Colorado Springs

The American Guides Project

Railroad Stations: S. Sierra Madre Ave. between W. Pikes Peak Ave. and Antlers Place, for southbound Denver & Rio Grande Western R.R., Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry., Missouri Pacific R.R., Colorado & Southern Ry., and Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Ry. Santa Fe Station, 509 E. Pikes Peak Ave., for all northbound trains and for Midland Terminal Ry.

Bus Stations: 113 E. Pikes Peak Ave. for Greyhound Lines; Union Bus Station, 2 E. Pikes Peak Ave., for Cripple Creek, Victor, and Colorado Springs Stage Co., Denver-Colorado Springs-Pueblo Trailways, Rio Grande Trail-ways, and Santa Fe Trailways.

Taxis: Meter cabs 50¢ first mile, 25¢ each additional mile; zone cabs 25¢ a mile, 1 to 5 passengers.

City Busses: Rates 10¢ within city limits; 20¢ to Manitou Springs and Broad-moor.

Airport: Municipal Field, 62 miles E. on Pikes Peak Ave., S. on Union Blvd.and dirt road, for Continental Air Lines; time, 20 minutes.

Street Order and Numbering: Cascade Ave. is the dividing line for E. and W. Sts., Pikes Peak Ave. for N. and S. Sts.

Accommodations: Six hotels; boarding and rooming houses, furnished cottages, and tourist camps.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 121 E. Pikes Peak Ave.; A.A.A., 115 E. Pikes Peak Ave.

Theaters and Motion Picture Houses: Municipal Auditorium, SW. corner E. Kiowa and N. Weber Sts.; Fine Arts Center, 18 W. Dale St.; six motion picture houses.

Athletic Field: Washburn Field, Colorado College campus. Swimming: Prospect Lake, 900 E. Costilla St.; Penrose Pool, Monument Valley Park (between Kiowa and Monroe Streets); Broadmoor Hotel pool, 40¢. Golf: Patty Jewett Municipal Course, 700 E. Espanola St., 18 holes, greens fee $1; Broadmoor Course, 18 holes, greens fee $2.50 weekdays, $3 Sun. and holidays.

Tennis: Monument Valley Park (between Kiowa and Monroe Streets); Prospect Lake Park, 900 E. Costilla St.; Acacia Park, N. Nevada Ave. and W. Bijou St.; all free.

Shuffleboard, Chess, Checkers, and Horseshoe Pitching: Acacia Park, N. Nevada Ave. and W. Bijou St.; Boulder Park (on East Boulder St.); Bancroft Park, 24th St. and W. Colorado Ave.; all free.

Annual Events: Easter Sunrise Service, Garden of the Gods; Pikes Peak or Bust Celebration, June; Wild Flower Show, July; Polo Tournaments, July and Aug.; Invitation Golf Tournament, Aug.; Will Rogers Rodeo, Aug.; Pikes Peak Auto Races, Labor Day; AdAraAn Club Pilgrimage to Pikes Peak, Dec.

COLORADO SPRINGS (5,900 alt., 33,237 pop.), seat of El Paso County, a tailor-made resort and residential city, lies on a broad rolling plain near the base of Pikes Peak. Between the city and the peak rise forested foothills, cut by many canyons; the nearest is dark loaf-shaped Cheyenne Mountain to the southwest. Monument Creek, coursing through Colorado Springs from the north to south, separates the newer section of the city on the east from the older section on the west, formerly the independent community of Colorado City, now known as West Colorado Springs. Fountain Creek, or Fontaine qui Bouille, as the French named it, flows from Ute Pass and the mineral springs at Manitou Springs to join Monument Creek in the southwestern corner of the city.

To the general scene, roughed in by nature with extraordinary magnificence, man has made his contribution. In little more than half a century a dreary stretch of sagebrush and yucca has been transformed into a garden spot. With marked civic pride the city presents to the world a shining, well-scrubbed aspect. Householders wash their walks every morning, regularly irrigate and mow their lawns, keep hedges neatly trimmed, and assiduously cultivate their flower gardens; even the railroad stations have spacious lawns and shrubbery. No factory smoke clouds the crystalline air. Men who had grubbed fortunes from the hills or had grown rich from mills, smelters, and railroad shops established elsewhere, came here to build their frame and sandstone houses; resolved to keep their city free from din and grime, they discouraged the building of factories. These men and their families founded and endowed art, educational, and charitable institutions, and in many cases willed much of their wealth for their perpetuation.

