Elkanah Lamb

Elkanah J. Lamb (January 1, 1832 – April 7, 1915)[1] was born in Indiana and moved westward through Iowa to Kansas and Nebraska during his early adulthood.

He became a minister of the Church of the United Brethren and traveled through the Kansas and Nebraska frontier to preach to people in their homes or school houses.

Lamb initially preached to people he met while traveling through the St. Vrain valley, and he was later a church minister and elder.

[2][5] In 1860, Lamb spent a brief period prospecting for gold in Colorado with his cousin, Enos Mills Sr., and then he returned to Kansas.

His work was dangerous due to the tension between the people of European descent and the Native Americans for land and food, which resulted in deaths and kidnappings.

[2] He spent a year in Colorado, including a visit to Estes Park in the fall of 1870,[9] where Lamb held church services in a log schoolhouse.

[9] In 1873, Lamb moved his family to Colorado and was assigned by the United Brethren Church to minister to the people in the St. Vrain valley.

[9] He published the book Past memories and future thoughts: reminiscences for over thirty years, from birth up to April 17, 1870, when I was ordained by Bishop Dickson by 1905.

This sudden stopping of my acrobatic performance brought my long walking appendages around with a musical swash… spilling all the specimens I had gathered on the summit.

Lamb assembled a party in 1871 to climb Longs Peak using the Keyhole route, which has become the most popular way to ascend to the summit.

He made his way across a very narrow ledge, ironically called "Broadway", that was hundreds of feet above Chasm Lake and at the base of the couloir.

The trail begins Tahosa Valley, runs counterclockwise around Longs Peak and reaches the summit at 14,259 feet.

[7] Lamb homesteaded 160 acres on land that was about 35 miles from the nearest store and in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park.

"[15] In 1901 or 1902, he sold Longs Peak House to Enos Mills, who is said to be the "father of Rocky Mountain National Park."

[7] After he sold the Longs Peak House, Lamb moved into a place called Mountain Home in Estes Park.