Maroon
Peak

The peak's color comes from iron oxide in the Maroon Formation, mudstone so weak it fractures underfoot on nearly every route. Percy Hagerman, a Colorado Springs businessman and mountaineer, made the first well-documented ascent on August 25, 1908, riding a horse partway up the Maroon Pass trail before finishing solo up the southwest face in an 11-hour round trip, an outing he later recounted in his own field notes on the range. A Wikipedia infobox instead credits an 1890s climb by a 'C. Wilson,' a claim this research could not corroborate elsewhere.

The surrounding Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness was Ute territory before miners and, later, hikers arrived, and became one of five areas in Colorado designated as wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act. The range's instability turned deadly in 1965, when eight people died across the Maroon Bells in five separate accidents in a single year, cementing the peaks' reputation as Colorado's least forgiving fourteeners despite roughly 300,000 annual visitors to the scenic area below.