Zebulon Pike’s story should tower over Colorado like his pink granite mountain
If you’ve enjoyed a doughnut at the Summit House atop Pikes Peak, then you’ve accomplished two things the great Zebulon Pike never did. He never reached the top of his mountain, and the doughnut was invented in 1847, 34 years after Pike’s death.
Score two points for you, but let’s examine Pike’s resume and see if the lead holds. I would argue Pike is Colorado’s greatest contribution to the American story, worthy of more than Colorado has given back. That’s saying a mouthful about Pike, whose peak is America’s mountain‘, where Katherine Lee Bates was inspired to write “America the Beautiful” in 1893.
Sure, Colorado also gave Zebulon a neighboring national forest, but some perspective: We live in a place that has handed out names to natural wonders such as Poverty Gulch, Big Dry Creek, Bald Knob, Mount Baldy, Middle Baldy and Little Baldy. My man Zeb should have a county or a city named after him, equal to (railroad promoter and Gov. John) Evans, (Ute Chief) Ouray, (surveyor John W.) Gunnison or (state Sen.) John H. Crowley. Sixty-four counties have been named in this state, and none of them are named Pike.
You know who does have a county named after him? John C. Fremont. No disrespect to my friends in Canon City and Florence, but Fremont was as god-awful as he was great. He championed the anti-slavery movement, but he was famous for his blunders. He foolishly and stubbornly led an ill-conceived expedition of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that cost 10 of his men their lives during the winter of 1848.
Fremont’s first three expeditions to the frontier could be attributed to his friendship with frontiersman Kit Carson (also has a county named after him). Fremont was the first man to turn a buck on Las Vegas. Yet, ultimately, Fremont County’s namesake was court-martialed for mutiny and military misconduct. He died broke in New York, living off his wife’s earnings.
Pike, on the other hand, was a one-man Lewis and Clark, dispatched in 1806 to explore the southern boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase and find a river route to the Pacific through what would become Colorado. Forty-two years before Fremont’s folly, Pike crossed the Sangre de Cristos and discovered the headwaters of the Red River. And that ain’t all.
“He left St. Louis on 15th July, 1806,” the website Spartacus Education instructs. “Travelling along the Arkansas River with a party of 15 men he followed the route of what was later to become known as the Santa Fe Trail. He also attempted to climb the mountain that was later named Pikes Peak. He also discovered the Royal Gorge (4th December) and the upper waters of the South Platte (13th December). In January, 1807, Pike reached the upper Rio Grande. The following month he was captured by a 100-man Spanish force. He was held in captivity until being forced to leave Spanish territory in April, 1807.”
On Nov. 26, 1806, Pike began to climb his mountain, though he called “Grand Peak,” the billion-year-old pink granite 14er. He turned back because of waist-deep snow and cold that kept him from the summit.
Zeb was 27 years old. He died heroically just seven years later. Promoted to brigadier general at the onset of the War of 1812, Pike led the charge on York, or present-day Ontario on March 27, 1813. As Pike and his men advanced, the British exploded their on powder magazine; 52 other Americans were killed with the general.
“General Pike was crushed beneath a heavy mass of stone that struck him in the back,” recounted Benson J. Lossing in 1869 in his “Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812.” “He was carried immediately after discovery to the water’s edge, placed in a boat, and conveyed, first on board the Pert, and then to the commodore’s flag-ship. Just as the surgeons and attendants, with the wounded general, reached the little boat, the huzzas of the troops fell upon his benumbed ears. ‘What does it mean?’ he feebly asked. ‘Victory,’ said a sergeant in attendance. ‘The British union-jack is coming down from the block-house, and the stars and stripes are going up.’ The dying hero’s face was illuminated by a smile of great joy. His spirit lingered several hours, and then departed. Just before his breath ceased the captured British flag was brought to him. He made a sign for them to place it under his head, and thus he expired.”
John C. Fremont died when he was 77 years old from stomach inflammation on Staten Island. Four states named counties after him, and seven states have cities named in his honor. Before one judges him too harshly, know that it was a 27-year-old Fremont who pushed to give Pikes Peak its name in 1840.
Colorado has neglected to honor Zebulon Pike, and that’s not just an oversight; it’s a travesty. In 2001, Broomfield became Colorado’s 64th county. The name comes from the cornstalks that used to grow in the area and were used to make brooms.