Perched impossibly at 14,109 feet above sea level, the squat cog railway train and its cloud of dark steam sit atop the wind-scoured granite summit of Pikes Peak, Colorado, in this striking hand-colored postcard — a mountain that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write "America the Beautiful" after ascending it in 1893, and that by the 1910s had become one of the most famous tourist destinations in the American West. The foreground is a jumble of massive rust-red boulders patched with snow, the summit buildings barely visible behind the train, the sky above a crisp vacation blue. The Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway, opened in 1891, was one of the highest cog railways in the world, and images of its trains at the summit were perennial bestsellers in the Colorado souvenir trade. Card no. 15717 with the characteristic arrow/Indian figure publisher logo on the reverse — the same series as the Ute Pass card — and a simple "STAMP" box with no rate notation, slightly later than the one-cent era card.