Sawatch Range in the context of Fourteeners

The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's source basin lies in Colorado, specifically the Arkansas River Valley. The headwaters derive from the snowpack in the Sawatch and Mosquito mountain ranges. It flows east into Kansas and finally through Oklahoma and Arkansas, where it meets the Mississippi River.

At 1,469 miles (2,364 km), it is the sixth-longest river in the United States, the second-longest tributary in the Mississippi–Missouri system, and the 47th longest river in the world. Its origin is in the Rocky Mountains in Lake County, Colorado, near Leadville. In 1859, placer gold discovered in the Leadville area brought thousands seeking to strike it rich, but the easily recovered placer gold was quickly exhausted. The Arkansas River's mouth is at Napoleon, Arkansas, and its drainage basin covers nearly 170,000 square miles (440,000 km). Its volume is much smaller than the Missouri and Ohio rivers, with a mean discharge of about 40,000 cubic feet per second (1,100 m/s).

This article comprises three sortable tables of major mountain peaks of the Rocky Mountains of North America.

The summit of a mountain or hill may be measured in three principal ways:

San Isabel National Forest is located in central Colorado. The forest contains 19 of the state's 53 fourteeners, peaks over 14,000 feet (4,267 m) high, including Mount Elbert, the highest point in Colorado.

It is one of eleven national forests in the state of Colorado and contains the Sawatch Range, the Collegiate Peaks, and Sangre de Cristo Range. It has a total area of 1,120,233 acres (1,750.364 sq mi; 4,533.42 km) spread out over parts of eleven counties in central Colorado. In descending order of land area it is located in Chaffee, Custer, Lake, Huerfano, Fremont, Pueblo, Saguache, Las Animas, Park, Costilla, and Summit counties.

This is a list of mountain peaks in the U.S. State of Colorado that exceed 14,000 feet (4267.2 meters) of elevation.

In the mountaineering parlance of the Western United States, a fourteener is a mountain peak with an elevation of at least 14,000 feet. This is a complete list of the 53 fourteeners in the U.S. State of Colorado with at least 300 feet (91.44 meters) of topographic prominence. See the main fourteener article, which has a list of all of the fourteeners in the United States, for some information about how such lists are determined and caveats about elevation and ranking accuracy.

Mount Elbert is the highest summit of the Rocky Mountains of North America. With an elevation of 14,440 ft (4,400 m), it is also the highest point in the U.S. state of Colorado and the second-highest summit in the contiguous United States after Mount Whitney, which is slightly taller. The ultra-prominent fourteener is the highest peak in the Sawatch Range, as well as the highest point in the entire Mississippi River drainage basin. Mount Elbert is located in San Isabel National Forest, 12.1 mi (19.4 km) southwest (bearing 223°) of the city of Leadville in Lake County, Colorado.

The mountain was named in honor of a Colorado statesman, Samuel Hitt Elbert, who was active in the formative period of the state and Governor of the Territory of Colorado from 1873 to 1874. Henry W. Stuckle of the Hayden Survey was the first to record an ascent of the peak, in 1874. The easiest and most popular climbing routes are categorized as Class 1 to 2 or A+ in mountaineering parlance. Mount Elbert is therefore often referred to as the "gentle giant" that tops all others in the Rocky Mountains.