The few blocks north and south of Pikes Peak Avenue, the principal thoroughfare, is the shopping center; here are small parks, municipal buildings, the larger downtown hotels, and several once-fashionable clapboard residences, reminders of pioneer days. The broad streets, that wander off into distant canyons are bordered with maples, locusts, and elms, which have replaced the cottonwoods planted by the city founders. The better residential districts lie north of Colorado College and at Broadmoor, a smart suburb to the southwest, grouped about the fashionable Broadmoor Hotel. The palatial Italian villas, Spanish casas, and Tudor manors in this section are set off by formal gardens, pools, and fountains, and many are secluded behind high walls. Polo is popular with the Broadmoor set. The game was introduced in the golden 1890's, which led an Englishman to observe, "there are but two civilized places between your Atlantic and Pacific Oceans—Chicago and Colorado Springs. For wherever you find polo you find good clubs, good society, and, usually, good tea." Residents have come from many different parts of the country, and the architecture of the city reflects this in its New England cottages, pseudo-Gothic stone castles, white and rose-pink stucco dwellings, and marble piles of uncertain lineage. West Colorado Springs, largely peopled by workers living in rather begrimed small houses, centers on the Golden Cycle Mill.

From the early 1870's the city has been a summer playground and health resort. In the town, so it has been said, are three distinct groups: a leisure class devoted to Society and sports, tourists, and those who serve both groups. "Covered-wagon" information booths stand at the principal highway entrances to the city; curio shops are numerous; the sale of souvenirs and picture post cards is a thriving business. Offices of sightseeing companies line the downtown streets, each with uniformed attendants and guides; alluring photographs of local scenes occupy every available wall and window.

In summer, chartered cars and sightseeing busses roll in and out of the city between dawn and sunset. "Chuck-wagons" make twilight excursions into the countryside to cook steak and chicken suppers in the open as singing cowboys and Indian ceremonials entertain the paying guests. The surrounding mountain parks, the Garden of the Gods, Cheyenne Canyon, the drive up Pikes Peak, and other points of scenic interest within a few hours' ride are perhaps unexcelled in a State noted for its scenery.

Flower festivals, rodeos, auto races, golf and polo tournaments are held during the summer, primarily for visitors, but townsfolk are not neglected. During the Christmas holidays the main thoroughfares are festooned with multi-colored lights, holly, and evergreen boughs, and carols resound over a system of loud speakers. On New Years Eve a fireworks display is held on the summit of Pikes Peak, and shortwave radio carries the city's greetings to the Nation.

Colorado City, known as "Old Town" and as West Colorado Springs, a narrow strip extending two miles along Fountain Creek, was founded as El Dorado City in 1859 by a party of gold hunters from Kansas. On the same site the year before the town of El Paso (Sp. the pass) had been laid out by other Kansas prospectors because it stood on an Indian trail through Ute Pass, offering access to the mines of South Park. Despite beautifully lithographed and widely distributed maps which "emblazoned to the world that a new town had enlarged the area of civilization," the venture failed, and El Dorado City was rechristened Colorado City. By 1861 more than 300 cabins had been erected along the river. The town advertised its free highway to South Park, its medicinal waters, and the Garden of the Gods. The following year it became the Territorial capital for a brief period when the Second Territorial Legislature met here for four days. Little business was transacted, however, for not only did the lawmakers consider the accommodations and divertissements inadequate, but news had just come that Fort Sumter had been fired on. The Territorial governor never saw fit to transfer his office to Colorado City.

Brawls and shooting affairs were common, and justice was meted out by a citizens' court. When the first church services were announced in 1863, the minister found but one worshipper in the hall, who explained that a Mexican horse thief had just been captured and his trial was in progress. Promptly convicted, the culprit was taken to the nearest cottonwood and hanged, after which the assembled citizens trooped into the hall and listened to a sermon on "righteousness and the judgment to come."

