The farming community of Las Animas (pop. 2,758) takes its name from the Arkansas River tributary originally known as Río de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio—the River of Lost Souls. Las Animas is also the place where, on November 15, 1806, Lt. Zebulon Pike first laid eyes on the Rocky Mountain peak that now bears his name—Pike’s Peak, 120 miles to the northwest.
Beyond Las Animas, US-50 continues its gradual descent across the Rocky Mountains foothills. The area was first known as Big Timbers for the tall cottonwoods that grew here along the Arkansas River, though most of these trees were cut down soon after the arrival of white settlers. In the 1840s and 1850s, local Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Apache tribes bartered bison hides at William Bent’s trading post, and Wild West explorer Kit Carson died here on May 23, 1868, in his family home at what was then the U.S. Army’s Fort Lyon, south of present-day US-50. Carson’s remains were later moved to Taos, New Mexico, and his lands were flooded after the Arkansas River was dammed to form the large John Martin Reservoir, which stretches most of the way downstream to Lamar.
