Hello and welcome to the Colorado Community Open Thread!
The first few decades in which the Pikes Peak Region was "settled" was a rather interesting time! Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs were founded and building commenced, along with the various bumps-and-grinds getting a new settlement founded and on its way. For more details, jump below the Orange Omnilepticon!
;-)
Old Colorado City was the first town founded in the area. Wikipedia says:
"Colorado City, now called Old Colorado City, was founded at the confluence of Fountain and Camp creeks on August 13, 1859, making it the first Pikes Peak region settlement. The Colorado City area became part of the Jefferson Territory on October 24 and of El Paso County on November 28, 1859. From November 5, 1861, until August 14, 1862 (including one legislative session), the city was the Colorado Territory capital until moved to Denver."
source
The original Territorial Capitol Building and El Paso County Headquarters still stands in Old Colorado City at the North side of the 2300 block of Colorado Avenue (old US 24). I like to snarkily remind inhabitants of metro Denver where the first Capital of Colorado was -- and should still be.
;-)
For twelve years, until General William J. Palmer got into the act, Colorado City was the only habitation in the area. But Palmer would change that, and substantially so.
PALMER ARRIVES AND CAUSES MANY CHANGES.
William Jackson Palmer
(September 18, 1836 – March 13, 1909)
General Palmer had a strong belief that the Pikes Peak Region would become a major magnet for tourism and health. The mineral water springs were already famous, and the scenery was breathtaking. Palmer's Denver and Rio Grande Railroad already used the Monument and Fountain Creek valleys as its location to get from the summit of the divide between the South Platte and Arkansas River drainages (the divide now bears his name) to the Arkansas River itself. Palmer was also disapproving of the "wild and crazy" lifestyle of Colorado City, a typical Western town: he felt that the brothels, opium dens, and saloons weren't the kind of thing that his sort of tourists, well-heeled Englishmen and their families, would be interested in.
So Palmer purchased land east of Old Colorado City, around the location of his railroad. He drove the "origin stake" for ""Fountain Colony" on July 31, 1871, at the exact latitude of the summit of Pikes Peak and roughly one-half mile east of Monument Creek. The town was laid out by the Colorado Springs Company by the end of the year, and it was known as Colorado Springs by 1879. In the original charter, an ordinance was placed prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or public consumption of alcoholic beverages. Exempt were Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Episcopal Churches (to allow them their Eucharistic wine) and druggists, who were allowed to sell alcohol for "medicinal" purposes. These restrictions weren't lifted until the end of national Prohibition in 1932.
Palmer also founded the town on the other side of Colorado City, Manitou Springs.
Between the two, Palmer's town grew and prospered, as "Little London" attracted the well-heeled Englishmen Palmer wanted to come and spend money. This was largely due to the actions of Palmer's partner Dr. William Abraham Bell, who promoted the area in England. Soon Colorado Springs sported the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind and The Colorado College (both in 1874); Palmer's own Antlers Hotel in 1872; the Seat of El Paso County (1873); and Colorado Springs was granted the status it now enjoys, that of a home-rule city, on June 19, 1886.
Most things were now working as Palmer wanted them to. Although he didn't really anticipate the influx of tuberculosis convalescents, these were never a real problem in any way, and they helped keep the place in the public eye. The only real "fly in the ointment" for Palmer was that his wife, Queen, could not make a life at the home he built for them in Glen Eyrie; as I remarked in an earlier Diary, she suffered from continuous altitude sickness, and the very things that helped all those tuberculosis sufferers to breathe harmed Queen's ability to do the exact same thing. So she went to England to live out her days, forcing Palmer to commute between his business in Colorado and Utah and his wife in England.
And then the real monkeywrench fell into Palmer's ever so precisely wrought gears. It was dropped there from roughly 40 miles to the southwest as the crow flies. It came as one word from Robert Miller "Bob" Womack on October 20, 1890:
Gold!
Credit where it's due!
I used some Wikipedia articles to flesh out my "off the top of my head" recollections and help them make sense. They are:
History of Colorado Springs, Colorado
Biography of William Jackson Palmer
History of Cripple Creek, Colorado