Discouraging reports by prospectors returning from South Park and the diversion of travel from the Arkansas Valley during the Civil War brought a long period of decline. Ute Pass again became merely an Indian trail; a flood swept away much of the settlement, and Colorado City seemed destined to become another ghost town. A few miners, prospectors, and cowmen made it their headquarters, however, and in time of Indian troubles it provided refuge for residents of the surrounding area.

Very different was the founding and development of Colorado Springs proper. Its founders planned a community to attract and hold people of means and social standing, a citizenry of "good moral character and strict temperance habits." They made it clear that manufacturing establishments were not desired. Mills, smelters, saloons, and gambling houses were to be confined to boisterous Colorado City. General William J. Palmer, promoter of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, who made and unmade towns by directing where tracks should be laid, was impressed with this site so near the mountains and the foothill canyons. His company purchased 10,000 acres for $10,000, and on July 31, 1871, the first stake was driven at what is now the southeast corner of Pikes Peak and Cascade Avenues. Three months later the tracks of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, the first narrow-gauge line in the State, reached the prospective town from Denver.

During its first years it was known as Fountain Colony for its position on Fountain Creek; later, it was renamed Colorado Springs for the mineral springs at the near-by village of Manitou. Broad thoroughfares were laid out; many of those running north and south were named for mountain ranges, and principal cross streets were given Indian, French, and Spanish names. Lots were set aside for schools and churches; an extensive park system was projected; cash and twenty acres of land were donated for the founding of Colorado College. Written into all deeds was a clause prohibiting the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors on the premises, a restriction enforced until the repeal of prohibition in 1933.

The first building served as Palmer's office, railroad station, and post office. Foundations of the Colorado Springs Hotel were laid in 1871. Thousands of cottonwoods were planted along streets and prospective parks; water from an irrigation canal ran in ditches along the streets; by the end of 1871 more than 150 structures had been built, many of them knockdown portable houses shipped from Chicago and put together on the ground within a few hours. A pioneer two-story business building was used as schoolhouse, courtroom, lecture hall, and church. A short-lived speakeasy of the day was equipped with a "Spiritual Wheel" a revolving contrivance upon which a customer placed a two-bit piece and received a glass of liquor from the barkeeper concealed behind a partition.

Within a year a passable road had been constructed to the springs at Manitou. Isabella A. Bird, British journalist, traveled over it that fall: "After fording a creek, I came upon a decayed looking cluster of houses bearing the arrogant name of Colorado City, and a few miles farther on I saw the bleak scattered houses of the ambitious watering-place of Colorado Springs. ... A queer, embryo-looking place it is, out on the bare plains, yet rising and likely to rise, with some big hotels much resorted to. ... I dismounted, put on a long skirt, and rode sidewise, though the settlement scarcely looked like a place where any deference to prejudices was necessary." The costume, which the traveler referred to as a "lady's mountain dress" consisted of a "half-fitting jacket, a skirt reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish trousers gathered with frills falling over the boots."

From the beginning the railroad publicized the region as a "scenic wonderland" and health resort. Pikes Peak was already a national landmark, and within a short time the Garden of the Gods, Seven Falls, Cheyenne Mountain, and the springs at Manitou were almost equally well known. Physicians extolled the dry air and bright sunshine, and several tubercular sanatoriums were established. The town grew rapidly. The irrigation ditches bordering every street were "in summer embossed with flowers. Ditch water was carried in tubs . . . for domestic purposes, and clear cold drinking water was peddled about the streets for twenty-five cents per barrel. . . . Cows wandered through the streets. . . . Vegetables grew chiefly in cans, and stream-beds and canons glittered with these omnipresent signs of civilization." Fresh meat was supplied to the local market by "Antelope Jim" Hamlin.

In winter, citizens had their Fortnightly clubs and afternoon teas, according to a contemporary, "with perhaps a Christmas ball at Glen Eyrie, and dances in some store building, where coffee and cakes were served on stoneware, and dim kerosene lamps lighted the charming Eastern costumes of the ladies. . . . The fashionable afternoon promenade was to the post office. ... In summer, society played croquet on bare places of hard ground (grass was too expensive a luxury to be trodden under foot) . . . camped in the mountains, or took overland excursions in the parks, and all the year round every one rode or drove in a perpetual picnic under the blue, sunlit sky."

