[2] The county is named for Colorado Governor Frederick Walker Pitkin.

[3] The county's highest point is Castle Peak, a fourteener with a height of 14,265 feet (4,348 m).

It is 20 miles (32 km) south of Aspen on the Gunnison County border.

According to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, residents of Pitkin County had a 2014 life expectancy of 86.52 years, the second-longest in the nation.

[13] In June 2021, U.S. News & World Report ranked the county with the nation's fourth-best life expectancy, at 93.4 years.

From 1920, Pitkin County followed national trends until being narrowly carried by losing candidate Thomas E. Dewey in 1944.

Pitkin was largely Republican-leaning until the growing ski resort community drew its residents to the liberal George McGovern – rejected by a majority of the electorates of all but 129 other counties – in 1972.