Mount Massive Mount Massive Mount Massive is the second-highest summit of the Rocky Mountains of North America and the U.S. state of Colorado. The prominent fourteener of the Sawatch Range is located in the Mount Massive Wilderness of San Isabel National Forest, west-southwest (bearing 247°) of the City of Leadville in Lake County, Colorado, United States. Mount Massive edges out the third-highest summit of the Rockies, Mount Harvard, by , but falls short of Mount Elbert by . It ranks as the third-highest peak in the contiguous United States after Mount Whitney and Mount Elbert. Mount Massive was first surveyed and climbed
Mount Elbert of gneiss and schist. Unlike mountains of similar altitude elsewhere, Elbert lacks both a permanent snowpack and a prominent north-facing cirque, which can be attributed to its position among other mountains of similar height, causing it to receive relatively small quantities of precipitation. Mount Elbert was named by miners in honor of Samuel Hitt Elbert, the governor of the then-Territory of Colorado, because he brokered a treaty in September 1873 with the Ute tribe that opened up more than of reservation land to mining and railroad activity. The first recorded ascent of the peak was by H.W. Stuckle in 1874,