Mount
Elbert
Miners named the peak for Samuel Hitt Elbert, territorial governor of Colorado, who in September 1873 brokered a treaty with the Ute that opened more than 3 million acres of reservation land to mining and railroads. The first recorded ascent came in 1874, when H.W. Stuckle climbed the summit while surveying the Sawatch Range for the Hayden Survey. A 1988 re-measurement under a revised vertical datum raised the accepted elevation from 14,433 feet to its current figure.
During the Great Depression, supporters of neighboring Mount Massive stacked rocks on its summit to close the 12-foot gap with Elbert; Elbert partisans tore the cairns down, and Elbert kept its title as Colorado's high point. In 1949 a Jeep made the first recorded motorized ascent, testing the mountain's potential for a ski area that was never built. Elbert remains the highest summit in the Rocky Mountains and the second-highest in the contiguous United States, after Mount Whitney.
SOURCE Wikipedia — Mount ElbertNo fees; vault toilets (closed seasonally). CLOSED as of late June 2026: Willow Fire — USFS PSICC area closure order effective 7/1-7/12/2026 unless extended (fs.usda.gov 'Willow Fire Area Closure'); 14ers.com (6/29/2026) reports all Mt. Elbert trailheads and trails closed until further notice. Winter: road normally closed ~5 mi below TH. Re-check fire status before build.