Collegiate Peaks Wilderness is a 168,000-acre protected mountain area in central Colorado, designated by Congress in 1980 under the Wilderness Act of 1964. Spanning parts of the San Isabel, Gunnison, and White River national forests, it includes much of the Sawatch Range and has the highest average elevation of any wilderness area in the United States. Named for nearby university-themed fourteeners such as Mount Harvard, Mount Oxford, Mount Yale, and Mount Columbia, it also contains other major summits, alpine valleys, and important headwaters along the Continental Divide. The area also preserves evidence of earlier Ute use and later mining activity.