The Gore Range and Lord Gore's Slaughter
Near Vail, Colorado
The jagged peaks rising north and east of Vail are the Gore Range, and the name comes from one of the most excessive hunting trips in the history of the American West. Sir Saint George Gore was an Irish aristocrat who arrived in the West in eighteen fifty four with money to burn and no intention of roughing it. His guide was the legendary mountain man Jim Bridger, and his traveling party was enormous, with a long train of wagons, horses, and livestock.
Over roughly three years, Gore and his party killed staggering numbers of animals purely for sport, by some accounts thousands of animals, much of it left to rot on the ground. Even by the standards of his day, this was seen as shocking waste. A United States official complained that Gore was destroying the game that Native people depended on to survive.
What makes the name almost absurd is that Lord Gore probably never set foot in the core of the range that now bears his name. The Ute people knew these peaks long before any aristocrat arrived.