Droughts on the eastern plains and the grasshopper plagues of 1873-74 did not materially affect the community. The greatest excitement of the period was a threatened uprising of the Arapaho; all able-bodied citizens were called out, but it was a short-lived affair, marking the end of Indian troubles in the region. By 1873, when the town had supplanted Colorado City as the county seat, it was finding favor with artists and writers, some of whom made their homes here—among others, Helen Hunt Jackson, author of Ramona.

During the late 1870's many young Englishmen came to settle, and the town was often referred to as "Little Lunnon," a name perpetuated today in society columns. The newcomers introduced golf, cricket, polo, and fox hunting. As foxes were not often to be found, a piece of meat at the end of a rope provided a "scent" for the hounds to follow. Occasionally a coyote blundered upon the scene, and the pack went baying after the poor animal as he fled in terror, unaccustomed as he was to strange English ways.

The opening of the Antlers Hotel in 1882 was a gala occasion, but the new opera house got off to a poor start with Camille—a dismal choice, for a large proportion of the audience were health seekers. The Colorado Midland Railroad pushed westward from the city in 1885 to tap several prosperous silver camps; Colorado Springs was chosen as the western terminal of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway in 1889. A cog railroad built to the summit of Pikes Peak in 1890 and the construction of street car lines to Manitou Springs brought many visitors. The silver panic in the 1890's was followed by rich gold strikes at Cripple Creek (see Tour 5B), just over the mountains to the west, discoveries that played an important part in the affairs of Colorado Springs and of Colorado City, which stirred with new life. This all-but-deserted town became a lively industrial center; several ore-reduction mills and railroad shops were built; mill workers, hard-rock miners in for supplies and amusement, promoters, gamblers, and ladies of the evening thronged the streets. Almost every corner was occupied by a saloon, and the south side of Colorado Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets was solidly lined with barrooms and dance halls.

Colorado City had its share of labor troubles, the most important in 1903 when members of the Mill and Smeltermen's Union called a strike, alleging discrimination against union workers. For a time the town was an armed camp, loud with charges and countercharges of violence. The dispute brought about a sympathetic strike of miners in the Cripple Creek gold fields, but all strike objectives were lost.

Colorado City did the work, but the great gold fortunes went elsewhere. William D. (Big Bill) Haywood, labor leader, who described the community as a "forlorn little industrial town of tents, tin houses, huts, and hovels, bordered by some of the grandest scenery of nature," added that "none of the refined gold was left here—nothing but waste and slum." After 1912 the old mills were closed or torn down, to be replaced with the Golden Cycle Mill using a new and better reduction process. Population dwindled, and the town began slipping toward oblivion. In 1917, absorbed by its thriving rival to the east, Colorado City became West Colorado Springs and, while retaining marks of its identity, gradually conformed to the Palmer pattern of respectability.

Meanwhile, Colorado Springs had greatly profited from the Cripple Creek gold fields. Within a few months of the first strikes in 1891, five mining exchanges were operating day and night; soon a mining exchange building, the tallest structure in the city, was added to the skyline. Tradesmen, professional men, laborers, everybody traded in stocks and futures; hundreds of new mining companies were organized and their stock was sold throughout the country; promoters and investors rushed to the city to share in the prosperity. Bonanza kings invested part of their fortunes in substantial office structures and palatial houses. Wood Avenue, a short thoroughfare at the north end of town, named for the three Wood brothers, founders of Victor (see Tour 5B), was known as Millionaire Row. Here those who had made their fortunes from the Cripple Creek mines built elaborate mansions—all except "the Midas of the Rockies," Winfield Scott Stratton (see Tour 12b), who shocked the community by buying an old-fashioned frame house near the business district upon which he had worked as a carpenter years before. Between 1890 and 1900 the population increased from 11,000 to more than 23,000; during the next decade Colorado Springs had claims to being the wealthiest city per capita in the United States.

With such a population the town never lacked patrons willing to contribute materially to its development. Among these, in addition to Palmer and Stratton, was the late Spencer Penrose, builder of the Pikes Peak Highway and founder of the Broadmoor Hotel development at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain. The mountain parks system, created in 1907, was increased when the Garden of the Gods was bequeathed to the city two years later. Agricultural development of eastern Colorado made the city a trading and supply center for a large new territory, later the regional headquarters of beet sugar companies. Coal and clay deposits in the vicinity led to the establishment of industrial plants.

