Milestones Icon: Longs Peak

Each year, more than 10,000 people attempt to climb Longs Peak, the highest summit in Rocky Mountain National Park and one of Colorado’s famed “fourteeners” (mountains higher than 14,000 feet in elevation).

But the man for whom the peak is named, Stephen Harriman Long, never climbed it. In fact, he never even got close enough to touch it.

What you see from Longmont is actually two peaks – Longs Peak and Mount Meeker, sometimes referred to as the “Twin Peaks” for which many businesses in the region are named. Don’t confuse that name with “Twin Sisters,” a nearby mountain that is prominent up close but does not stand out as strongly when looking at the area from the Front Range.

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Born in New Hampshire in 1784, Long attended Dartmouth College and then enlisted in the U.S. Army. In 1817, the military dispatched Long, at that time a brevet major in the Corps of Topographical Engineers, to explore the Upper Mississippi River.

Pleased with his work on the project, the Army later chose Long to lead an expedition to explore and map the area east of the Rocky Mountains. He left St. Louis in the spring of 1820, accompanied by a team of scientists and topographers. The group set out across a poorly known section of the Great Plains, following the Platte River.

It wasn’t until late June that Long’s men caught their first glimpse of the Rockies. There was one mountain that Long was especially keen to find: a summit first recorded by Zebulon Pike during his earlier expedition to the area. They soon spotted one peak that towered above the rest, which Long took to be Pike’s legendary summit. Long recorded the feature on his map as “The Highest Peak,” and the expedition then continued south. It wasn’t until they finally arrived at the actual Pikes Peak that Long and his men realized their mistake. Although Long never came closer than 40 miles of the mountain, he was the first explorer to record it, and within five years it had come to be known as “Long’s Peak.” (The apostrophe was later dropped.)

It was also during this expedition that Long described the Great Plains as “The Great American Desert,” asserting that the region was too dry and the soil too poor to support human habitation. Five decades later, proving that the West could indeed sustain life, citizens of the newly founded Chicago-Colony honored the explorer by naming their new town after his mountain, dubbing it Longmont.

Long went on to lead several more expeditions across the United States and north into Canada. He rose steadily through the military ranks and explored more than 26,000 miles of territory in total. As an inventor, he contributed to the technology of the steam locomotive, and was chief engineer of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In the 1850s, Long was tasked with improving navigation on the Mississippi River, and when the Civil War began, he was made commander of the Topographical Engineers, where he made crucial contributions to the war effort. However, despite his many accomplishments, Long will likely be best remembered in this area for the imposing peak and the city that still bear his name.