Pike’s Peak or Bust!

On the first day of summer in 1850, John Beck, a Cherokee preacher en route to California’s goldfields, stopped to do a little panning along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies near what would become Denver. He found a few flecks of color, but he didn’t think the stream would pay adequately for his efforts, so he continued on toward California. A few years later, Beck had left California and corresponded with William Green Russell in Georgia, who had also been in California during