People with good motives sometimes have bad ideas. It happens to the best of us.

Jim Strub loves Pikes Peak and knows a lot about it. At age 92, he has spent at least five decades exploring and adoring it. He spent a decade plotting the nearly finished 63-mile Ring the Peak Trail. He has volunteered much of his life to improving the mountain for visitors.

Knowing he likely won't see the idea to fruition in his mortal lifetime, Strub leads a newly announced effort to make Pikes Peak and the surrounding area a national park. He has written a formal proposal and formed a small support group that has only begun a campaign to support Strub's vision.

It is a bad idea and one we hope Strub will reconsider.

Pikes Peak ain't broke so we had best not try fixing it. Pikes Peak could define "not broke," as it attracts about a half million visitors each year without a big marketing campaign.

Known as "America's Mountain," people know about Pikes Peak around the globe. It is considered a "must-see" natural landmark for Colorado visitors. It is the first sight of the Rockies anyone sees while driving west through Colorado on I-70.

Nearly everyone has access to the 14,115-foot summit. The mountain features the newly rebuilt Cog Railway. The city of Colorado Springs maintains a paved road from the base to the peak. Thanks to a well-executed public-private partnership, a new state-of-the-art visitor's center offers an ethereal experience of high-altitude views and endless information about the mountain's history.

America's Mountain belongs to everyone and is well cared for by the public, Colorado Springs city government, Manitou Springs city government, Colorado Springs Utilities, The Broadmoor, Colorado state government, the National Forest Service, and more.

The diverse interests that manage and regulate Pikes Peak have developed an organic system of cooperation that works. People who want to enjoy the mountain get to do so, whether they hike, drive, or ride their way up on a train.

Turning Pikes Peak into a national park only gives more responsibility to a federal agency that constantly complains of inadequate resources to maintain the 423 properties it has.

Even worse, turning Pikes Peak into a national park would further institutionalize the area and potentially inspire a circuslike atmosphere too often witnessed at our country's more popular national parks. Imagine all of those little secret finds, known only to the most able-bodied and robust mountaineers, resembling museum attractions along well-traveled trails.

"He (Strub) envisions the massif's lesser-ventured canyons, drainages, couloirs and mountaintops becoming more accessible — 'jewels that practically nobody can get to, except those I call the intrepid,'" Strub said, as quoted in a Gazette news article. "The proposal points to park portals at the current highway toll, at the Crags Campground and off Gold Camp Road in the Cripple Creek area."

Not all of nature's greatest jewels should be easily accessible. We should prioritize leaving much of the mountain just as it was created and has evolved.

Of course, Pikes Peak easily checks the boxes to become a national park. So would Garden of the Gods, which is beautifully owned, managed, and maintained by Colorado Springs — not by the U.S. Park Service. Pikes Peak would rank second to none our national parks, but it is hard to see the upside.

Coloradans and outside visitors love Pikes Peak just as it is — accessible to nearly all and nothing like a federal theme park.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE

Photo credit: kinkate at Pixabay