The depression of the early 1930's was in a measure relieved by increased prices for gold, which stimulated activities in the surrounding gold fields. This, together with the growing number of tourists attracted by the improvement and expansion of highways throughout the mountains, has been instrumental in maintaining the city's economic well-being.

1. The HELEN HUNT JACKSON HOUSE (private), 228 E. Kiowa St., a three-story gray-green frame structure, was built in 1874 by William S. Jackson for his authoress bride, Helen Maria Fiske Hunt, who occupied it until her death. Although additions have been made to the house, the original part has not been altered. Its rooms contain the author's library, her desk, many papers, letters, and manuscripts, and a collection of Indian pottery and baskets. Helen Hunt Jackson, popularly known as H. H., was born in 1830 at Amherst, Mass.; coming to Colorado Springs in 1873, she married Jackson two years later and here wrote parts of several novels, many poems, and the magazine sketches later collected in book form as Bits of Travel at Home (1874). Critics pronounced her Colorado sketches the poorest in the collection—merely a succession of canyons, waterfalls, and mountain passes described at sunrise and sunset, and marred by lavish color and sentimentality. Her outstanding works were A Century of Dishonor (1881), a record of her work done for the Federal Government in behalf of the Indians, and Ramona (1884). Helen Hunt Jackson died in California in 1885 and was buried on Cheyenne Mountain (see Tour 12b); her body was removed to Evergreen Cemetery here in 1891.

2. The bronze equestrian STATUE OF GENERAL WILLIAM JACKSON PALMER, intersection of E. Platte and N. Nevada Aves., the work of Nathan D. Potter of New York City, was unveiled in 1929. Born in Delaware in 1836, Palmer was commissioned a colonel and later a brigadier general in the Union Army; he came to Colorado in 1869 as manager of construction on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. In 1870 he and his associates incorporated the narrow-gauge Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, developed coal and iron mines along the line, and founded the steel mills at Pueblo. General Palmer died here in 1909.

3. COLORADO COLLEGE, a group of 40 brick and sandstone buildings, occupies a 50-acre landscaped campus on N. Nevada Ave. between E. San Rafael Ave. and E. Cache la Poudre St., extending to Monument Valley Park. The college was founded in 1874 largely through the efforts of General Palmer and his associates in the Colorado Springs Charter Company in cooperation with the Congregational Church. The first classes were instructed by the Reverend Jonathan Edwards in a temporary building on Tejon Street; the three classrooms were furnished with 30 desks, a bookcase, an organ, and lamps for use in the early morning. Seventy-six students attended that year.

Although the Congregational Church played a leading part in its establishment, the college is no longer under denominational control. Wealthy residents of the city and State have created an endowment in excess of $2,000,000. The college is coeducational, with an average enrollment of 700. Students' publications include the Tiger, a weekly, and the annual Pikes Peak Nugget.

Although essentially a liberal arts institution, one of the outstanding departments is the Foundation for Research in Tuberculosis. Organized in 1924, the foundation maintains a building and laboratory, and is nationally recognized for its work in experimentation and research.

SHOVE MEMORIAL CHAPEL (open 9-12, 2-4 daily), N. Nevada Ave., a limestone structure erected in 1931, English Gothic in design, memorializes the clerical ancestors of Eugene P. Shove, its donor. Ten stained glass windows in the nave depict The Introduction of Christianity into England; the chancel rose window portrays the seven liberal arts; teachers of the sciences and humanities are commemorated in the rose windows of the north and south transepts.

PALMER HALL (open 8-6 weekdays), between N. Nevada and N. Cascade Aves., at the northern edge of the campus, a three-story Romanesque sandstone structure built in 1903, contains an HERBARIUM on the second floor exhibiting 22,000 species, with a collection of 3,500 specimens of flora from the Pikes Peak region. The MUSEUM on the third floor houses a natural history collection, with exhibits on paleontology, mineralogy, archeology, and anthropology, including pottery and implements of the Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest.

