Annie Smith Peck

Annie Smith Peck (October 19, 1850 – July 18, 1935) was an American mountaineer, adventurer, Pan-Americanist., classical scholar, professor, lecturer, writer, and suffragist. In 1927 the Geographical Society of Lima renamed Huascarán's northern peak as Cumbre Aña Peck in her honor. She was one of only three women who reached the summit of the Matterhorn during the nineteenth century. (The first was Lucy Walker and the second was Meta Brevoort.)

Quotes

• ... The conquest in 1895 of the grand old Matterhorn, and the unmerited notoriety attained thereby, spurred me on to the accomplishment of some deed which should render me worthy of the fame already acquired. The most feasible project seemed to be the ascent of Orizaba in Mexico, its summit the highest point which had been reached in North America. This became, under the auspices of the New York World, in 1897, the easy goal of my ambition and gave me temporarily the world's record for women.
  • "Foreword". A Search for the Apex of America: High Mountain Climbing in Peru and Bolivia Including the Conquest of Huascaran, with Some Observations on the Country and People Below. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. 1911. pp. ix–xii.  (quote from p. x)

• Fortunate the traveler, who, 7 or 8 miles below Las Cuevas, has at the head of a side valley at the north a glimpse of colossal Aconcagua 15 miles away, a long ridge of snow arching into two domes, with a sheer drop of 10,000 feet on its black southern wall; and farther on a sight of Tupungato, 30 miles away at the south: both mountains first climbed in 1897 by the Fitzgerald Expedition, though he unfortunately was compelled by mountain sickness to forego the satisfaction of attaining either summit himself. The first to reach the supposed apex of the Western Hemisphere, the top of Aconcagua, according to the latest measurement, 22,817 feet, was Matias Zurbriggen, the celebrated Swiss guide, who in almost every land has led English and Americans to the summits of noted mountains. Alone, January 14, 1897, he gained this height, and there erected a stone man as is the custom where possible. In April of the same year, the first ascent of Tupungato, 21,451 feet, was made also by Zurbriggen, and the Englishman, Vines.
• The South American Tour (2nd ed.). New York: George H. Doran Company. 1913. p. 201.  (1st edition 1913)

• Interest was heightened by the knowledge that the 162,000 acres of land already cultivated in the State of Lambayeque, where Pimentel is located, were to triple through a great irrigation project inaugurated by President Leguía. In 1930 it was well under way when the project was abandoned. An American engineer, Charles W. Sutton, long in the service of Peru, was adding to his fame and usefulness by undertaking to bring from the Huancabamba River, tributary to the Amazon, by means of a tunnel through the mountains, water to supplement the service of the coastal streams.
  • Flying Over South America: Twenty Thousand Miles by Air. New York: Houghton Mifflin. 1932.  1st part of quote 2nd part of quote last part of quote

Quotes about Annie Smith Peck

• ... this woman, now nearly sixty, with graying hair and steel-rimmed glasses, was a monster of persistence. She was determined to become the first known human to ascend the summit of the forbidding Huascarán, which she hoped would prove to be the highest in the Western Hemisphere, the "apex of America."
  And so she went on to reach Huascarán's summit on her sixth onslaught. Her achievement was heralded by Harper's Magazine as "one of the most remarkable feats in the history of mountain-climbing." Upon her death at eighty-four, the New York Times called her the most famous of all women mountain climbers.
  • Elizabeth Fagg Olds, "Annie Smith Peck". Women of the Four Winds: The Adventurers of Four of America's First Women Explorers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1999. pp. 5–70. ISBN 0395957842.  (quote from p. 8; 1st edition 1985)

• After years of climbing, she made New Hampshire’s Mount Madison her final ascent in 1932. She was 82 years old. On her gravestone in Providence is written: “You have brought uncommon glory to women of all time.”
  • Charles T. Robinson, (October 30, 2015) "Annie Smith Peck | New England's Gifts". Yankee Magazine (newengland.com).

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Annie Smith Peck on Wikipedia
• Joseph Adelman, "Annie Smith Peck". Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages with Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. John L. Rogers. 1928. pp. 292–293. ]