for the Mexican mountains.”
Over the next several weeks Pike developed a special affinity for the peak later named after him. From 15 November 1806 to 27 January 1807 he had it almost constantly in sight as he searched the surrounding country for the sources of the Red River. On reaching the mouth of Fountain Creek in the present city of Pueblo, he decided to build a log breastwork to protect his men, while he and three others attempted an ascent of the peak “in order to be enabled, from its pinical, to lay down the various branches and positions of the country.”
Instead of following the established Indian trail to the base of the peak, Pike attempted a short cut across the broken prairie. His projected “one day’s march” took forty-one hours, and left him and his fellow climbers in waist-deep snow and twenty-three degree weather atop a lesser mountain, still a dozen miles southwest of their objective. As he looked around at his three companions - all of them clad only in light overalls, with no socks, blankets or food - Pike could only conclude that an ascent of the peak under such conditions was impossible: “It was as high again as what we had ascended, and it would have taken a whole day’s march to arrive at its base, when I believe no human being could have ascended to its pinical.”
Pike’s failure to climb his “Highest Peak” became known to American readers through the publication of his journals in 1810. The following year, a more grammatically correct edition was published in England, with later translations into Dutch, German and French. Pike became famous. His mountain became a well-known western landmark, and its subsequent conquest became merely a matter of time.
The Highest Peak was first climbed on 14 July 1820, less than fourteen years after the departure of Zebulon Pike. The climbers were botanist Dr. Edwin James, hunter J. Verplank, and baggage master Zachariah Wilson, all members of the Long Scientific Expedition, which had come west to explore the southwestern boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase. The trio had been deposited at the base of the peak by expedition guide Joseph Bijeau, who left them with the warning that “the whole of the mountain to its summit, was covered with loose sand and gravel, so that though many attempts had been made by the Indians and by hunters to ascend it, none had ever proved successful.”
Undaunted, Dr. James and his two companions labored upward for the better part of two days. At about 4 P.M. on the second day they reached the summit. There they found an alpine world - cold, clear, bare of vegetation, and covered with acres of splintered rock. Stretched out below them lay a natural map of rivers, plains, and mountain chains. For half an hour, the men gazed out at the magnificent panorama, then began their descent. Dr. James’ laborious climb earned him title to the mountain. It was called James Peak in his honor, and for fifteen years the name stuck. In 1835, however, members of the Dodge military expedition changed the name to Pike’s Peak. Adventurer E. Williard Smith in 1839 and Rufus B. Cable in 1842 continued the name change; and in 1843 John C. Fremont, finding the name “Pike’s Peak” in common use among the mountain men, put it on his map, ending the diversity for all time.
All of these early explorers wrote accounts of their adventures in the west. Dr. James compiled the Long Expedition’s reports for publication, and included a rather lengthy account of his own climb up the Peak. Captain Lemul Ford of Dodge’s U.S. Dragoons published an article in the Army and Navy Chronicle of 1836, entitled “A Summer Upon the Prairie,” in which he gave details of the army’s second aborted attempt to scale the peak named after Lieutenant Pike.
Fremont not only described the mountain and analyzed the soda springs at its base, but also inserted in his report a lithograph of Pike’s Peak: “40 miles distant from camp July 11th (1843).”
In his 1846 Rocky Mountain Life, Rufus Sage wrote of the Pike’s Peak region in such glowing terms - the mild climate, the rich soil, the abundance of game, the magnificent and delightful scenery - it was a wonder that his readers did not immediately pull up stakes and move west.
With each published report, the name Pike’s Peak became more recognizable to the reading public until, by the late 1850’s, the mountain had become almost a symbol of the Rocky Mountains themselves. Only one catalyst was yet needed to make the name a household word, and that catalyst was soon provided by a group of promoters from Kansas Territory.
This group was composed of forty-eight men, two women and a child. Most were from the frontier town of Lawrence, K.T. They had been organized as a gold seeking party in the spring of 1858, after an Indian army scout had returned to the Delaware Reservation near Lawrence with a handful of gold nuggets tied up in a handkerchief. The nuggets, he said, had been found near Pike’s Peak.
As they approached closer to the Front Range, some of the Lawrence Party began making bets as to the true composition of the white substance visible atop Pike’s Peak. Some claimed that it was white rock; others wagered it was snow. On 3 July 1858, while the main party was encamped on the Fontaine qui Bouille, several small groups set out to hike the twenty-five miles to the base of the peak, climb to the summit, and settle all bets. “One by one the boys succeeded in getting back to camp at some hour of that night,” Jason Younker remembered with a smile, “but none of them had a report to make on the question of snow vs. white rock.”
Three of the men - Augustus Voorhees, John Miller, and Frank Cobb - were more determined than the rest. No sooner had the Lawrence Party gone into their month-long camp at the foot of Pike’s Peak, then Miller busied himself cooking up provisions for an assault on the summit. Early on the morning of 9 July he and his two friends shouldered their packs and climbed all day. The first night they slept between two large rocks. The following day they reached timberline, but soon after were forced to spend nearly three hours crouching under an overhanging rock to escape a driving hailstorm. They got to the top at three o’clock in the afternoon. It was so cloudy they could see nothing of the country beyond.
Certain that they were the first to have ever stood on the summit, the trio made what Cobb later called “a thorough search to ascertain whether anyone had ever done so before but could find no indication that anyone had.” This determined them to leave behind a permanent record of their own achievement, so the men built up a pyramid of rocks, in the middle of which they placed an upright stick engraved with their names and the date.
The three men returned to camp celebrities. Often over the next month, others of the party sought them out to hear of their climbing experiences and to ask about the best route up the mountain. One of the most interested listeners was a twenty-year-old woman named Julia Holmes. Julia was described as “young, handsome, and intelligent;” she was also an avid feminist, who had more than once shocked her traveling companions by wearing the recently-introduced bloomer costume and by insisting on standing guard duty with the men.
