Pike Explores the Valley

Pike Explores the Valley. . , With the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States had extensive new lands to explore., In search of a new border , While Lewis and Clark engaged in their famous “Voyage of Discovery” along the Missouri River (1803-1806), the young and ambitious Zebulon Montgomery Pike explored the Mississippi River to its head. With that expedition completed, Pike was ordered to negotiate relationships with native peoples and to acquire knowledge of the southwestern boundary of the Louisiana Territory., November 1806 found Pike and his party on the Arkansas River near present day Pueblo. They intended to follow the Arkansas to its headwaters then turn south and return along the Red River, the edge of New Spain., Frustrated in an attempt to climb the peak that would later bear his name, Pike and his men turned away from the main branch of the Arkansas into South Park. After crossing Trout Creek Pass above present day Buena Vista, they came into a broad river valley. Not realizing they were back on the Arkansas, the explorers believed they had found the Red River. , By this time food supplies were perilously low and the men ill-equipped to deal with the weather. On December 24 Pike wrote that they had not eaten in several days but the members of his party who had been sent ahead had killed buffalo. The group reunited and camped on the north bank of the Arkansas at the mouth of Squaw Creek. , Christmas 1806 , Christmas Day the weather was stormy and Pike elected to keep the group at camp to repair equipment, eat and replenish food supplies. In his journal he described the difficult conditions:, “Here I must take the liberty of observing that in this situation, the hardships and privations we underwent, were on this day brought more fully to our mind… in the most inclement season of the year; not one person clothed for the winter, many without blankets, (having been obliged to cut them up for socks, etc.) and now laying down at night on the snow or wet ground; one side burning whilst the other was pierced with the cold wind…” , On December 26 they camped at Big Bend near present day Salida. As they continued downstream, Pike and his men realized their error and turned south in search of the Red River. , Early in 1807 the group crossed into the San Luis Valley at the Great Sand Dunes and built a log stockade near present day La Jara. Here Pike was overtaken by the Spanish and interrogated as a suspected spy. He and his men were escorted back to US territory through Texas and into Louisiana. During that time he made copious notes, most of which were confiscated by the Spanish. Pike’s subsequent book and reports were completed largely from memory. , An insurmountable peak? , Pike's Colorado explorations are memorialized in the mountain west of Colorado Springs that bears his name. , Pike believed that he could reach the summit of the peak and return to his expedition's camp near Pueblo in just three days. In late November he set out with three of his men, but by the third day they were far from their goal and were forced to turn back. Pike wrote in his journal:

“...The thermometer...here fell to 4° below 0. The summit of the Grand Peak, which was entirely bare of vegetation and covered with snow, now appeared at the distance of 15 or 16 miles from us, and as high again as what we had ascended, and would have taken a whole day's march to have arrived at its base, when I believed no human being could have ascended to its pinical [sic]. , This with the condition of my soldiers who had only light overalls on, and no stockings...the bad prospect of killing any thing to subsist on...determined us to return.”

This entry has led to the claim that Pike believed no one would ever reach the top of Pikes Peak. Taken in context, however, it seems he made a reasonable assessment of his own ability to reach the top in difficult circumstances. These circumstances would worsen in the days to come as they approached the Upper Arkansas Valley. , [photo captions] , . A photomontage of Pikes Peak from Colorado City, probably depicting Fountain Creek. The montage also includes a portrait of Zebulon Pike. Attributed to William Henry Jackson. , . President Theodore Roosevelt stands in a carriage outside the Antlers Hotel in Colorado Springs near a plaster statue of Zebulon Pike. The statue succumbed to the weather in a short amount of time. , . This commemorative coin was struck in 1906 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Pike’s “discovery” of the peak that bears his name.