On this episode of Our American Stories, long before travelers drove the Pike’s Peak Highway or stood at the summit that rises more than fourteen thousand feet above Colorado, a determined young officer named Zebulon Pike set out to understand the far edge of a country still finding its shape. Craig Du Mez of the Grateful Nation Project traces how Pike’s early failures, his encounters with Spanish authorities, and his later military service shaped the story behind the peak that still carries his name.

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