Ted Bill Owens is a Big Weenie

UPDATE: Oops. I have been anonymously corrected that the governor of Colorado is actually Bill Owens, not Ted Owens. My embarrassing mistake. He's still a Texan.

I haven't written about this yet, I don't think, but the Colorado quarter pisses me off.

There it is, just above. Oh, sure, it looks innocent enough, a nice mountain indicative of the majestic peaks of the Centennial State. In fact, the Denver Mint publicizes it as a generic "sweeping view" of the mountains. Governor Ted Bill Owens, who picked the winning design from five finalists, and who is a damn Texan anyway, makes no specific mention of it except that it is a "striking mountain landscape."

The problem?

Well, as the Brits might say, that's bollocks.

The image on the quarter is no more a generic mountain than I am a generic homo sapiens. No, that is clearly a depiction of Longs Peak, a "fourteener" just northwest of Denver. Look at this picture of Longs Peak and tell me that it and the quarter aren't one and the same:


See? Same triangular, flat top. Same ridge going down on the right. It's the same damn mountain. And that sucks.

Pikes Peak should be on the quarter.

Now, I don't say that because Pikes Peak is my home mountain and I can see it out of my parent's kitchen window. Okay, maybe a little. But Pikes Peak is a defining part of Colorado culture. The mountain is a legend in history. It greeted the miners and pioneers as they made their way west across the plains.

Nobody, I mean nobody, ever f*cking said, "Longs Peak or Bust!"

Plus, it just looks cooler than Longs Peak. Look:

Now, that's a cool mountain. Furthermore, there is nothing particularly special about Longs Peak when placed in context with its surroundings aside from being a little taller. It's the eastern edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, so there are lots of mountains around it and, unless you have lived in Colorado, no one is going to be able to look at the Front Range from Denver and be able to tell you which mountain is Longs.

You are a true idiot if you don't know that with Pikes Peak. It arises from the plains suddenly and alone, a huge massif that utterly dominates everything in a one-hundred mile area. This is what it looks like from the Plains:

Now that's pretty cool looking.

So, it's pretty clear what happened, here. Those Denver weenies didn't want to give any kind of acknowledgment to their little cousin down south and so picked the local, lame peak as the "representative" "generic" one. Screw them.

Oh, and if you happen to be one of those Denver weenies who want to try to make the argument that the quarter really could be a representation of Pikes Peak, just from its north face rather than its more commonly known east face, you are wrong. Note the following picture of the north side of the Peak:

True, the Peak is flat on top, like Longs. And there is a similar ridge. But its pretty clear that this is not the same mountain that is on the coin. The summit is too broad and the ridge doesn't share the same features.

So, up yours Ted Bill Owens. You Texan.