After much discussion, Julia was finally able to persuade John Miller to retrace his steps up Pike’s Peak. On the first day of August 1858, Julia - with her husband James, their guide John Miller, and a prospector named George Peck - began the ascent. The lady wore a pair of tight black pants, a hickory shirt and a pair of moccasins. With her she carried some writing materials and a copy of Emerson’s essays.
Julia’s later description of her historic climb was pure poetry. She wrote of “huge boulders” and “terrible canyons,” of “music from the foaming stream” and of “straight, slender tapering pines that stand around so beautiful in their death.” She also described a little rocky nook near timberline which she christened “Snowdell,” and where she and her companions spent two days resting for their ultimate climb to the summit.
That climb came on 5 August 1858. The day was cold and cloudy, with frequent squalls of snow. Once on top, Julia finished a letter to her mother: “I have accomplished the task which I marked out for myself, and now I feel amply repaid for all my toil and fatigue...In all probability I am the first white woman who has ever stood upon the summit of this mountain and gazed upon this wondrous scene, which my eyes now behold.” Though numbed by the terrible cold, Julia hurriedly commenced letters to some of her friends, then took a few minutes to engrave her name on a large boulder. Before starting the descent, she read aloud a few lines from Emerson:
“A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs
The world uncertain comes and goes
The lover rooted stays.”
On her return from the peak, Julia and her husband traveled south to New Mexico. Two of her letters describing her trip west and her climb up Pike’s Peak were later published in “The Sybl,” a semi-monthly journal of The Whig Press.
Failing to find any gold near Pike’s Peak, most of the other members of the Lawrence Party eventually found their way north to the newly discovered gold diggings at the mouth of Cherry Creek. There they did some prospecting and founded the short-lived towns of Montana and St. Charles. By late fall of 1858, most had returned to Lawrence, where they spread the word about the Pike’s Peak gold fields by means of interviews, letters, newspaper articles, and hastily-written guidebooks.
Largely through their efforts Pike’s Peak became the most tangible symbol of the Colorado gold rush. Later gold seekers came to view the mountain with much the same reverential awe as that first displayed by the Lawrence Party. They all pointed their wagons “Pike’s Peakward,” vying with one another to see who could first catch a glimpse of the mighty mountain. More often than not, the initial sighting was made near Beaver Creek on the northern route, near Sand Creek on the two central routes, or just past the ruins of Bent’s Old Fort on the southern route. Invariably, the peak would first appear as a small cloud on the western horizon. Its outline, so clear in the early morning air, would dim during the bright midday hours, only to reappear more plainly the following morning. On noting that the distant cloud had not drifted or grown appreciably larger, the gold seekers would usually give “three cheers for old Pike” and, as often as not, pass around the whiskey bottle in celebration.
But by far the greatest majority of the Pike’s Peakers gloried in the name. They felt themselves pioneers in the great westward migration, argonauts in the founding of a new state, and implements in the 19th century doctrine of Manifest Destiny. In later years, most came to look back on the time spent in the Colorado gold fields as the greatest experience of their lives. The many documents they left behind - the numerous trail diaries, the hundreds of letters and newspaper accounts, the reminiscences written in later life - tell their stories in both realistic fact and romantic fiction. In the pages of these personal accounts can still be found an accurate portrayal of the first Pike’s Peakers, of the men and women who left their homes and families to take an active part in the historic movement known then, as now, as the great Pike’s Peak Gold Rush.
2. Don Juan Bautista De Anza, "Diary," Forgotten Frontiers, edited by Barnaby Thomas. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932).
3. Edwin James, From Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains, edited by Maxine Benson. (Golden: Fulcrum Inc. 1988).
4. Letter of Julia Holmes from Fort Union, 25 January 1859. Published in The Sibyl. Reprinted in The Whig Press, 16 & 23 March 1859.
5. William B. Parsons, "Pike's Peak Fourteen Years Ago," Kansas Magazine January-June 1872.
6. Jason T. Younker, "The Early Pioneer," The Trail, Vol. II.
7. Letter of W.J. Boyer, 18 June 1858. Published in the Lawrence Republican, 15 July 1858.
What really set Pike’s Peak apart from its more lofty neighbors was its location midway between the Arkansas and South Platte Rivers. It jutted out from the Front Range, exposing more than 400 square miles of mass and a vertical climb of nearly 8,000 feet. Its lofty summit was visible for more than a hundred miles out on the plains.
On 24 May 1858, the Lawrence Party (as they came to be called) struck southwest for the Santa Fe Trail, which they followed due west to the mountains. Their destination: the rumored gold fields at the base of Pike’s Peak. Immediately upon leaving the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail, they began “to look anxiously for a glimpse of Pike’s Peak.” Like Pike before them, they first caught sight of the mountain just past the ruins of Bent’s Old Fort. Everyone stopped their wagons and took a good, long look. “We stood upon the plain and gazed upon our mountain,” wrote William Parsons in later years. “It was to us everything. It stood for the whole country, from Mexico to our northern line. It represented gold, and plenty of it; it spoke of influence, power, and position in our middle age, and ease and comfort in our decline.” 
There were some that came to curse Pike’s Peak and all it stood for. For a time during the late spring of 1859, ugly rumors forced thousands of gold seekers to stampede back over the trails, victims of what was called the “Pike’s Peak Humbug.”
Copyright © 1999-2007 Richard Gehling. All Rights Reserved.
E-mail me at GehlingR@aol.com
1. Zebulon Pike, "The Arkansas Journey," The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, edited by Elliot Coues. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1987).
