Culebra
Peak

Culebra takes its name from the Spanish word for snake, likely borrowed from Culebra Creek below it; the name appears on Zebulon Pike's 1810 map as Rio de la Culebra and on Alexander von Humboldt's 1811 map of New Spain. The peak forms the eastern boundary of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant, issued by Mexican governor Manuel Armijo in 1843, and is Colorado's southernmost fourteener. No first ascent of the summit has been documented, though the surrounding range was mapped by Spanish and Mexican surveyors decades before Colorado statehood.

North Carolina lumberman Jack Taylor bought the 77,500-acre tract containing the peak in 1960 and fenced it off, cutting local families from land-grant access rights their ancestors had held since the 1840s. The resulting lawsuit, Lobato v. Taylor, ended with a 2002-03 Colorado Supreme Court ruling that restored grazing, firewood and timber rights to area heirs. The ranch, renamed Cielo Vista and listed for about $105 million, passed to Texas oil heir William Harrison in 2017 and still charges climbers a per-person fee to reach the summit.