I just spent a couple of days working down near Colorado Springs. I wasn’t really working, I was attending a conference but I did speak for 90 minutes on one of the days and I got paid for the whole thing, so it counts as working. Kick off was 7:45am on the first day, which meant I’d to rise at an even more ungodly hour than normal ready for the two-hour drive down there. The good news was that the journey itself, down Highway 126 through Pine is one of the prettiest around and there are worse ways to spend an early summer morning. Colorado Springs is one of the few places in this state which holds little appeal for me. Fortunately, conference wasn’t in the town itself, but in a nearby park called The Garden of the Gods.
The park is a magical place of towering spires and balanced boulders, with sheer cliff walls soaring upwards towards the Colorado sky. These massive rocks of white and red are remnants of sandstone sediment laid down in ages past and long covered by an inland sea. Mountain uplifts within the past 75 million years not only drained the water by also twisted, turned and tilted the rock layers into upright positions. The process of erosion then stripped away the soft sedimentary layers, sculpting each rock into its distinctive form.
The mild climate, enchanting wildflowers, abundant game and heavenly scenery led early Indians to revere the place as home to the Good Spirit, however the area was generally overlooked by the explorers and mountain men who first passed through the Pikes Peak region. In fact, Pike’s Peak is named after one Zebulon Pike, who missed the area altogether. The major attractions of the early 1800s were the “highest peak” and the “boiling fountains” where the town of Manitou sits today. Despite this early indifference, the red rocks continued to beckon, the soaring fingers being visible to travelers more than thirty miles away. The adventurer Rufus B. Sage wrote a best selling book entitled “Rocky Mountain Life” which extolled the virtues of the area and in time, the wonders of the Pikes Peak region became known nationwide.
Another Rufus played an important part in the Park’s history, one Rufus Cable who with his friend, Melancthon Beach, rode down from Denver City in 1859 to lay out a new town at the foot of Pikes Peak. They named their new town Colorado City after the nearby red rocks (Colorado stems from “rojo”, the Spanish for red). The pair visited the rocks soon after their arrival and Beach immediately suggested that the place would one day serve as a great spot for a beer garden. “Why, it is a fit place for the Gods to assemble”, replied Cable, “and we will call it the Garden of the Gods”. It didn’t seem to appear to either of them that the Gods may have enjoyed the occasional cold one because the beer garden never transpired but the place has indeed been known as the Garden of the Gods ever since.
In the late 1870s there was however, a large beer saloon located under the rock formation fondly known as the Kissing Camels, one of a number of money making enterprises hoping to exploit the natural beauty of the site. These included a stairway climbing to the top of one of the spires, Gateway Rock built by a speculator named Billy Bryan who owned a nearby resort where he celebrated the 4th of July with fireworks and moonlight dances. In 1895 a group of entrepreneurs announced their plans to build a streetcar line from Colorado City to the Garden. At the terminus they planned a casino, a restaurant and a magnificent glass structure called the glass palace which they intended to house plant specimens from around the world. Perhaps not surprisingly in lieu of the $600,000 estimated construction costs, the project never got off the ground. One scheme which sadly, did take place was the establishment of a gypsum quarry mine in the park. The resulting trench like scar is still visible today.
Cable and Beach were the first to lay claim to the land surrounding the Garden of the Gods although numerous land claims were established over the next few years. In 1879, at the advice of his friend General William Palmer, the founder of Colorado Springs, the park was acquired by one Charles Perkins, who intended to build a summer home there. His occupation as president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad for the most part, kept him away from Colorado and management of the park was left to a gentleman named Henry Wills, who for twenty-five years paid the taxes, oversaw the removal of trash and debris, and kept the giant rocks open and free to all visitors.
Perkins died in 1907 but shortly before is reported to have scribbled a note on an old envelope, outlining his desire to have the Garden of the Gods given over to the city of Colorado Springs. His family honored this wish and in 1909, the city voted to accept the gift. The reason this required a vote is that Perkins established certain restrictions. Namely that the property be forever known as the Garden of the Gods; that no buildings be erected there, except those necessary to properly maintain the area as a public park,; that no intoxicating liquors be sold (there goes the last hopes for a beer garden!) and that it be forever free to the public. Violation of these restrictions would result in the property being returned to Charles Perkin’s heirs and as of today, they are still being honored.
My conference was being held at the Garden of the Gods club, a private resort overlooking the park. My room opened out onto lush green lawns populated by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of rabbits, that didn’t seem to be the slightest bit perturbed by my presence, even when I crept up close with my camera. The room was the kind which was too luxurious to want to waste time asleep and as it happens, I didn’t do too much of that. We were home late from dinner and I was up early the next day with my camera to take advantage of the early morning light playing over the rocks.
