Mount
of
the
Holy
Cross

William Henry Jackson's 1873 photographs of the cross-shaped snowfield on the peak's northeast face, taken during the Hayden Survey, made the mountain a national sensation and are often associated with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Cross of Snow." The same survey's James Gardner and W.H. Holmes made the first recorded ascent that August, though miners or Native Americans may have reached the summit earlier.

President Herbert Hoover designated Holy Cross National Monument in 1929, citing the cross-shaped snowfield's fame; it passed to the National Park Service in 1933. Congress abolished the monument in 1950 under President Truman, returning the land to White River National Forest. The peak's slopes are now protected within the 122,797-acre Holy Cross Wilderness, laced with some 164 miles of trails, which Congress established in 1980.