The surface of the top of Pike's Peak comprises several acres of level land thickly strewn with large blocks of rough granite of varying size,--blocks that are almost wholly in a regular rectangular shape, as if prepared for some Titanic scheme of architecture. The highest telegraph office in the world is located here, and the usual souvenir shop of every summer resort offers its tempting remembrances, all of which are closely associated with the _genus loci_, and are all a very part of the Colorado productions. A powerful searchlight was placed on Pike's Peak during the summer of 1906, adding the most picturesque feature of night to all the surrounding country. Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, the Cripple Creek district, the deep cañons of the Cheyenne range, the silvery expanse of Broadmoor, whose attractive casino is a centre of evening gatherings,--all these points in the great landscape are swept with the illumination from the highest searchlight in the world to-day.
A century has passed since Major Zebulon Montgomery Pike first discovered the shadowy crest of the mountain peak that immortalizes his name. It was on November 13, 1806, that the attention of Major Pike and his party was arrested by what at first looked to them as a light blue cloud in the sky, toward which they marched for ten days before arriving at the base of the mountain. The story of this journey is one of the dramatic records in the national archives. Major Pike and his men left St. Louis on July 15, 1806, on his trip to the Rocky Mountains, or Mexican Mountains as he called them at the time. He pronounced the country through which he travelled to be so devoid of sustenance for human beings that it would serve as a barrier, for all time, in the expansion of the United States. In vivid contrast are the conditions to-day. Major Pike could now make his journey from St. Louis to Pike's Peak over either of several grand trunk railways equipped with all the modern luxuries of travel. Where he passed great herds of buffalo, he would now see cattle grazing in equal numbers on the prairies. The vast plains that paralyzed his imagination by their desolate aspects are now dotted with prosperous farms or ranches. The mountains that appealed to him only for their scenic grandeur have been found to be the treasure vaults of nature that were only waiting to be conquered by the hardy frontiersmen who followed him nearly half a century later. The great white mountain that he declared could not be ascended by a human being is now the objective point of a hundred thousand tourists annually, who gayly climb the height in a swift trip made in a luxurious Pullman observation car. The first attempt of the Pike party to ascend the peak was a failure, and Major Pike expressed his opinion that "no human being could ascend to its pinnacle." In 1819 Hon. John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, sent Major Long and a party on an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, then almost as unknown as the Himalayas. This exploring party camped on the present site of Colorado Springs, and on July 13 (1819) started to ascend the peak. On the first day they made only two miles, as the ground was covered with loose, crumbling granite. On the second day, however, they succeeded; the first ascent of Pike's Peak thus having been made on July 14, 1819. A chronicle of this ascent describes the point above which the timber line disappears as one "of astonishing beauty and of great interest as to its productions." The first woman to stand on the summit of Pike's Peak was Mrs. James H. Holmes, in August of 1858.