Pikes Peak is the highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in North America.

The mountain is named in honor of American explorer Zebulon Pike, even though he was unable to reach the summit.

It is thought that the Ute people first arrived in Colorado about 500 A.D.,[citation needed] however their oral history states that they were created on Tava.

It is thought that the granite was once magma that crystallized at least 20 miles (32 km) beneath the Earth's surface, formed by an igneous intrusion during the Precambrian, approximately 1.05 billion years ago, during the Grenville orogeny.

James and two other men left the expedition, camped on the plains, and climbed the peak in two days, encountering little difficulty.

From the summit, she wrote in a letter to her mother: "Nearly everyone tried to discourage me from attempting it, but I believed that I should succeed; and now here I am, and I feel that I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.

"[11][12] Thirty-five years later, in July 1893, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful", after having admired the view from the top of Pikes Peak.

On July 17, 1913 William Wayne Brown drove his car, the Bear Cat, 20 miles (32 km) to the summit.

The road has a series of switchbacks, treacherous at high speed, called "The W's" for their shape on the northwest side of the mountain.

[21] The project was in response to a suit by the Sierra Club over damage caused by the gravel and sediment that is constantly washed off the road into the alpine environment.

The Highway is famous worldwide for the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a motor race held since 1916.

The short film Climb Dance features Ari Vatanen racing his Peugeot 405 T16 up the steep, twisty slopes.

[25] The most popular hiking route to the top is called Barr Trail, which approaches the summit from the east.

Although the Barr Trail is rated only Class 1, it is a long and arduous hike with nearly 8,000 ft (2,400 m) of elevation gain, and a 13 mi (21 km) trip one-way.

[27] Since 1969, the summit of Pikes Peak has been the site of the United States Army Pikes Peak Research Laboratory, a medical research laboratory for the assessment of the impact of high altitude on human physiological and medical parameters of military interest.

Johnson Construction Co., estimates that about half of the budget is for materials, many of which are prefabricated in downslope shops, and the balance is for labor, because of the project's high standards and the rigors of working for a maximum of 6+1⁄2 hours per day at such a high altitude during a short season of April to October.

Heavy equipment and prefabricated building components are slowly moved up the mountain's highway in the middle of the night to avoid any car traffic.

The project is being constructed to achieve both Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum Certification and Living Building Challenge.

The new complex will include a visitor center, a communications facility for Colorado Springs Utilities, and the Army's High-Altitude Research Laboratory.

Snow is a possibility any time year-round, and thunderstorms with high winds gusting up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) or more are common in the afternoons.