Kit Carson Peak - Recent History

Recent History

In 1995, the 151-square-mile (390 km2) Baca Ranch, which included Kit Carson Peak, was purchased for $15 million by a group that included Yale University. By 1997, one of the partners in the group, rancher Gary Boyce, had funded a signature drive that put two constitutional amendments on Colorado's 1998 ballot, both "aimed at financially breaking the water establishment" which was fighting his proposal to export water from the Baca. In 1997, the U.S. Forest Service led what turned out to be a 13-year effort to introduce new trails, campsites and trailheads that eased ascent of Kit Carson and other peaks in the basin; the effort, coordinated with trail restoration groups such as the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative and the Rocky Mountain Field Institute, was concluded in 2010.

In January 2002, the Nature Conservancy announced the signing of a $31 million purchase agreement for the Baca Ranch. The purchase significantly expanded the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in 2004.

The peak features complex terrain that has misled climbers in the past, contributing to a death in the summer of 2006, 2010, and 2011.

In 2011, the United States Board on Geographic Names considered a proposal to rename the peak Mount Crestone, voting unanimously against it due to the potential confusion with nearby Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle. The proposal had been put forward because Carson had led a 1863-64 campaign to dislodge Navajo Indians, who had sided with the Confederacy.