The indigenous Ute people who inhabited the Pikes Peak region called the mountain Tava, meaning "Sun Mountain." The Arapaho knew it as Heey-otoyoo', or "Long Mountain," while the Pawnee called it Tus Peh, meaning "Where the Heavens Touch the Earth." Spanish explorers referred to it as El Capitan.
American explorer Zebulon Pike encountered the mountain in 1806 during an expedition authorised by Thomas Jefferson to explore the Louisiana Purchase. Pike attempted to climb it in November but abandoned the effort in harsh conditions, writing in his journal that he believed no human being could ascend to its pinnacle. The first documented successful ascent came in the summer of 1820, when botanist Edwin James, a member of Stephen Harriman Long's expedition, climbed to the summit over two days. Long's expedition had referred to it as "James Peak" in James's honour, but the mountain was eventually renamed Pikes Peak in honour of Zebulon Pike, with the United States Board on Geographic Names standardising the spelling to "Pikes Peak" without an apostrophe in 1890.
Julia Archibald Holmes became the first European-American woman to reach the summit on August 5, 1858. In July 1893, visiting professor and poet Katharine Lee Bates climbed to the top and was inspired to write the poem that became "America the Beautiful," originally titled "Pikes Peak."
Pikes Peak is composed of a characteristic pink granite known as Pikes Peak granite, its colour the result of high potassium feldspar content. The granite is believed to have crystallised at least twenty miles beneath the Earth's surface during the Precambrian period, approximately 1.05 billion years ago during the Grenville orogeny, before uplift and erosion exposed the mountain's present form. The massif rises more than 8,000 feet above downtown Colorado Springs.
A notable sub-peak on the northwest side of Pikes Peak, near the Pikes Peak Highway, is known as the Devils Playground. At an approximate elevation of 13,075 feet (3,985 metres) it is the highest point in Teller County. The name derives from the way lightning sometimes dances and plays around the prominence during thunderstorms, which are common at altitude on the mountain.
A toll road, the Pikes Peak Highway, ascends 19 miles from a starting point near Cascade, on Ute Pass, to the summit. The road features a series of switchbacks on the northwest side known as "The W's" for their shape. For many decades the upper sections remained unpaved gravel; a paving project began in 2002 following a lawsuit by the Sierra Club over erosion damage to downstream streams and wetlands caused by accumulated road gravel. The final section of paving was completed on October 1, 2011, making the entire highway asphalt from the 2012 season onward.
The highway has been the course for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb since 1916. The race climbs 4,720 feet over 12.42 miles and 156 turns. Notable milestones include the 10-minute barrier, first broken in 2011 by Nobuhiro Tajima; the 9-minute barrier, shattered in 2013 by Sebastien Loeb in a Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak with a time of 8:13.878; and the 8-minute barrier, broken for the first time in 2018 by Romain Dumas driving an all-electric Volkswagen I.D. R with a time of 7:57.148.
The short film Climb Dance, released in 1989 by director Jean-Louis Mourey, documented Finnish driver Ari Vatanen's record run at the 1988 event in a Peugeot 405 Turbo 16 and remains one of the most celebrated motorsport films ever made.
At the summit, the partial pressure of oxygen is approximately 60 percent of that at sea level, and water boils at 186 degrees Fahrenheit rather than 212 degrees. The climate at the peak is classified as polar due to elevation, with snow possible year-round and thunderstorms with gusts exceeding 100 miles per hour common in the afternoons.
There are several ways to ascend Pikes Peak. The Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway, historically the world's highest cog railroad, operated from Manitou Springs to the summit and resumed regular service in May 2021 after a multi-year closure for repairs. Road vehicles may be driven to the summit via the Pikes Peak Highway, and the most popular hiking route is the Barr Trail, a 13-mile one-way climb approaching from the east with nearly 8,000 feet of elevation gain. The Pikes Peak Marathon, held since 1956, uses the Barr Trail as a round-trip running race.
In 2018 construction began on a new 38,000-square-foot Summit Complex to replace the existing Summit House, with the project completed around 2021.
The uppermost portion of Pikes Peak above 14,000 feet was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961. The summit has hosted the United States Army Pikes Peak Research Laboratory since 1969, conducting medical research into the physiological effects of high altitude. Each year on December 31, members of the AdAmAn Club climb the Barr Trail and ignite a fireworks display from the summit at midnight — a tradition maintained since the end of 1922.