The Ute Indians said they had always lived in the hills of Colorado and called the Rocky Mountain’s easternmost peak Sun Mountain because it catches the early morning rays. In the late 1700s, Spaniards called the peak El Captain. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike was sent in 1806 to survey the southwest section of the new acquisition, and on November 15 he wrote in his journal about a mountain or blue cloud in the distance that he called Grand Peak. Pike and his men tried to reach the summit but failed in a blizzard on November 24, 1806. The first recorded ascent came in 1820 by botanist Dr. Edwin James, and Major Stephen H. Long, who led the expedition, named the mountain James Peak in his honor. During the 1850s, Pikes Peak became the mountain’s official name, and the Pikes Peak or Bust gold rush of 1859 brought thousands of opportunity-seekers to its slopes and gave it national notoriety.