The COBURN LIBRARY (open 7:45 a.m.-9:30 p.m. weekdays during school year; 9-5 summer), SW. of Palmer Hall, a two-story sandstone building erected in 1894, was the gift of N. P. Coburn of Newton, Massachusetts. It contains 145,000 volumes. The two-story sandstone CUTLER HALL, facing N. Cascade Ave., built in 1880, the oldest structure on the campus, contains the engineering and geology departments. WASHBURN STADIUM, overlooking Monument Creek, built in 1926, has a seating capacity of 13,000.

4. The VAN BRIGGLE ART POTTERY (open 9-4 weekdays), 1125 Glen Ave., was founded in 1899 by Artus Van Briggle, and its products have won prizes in many international exhibitions. The rambling brick and sandstone building, with sweeping gables and massive kiln stacks, was designed by Van Don Arend of New York. One of the few examples of seventeenth century Holland-Dutch architecture in Colorado, it is visited annually by 50,000 persons. The clay used in the pottery is mined northeast of the city. The original designs of the Van Briggle pieces are made on a primitive potter's wheel and are hand-etched. Casts are then made; from these casts the pottery is made. When dried, the pieces are given the bisque-firing treatment, glazed, and baked in kilns.

5. The 160-acre MONUMENT VALLEY PARK, extending 2.5 miles along Monument Creek between W. Bijou and W. Monroe Sts., is the largest convenient recreational area in the city. On the north shore of Lake No. 1 are swimming and wading pools, tennis courts, and picnic shelters. At the Bijou Street entrance are the BOTANICAL GARDENS, most extensive in the State, presenting Colorado scenes in miniature. Of interest is a labeled collection of alpine plants gathered above timberline on Pikes Peak. Bridle paths and foot trails lead through the northwest section of the park.

6. The FINE ARTS CENTER (open 10-5 weekdays, 1-5 Sun.), 18 W. Dale St., was founded in 1919 as Broadmoor Art Academy and is affiliated with Colorado College. The new building is a gift of Mrs. F. M. P. Taylor and was opened in 1936. The plain concrete structure of modified Spanish-Pueblo design, with doors, windows, and balcony railings trimmed with aluminum, has a setting of courts and gardens. The building houses an art school, galleries, a small theater, a museum, and studios for resident and visiting artists. In addition to a permanent collection of Indian and Southwestern art, the center arranges exhibitions of contemporary American and European painting. The art school conducts two winter terms, and a summer session. Boardman Robinson is the director of the winter term (1940), and Henry Varnum Poor directs the summer sessions.

7. The PUBLIC LIBRARY (open 10-9 Mon.-Fri 9-9 Sat., 3-5 Sun.), 21 W. Kiowa St., a one-story brick structure built in 1905, contains 42,000 volumes.

8. The CITY MUSEUM (open 10-12, 1-5 weekdays, 1-5 Sun), 25 W. Kiowa St., displays historical and archeological articles, including a collection of Cliff Dweller's pottery, with four "spirit stones" (large white pebbles placed in the four corners of a room by Indians to ward off evil spirits) ; an Indian pipe, in which tobacco soaked in blood was smoked—to instill bravery—and a picture of Balaam, one of the first burros to reach the summit of Pikes Peak in the early 1880's. There is also a collection of Sandwich glass and pioneer clocks.

9. The COLORADO SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF AND BLIND (open 9-12, 2-4 daily), S. Institute St. between E. Pikes Peak Ave. and E. High St., a group of eleven red brick buildings, was founded in 1874 as the Colorado Institute for Deaf Mutes; the school for the blind was added in 1883. Courses from the first grade through high school are offered by a faculty of 37 with a special preparatory course for deaf mutes who plan to enter college. Attendance for 1938-39 was approximately 300.

10. The UNION PRINTERS HOME (open 9-11, 2-5 daily; guides), SE. corner E. Colorado Ave. and S. Union Blvd., on a rolling 250-acre landscaped tract, is maintained by the International Typographical Union as a home and hospital for aged and sick members. The largest of the three main buildings, a five-story granite structure, contains dormitories, a library, a dining hall, and recreation rooms. Part of the grounds are under cultivation, and the home maintains a dairy herd. The institution was founded in 1886 when G. W. Childs and A. J. Drexel of the Philadelphia Public Ledger gave a joint check of $10,000 to start a construction fund. Additional money was raised by union printers, each of whom contributed a sum equal to the wage received for setting 1,000 ems of type by hand, approximately an hour's earnings. The first building was erected in 1892 on 80 acres donated by the local board of trade, and for a period was known as the Childs-Drexel Home for Union Printers. The home represents an investment of $7,000,000 and cares for approximately 400 men annually.

