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The
Other Pike's Peak
Pike's Peak is a famous mountain in Colorado, attracting climbers
from all over. Pike's Peak is also in the Midwest, McGregor, Iowa, to
be exact. How did this happen?
According to the web site http://www.state.ia.us/parks/pikepeak.htm
(see below) "After the Louisiana Purchase, the government sent Zebulon
Pike in 1805 to explore the Mississippi valley and select locations suitable
for military posts. Pike recognized the park site as an important, strategic
point, and an excellent location for a fort. The government agreed on
the vicinity but selected the prairie around Prairie du Chien (now Wisconsin)
for the fort.
Several years later, Pike was again sent westward by the government and
named Pikes Peak in Colorado", (which Pike declared, "impossible to climb.")
"In 1837, Alexander McGregor established a ferry across the Mississippi
River. McGregor's Landing was established at the site of the town that
now bears his name. When Mrs. Munn, the grand-niece of McGregor, died,
her will provided that Pikes Peak be given to the federal government as
a gift. The land had been inherited from McGregor. It was later conveyed
by Congress to the State of Iowa and became Pikes Peak and Point Ann State
Parks in 1935.
Mrs. Munn had never allowed settlers on the land and as a result, the
landscape at Pikes Peak today probably does not vary much from the way
it was hundreds of years ago."
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