You can certainly see why the Gods would want this place as a garden, beer or no. In this setting, one couldn’t help but feel close to them.
The park is a magical place of towering spires and balanced boulders, with sheer cliff walls soaring upwards towards the Colorado sky. These massive rocks of white and red are remnants of sandstone sediment laid down in ages past and long covered by an inland sea. Mountain uplifts within the past 75 million years not only drained the water by also twisted, turned and tilted the rock layers into upright positions. The process of erosion then stripped away the soft sedimentary layers, sculpting each rock into its distinctive form.
The mild climate, enchanting wildflowers, abundant game and heavenly scenery led early Indians to revere the place as home to the Good Spirit, however the area was generally overlooked by the explorers and mountain men who first passed through the Pikes Peak region. In fact, Pike’s Peak is named after one Zebulon Pike, who missed the area altogether. The major attractions of the early 1800s were the “highest peak” and the “boiling fountains” where the town of Manitou sits today. Despite this early indifference, the red rocks continued to beckon, the soaring fingers being visible to travelers more than thirty miles away. The adventurer Rufus B. Sage wrote a best selling book entitled “Rocky Mountain Life” which extolled the virtues of the area and in time, the wonders of the Pikes Peak region became known nationwide.
Another Rufus played an important part in the Park’s history, one Rufus Cable who with his friend, Melancthon Beach, rode down from Denver City in 1859 to lay out a new town at the foot of Pikes Peak. They named their new town Colorado City after the nearby red rocks (Colorado stems from “rojo”, the Spanish for red). The pair visited the rocks soon after their arrival and Beach immediately suggested that the place would one day serve as a great spot for a beer garden. “Why, it is a fit place for the Gods to assemble”, replied Cable, “and we will call it the Garden of the Gods”. It didn’t seem to appear to either of them that the Gods may have enjoyed the occasional cold one because the beer garden never transpired but the place has indeed been known as the Garden of the Gods ever since.
In the late 1870s there was however, a large beer saloon located under the rock formation fondly known as the Kissing Camels, one of a number of money making enterprises hoping to exploit the natural beauty of the site. These included a stairway climbing to the top of one of the spires, Gateway Rock built by a speculator named Billy Bryan who owned a nearby resort where he celebrated the 4th of July with fireworks and moonlight dances. In 1895 a group of entrepreneurs announced their plans to build a streetcar line from Colorado City to the Garden. At the terminus they planned a casino, a restaurant and a magnificent glass structure called the glass palace which they intended to house plant specimens from around the world. Perhaps not surprisingly in lieu of the $600,000 estimated construction costs, the project never got off the ground. One scheme which sadly, did take place was the establishment of a gypsum quarry mine in the park. The resulting trench like scar is still visible today.
Cable and Beach were the first to lay claim to the land surrounding the Garden of the Gods although numerous land claims were established over the next few years. In 1879, at the advice of his friend General William Palmer, the founder of Colorado Springs, the park was acquired by one Charles Perkins, who intended to build a summer home there. His occupation as president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad for the most part, kept him away from Colorado and management of the park was left to a gentleman named Henry Wills, who for twenty-five years paid the taxes, oversaw the removal of trash and debris, and kept the giant rocks open and free to all visitors.
Perkins died in 1907 but shortly before is reported to have scribbled a note on an old envelope, outlining his desire to have the Garden of the Gods given over to the city of Colorado Springs. His family honored this wish and in 1909, the city voted to accept the gift. The reason this required a vote is that Perkins established certain restrictions. Namely that the property be forever known as the Garden of the Gods; that no buildings be erected there, except those necessary to properly maintain the area as a public park,; that no intoxicating liquors be sold (there goes the last hopes for a beer garden!) and that it be forever free to the public. Violation of these restrictions would result in the property being returned to Charles Perkin’s heirs and as of today, they are still being honored.
My conference was being held at the Garden of the Gods club, a private resort overlooking the park. My room opened out onto lush green lawns populated by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of rabbits, that didn’t seem to be the slightest bit perturbed by my presence, even when I crept up close with my camera. The room was the kind which was too luxurious to want to waste time asleep and as it happens, I didn’t do too much of that. We were home late from dinner and I was up early the next day with my camera to take advantage of the early morning light playing over the rocks.
You can certainly see why the Gods would want this place as a garden, beer or no. In this setting, one couldn’t help but feel close to them.
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