Geography of Colorado
The Rocky Mountains within Colorado contain 54 peaks that are 14,000 feet (4270 m) or higher, known as fourteeners. The mountains are timbered with conifers and aspen to the tree line, at an elevation of about 12,000 feet (3,650 m) in southern Colorado to about 10,500 feet (3,200 m) in northern Colorado; above this only alpine vegetation grows. The Rockies are snow-covered only in the winter; most snow melts by mid-August with the exception of a few small glaciers. The Colorado Mineral Belt, stretching from the San Juan Mountains in the southwest to Boulder and Central City on the front range, contains most of the historic gold and silver mining districts of Colorado.
Pikes Peak granite
Over the next billion years, the now cooled granite was gradually exposed through erosion of overlying rocks. About 60 million years ago, parts of the Western U.S. were subjected to a series of uplifts, known as the Laramide orogeny, that eventually formed the modern Rocky Mountains and raised Pikes Peak to its current height. Pikes Peak, like other portions of Colorado Rockies is still being uplifted today as a part of larger tectonic processes affecting the Western United States.