11. The GOLDEN CYCLE MILL (open 9-4 weekdays summer months; guides) SE. corner Chestnut and Wheeler Sts., West Colorado Springs, is the largest custom cyanide and flotation plant for treatment of gold ores in the United States. The milling machinery is housed in 17 rambling brick and frame structures surrounded by great dumps. The average run of ore is roasted and crushed, mixed with a cyanide solution to form a thin pulp, and run across a series of corduroy-covered tables, which catch and hold particles containing coarse gold. This concentrate is amalgamated with mercury and treated in retorts to recover the metal. Pulp that does not adhere to the tables is separated into two parts. The finer is thickened and treated with zinc dust to precipitate the gold, while the coarser is reground and run into cells containing a solution of water, xanthate, zinc, sulphate, and pine oil. Bubbles of air forced through this mixture carry concentrates of zinc, lead, gold, and silver to the top, where it is scraped off and again passed through the cyanide process. The average daily capacity of the mill is 1,500 tons of ore. In 1934, a peak year, $5,700,000 in bullion was shipped to the United States Mint at Denver.

12. The COLORADO CITY MUSEUM (open 8 a.m.- 10 p.m. daily, adm. 25¢), 26th and Cucharras Sts., a two-story brick structure built in the early 1860's as a jail and firehouse, displays collections of old guns, Indian arms, implements, and pottery, and relics of early Colorado.

13. A vacant lot on the north side of Colorado Ave., between 26th and 27th Sts., is declared by some to be the SITE OF COLORADO'S FIRST CAPITOL. Here in a two-room log cabin, now on the grounds of the Broadmoor Hotel, the Second Territorial Legislature is said to have met during the four-day session at Colorado City in 1862. But M. S. Beach, El Paso County representative in that body, declared in a letter written to the Denver Times, July 22, 1907, "the lower house of representatives assembled in a frame house built by John M. Francisco of Fort Garland, and its location was five or six lots below, or farther down the street, than said . . . cabin, and the upper house or council, as it was called, held their sessions in the kitchen or wing of Mrs. Maggard's hotel, about three blocks farther to the north on Center Street." This is supported in a letter to the El Paso County Pioneer Society by Irving Howbert, clerk of El Paso County in 1869, who declared that the cabin, "erroneously thought by many to be the original capitol building of the State," was used by him as an office for a time, and that it was occupied by Beach and a Dr. James Garvin during the legislative session.

14. The SITE OF THE COLORADO CITY LOG FORT, 2824 W. Pikes Peak Ave., is indicated by a bronze plaque set in a marker at the curb. A large log house built here in 1859, long since torn down, served settlers as a refuge in times of Indian troubles.

15. The BROADMOOR HOTEL, south 0.8 miles on US 85, then west (R) 1.5 miles on Broadmoor Rd., was built by the late Spencer Penrose, Colorado Springs capitalist, and his associates. Opened in 1918, the stuccoed brick and stone structure, of Italian Renaissance design, has two four-story wings; known as North and South Broadmoor, these flank the eight-story central section and tower. The architects were Warren and Wetmore, designers of the Ritz-Carlton and Biltmore hotels, New York City. The elaborately landscaped grounds contain formal sunken gardens and terraces about a lake, and numerous recreational facilities. Hindu rajahs, the Crown Prince of Siam, and royalty from many European countries have been guests here.

Garden of Gods, 52 miles (see Tour 6a); Ute Pass, 8.5 miles (see Tour 5b); Pikes Peak, 29.5 miles (see Tour 5A) ; Myron Stratton Home, 3 miles, Seven Falls, 6.4 miles, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, 6.5 miles, Will Rogers Shrine, 8.4 miles, Modern Woodmen of America Sanatorium, 9.5 miles, Cheyenne Mountain, 12.1 miles (see Tour 12b).