Mount Blue Sky

Mount Blue Sky rises to 14,264 feet west of Denver, the highest point on the city's skyline. The painter Albert Bierstadt, who traveled the range in 1863, called it Mount Rosalie for Rosalie Ludlow, later his wife. In 1895 the state renamed it for John Evans, the second governor of Colorado Territory.

Evans was governor when the Sand Creek Massacre was carried out in November 1864, and he was forced from office the next year. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes pressed for years to have his name taken off the mountain, Clear Creek County backed a new name, and in September 2023 the U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved Mount Blue Sky. The name joins the two nations: the Arapaho are known as the Blue Sky People, and the Cheyenne hold an annual renewal ceremony for all living things called Blue Sky.

Colorado began building the summit road, now State Highway 5, in 1921 and reached the top in 1927. It climbs some 7,000 feet in 28 miles from Idaho Springs, past Echo Lake and the bristlecone pines of Mount Goliath, to a parking lot at 14,130 feet, the highest paved road in North America, and a short trail goes on to the summit. The upper road opens from late May to early September with a timed-entry reservation. It was closed from September 2024 until May 2026 while crews rebuilt buckled pavement near Summit Lake, and Denver Mountain Parks took over the entrance station when it reopened. Mountain goats work the slopes near the top.