Pike's Peak Country
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Pike's Peak Country was the common name for what is now Colorado before the land was ever organized or widely settled. It was so named because Pikes Peak rose so starkly out of otherwise pancake-flat Kansas prairie—visible for miles around, it became the landmark which defined the area.
Originally unorganized land acquired by the United States under the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and 1848 Mexican Cession, the area of Pike's Peak County became part of the Kansas Territory in 1854 with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. After the 1859 Colorado Gold Rush, Pike's Peak County became part of the separate Colorado Territory (formed in 1861) and finally the state of Colorado in 1876.