Pike's Peak: A Mining Saga

by Frank Waters

During the fabulous reign of Colorado Silver, innumerable prospectors passed by Pike’s Peak on their way to the silver strikes at Leadville, Aspen, and the boom camps in the Saguache, Sangre de Cristo, and San Juan mountain. Then, in 1890, a carpenter named Winfield Scott Stratton discovered gold along Cripple Creek. By 1900, this six square mile area on the south slope of Pike’s Peak supported 475 mines and led the world in gold production. Against this backdrop of frenzied mining and gold fever, Pike’s Peak tells the story of Joseph Rogier, a man who seeks and finds his fortune in Colorado, and then loses everything in pursuit of something more important.

Arriving in Colorado Springs in the 1870s, Rogier becomes a successful contractor and builder and helps to raise a little mountain town into the Saratoga of the west. He rears a large family and scoffs at the “alfalfa miners” chasing silver strikes everywhere. But with the discovery of gold at nearby Cripple Creek, Rogier is shaken and methodically squanders his prosperous business and all his property attempting to reach the “great gold heart” of Pike’s Peak.

Waters’ is a psychologically modern novel whose universal theme is expressed on the grand scale of the opening of a territory. It is both a marvelously colorful and detailed account of the days when Colorado boomed and Denver became a big town, and an allegory of one man's furious pursuit of the truth within himself.

751 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Frank Waters was an American novelist, essayist, and cultural historian best known for his profound explorations of the American Southwest and Native American spirituality. Deeply influenced by his Cheyenne heritage and early experiences on the Navajo Reservation, Waters wove themes of indigenous identity, mysticism, and the clash between tradition and modernity into much of his work. His celebrated novel The Man Who Killed the Deer (1942) is considered a cornerstone of Southwestern literature, offering a powerful portrayal of a Pueblo man’s internal struggle with cultural dislocation. Over the decades, Waters produced an impressive body of work, including both fiction and non-fiction, such as Book of the Hopi, Mexico Mystique, and The Colorado, which blended mythology, history, and esoteric thought. A strong advocate for the arts, he held various editorial and academic positions and was honored with several awards. His legacy lives on through the Frank Waters Foundation, which supports writers and artists in the spirit of his creative vision.

Reviews

[Ned Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank Water's "Pikes Peak" mining saga is indeed a lost classic of American Western literature, and encompasses all of Frank Water's themes of individual passion, familial loss, and personal transcendence in the service of a great ambition -- a common theme in Waters and a powerful one. Waters also has that interesting way of approaching his story -- and his characters -- as near parables and fables, so that his stories feel nearly timeless.

A few years ago, I read everything by Waters I could get my hands on, and noticed the interesting Buddhist path that his characters tend to follow, transcending their own reality through deep immersion in nature. In this set of joined novels, the immersion is much more than just hiking or hunting, it is instead the ambition to mine and dig and plumb the depths of the earth, an ambition that is in the end at odds with the settling down impulse of the maturing West.

After Wallace Stegner's powerful Angle of Repose, I'd argue that Waters is the next most powerful and insightful novelist of the West.

If you're just starting Waters, I'd recommend Man Who Killed the Deer -- it was his breakthrough novel, and continues to be an influence on Western literature.

One personal note -- my novel Coeur d'Alene Waters could almost be read as a latter-day coda to Waters mining saga, as I deal with the aftermath of the pell-mell urge to mine that Waters first chronicled in his work.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful and moving saga--three linked (and rewritten) novels. This is Frank Waters at his best. The book is a lost classic of Western literature.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific story! A big heavy three-volume novel all in one. This is a sit and read volume rather than a read in bed novel. That said I found it hard to set aside. It has great characters and situations and the formidable spirit and view of Pike's Peak always in the background. Since it is considered a semi-biographical story the characters are many, well defined and easy to remember even if some of them are absent for years and others have passed but are not forgotten. This is the second novel I've read by this author and it is not the last. I recommend it.

[Francesca Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This trilogy is a long, so it's a bit scary to get started. I found the story riveting and had no problem at all racing through all three volumes. I read this after The Man Who Killed the Deer, which is also a brilliant book.

Since reading Pike's Peak, I am looking forward to reading more Frank Waters books. I can't get enough of Frank Waters, but it is hard to put my finger on exactly what I love about him.

He captures the flavor of the time and place he writes about. The characters are real and believable. His books are simply a pleasure to read.