I often wonder, as I walk the streets of downtown Colorado Springs, what life was like here in the 1880s and ’90s, not long after General William Jackson Palmer founded our well-planned city. I imagine him strolling down the street after checking on things in his Antlers Hotel. Perhaps he chatted with people as he strode across the wide dirt avenue. Queen Palmer, the General’s wife, had helped name the streets in the new city. The north-south streets took the names of mountain ranges. The east-west ones took the names of rivers.
Robert Cameron laid out the streets amid grama grass and juniper pines. Henry McAllister, Palmer’s friend from their shared military service, gathered 3,000 cottonwoods from the Arkansas River valley. Then he planted them up and down the streets at regular intervals. He took care to put up signs that warned people not to tie their horses to the new trees. Palmer’s mind must have been alive with ideas about how to get people to Colorado Springs. This was a place where people could live in a resort-like environment free from the hustle and bustle of a big city. He also knew of the healing properties of the spring water in Manitou. The climate could treat tuberculosis symptoms, so he told people that Colorado Springs was the place to “chase the cure.”
Palmer was a visionary. He planned early for the growth of the city. For instance, he made the streets extra wide so drivers could turn a coach-and-six rather than having to back up. He also planned seven parks that inter-connected so that they could be maintained by a crew that could easily travel between one and the next. If people needed a respite from their work, all they had to do was walk a few steps. There, they’d find a park to rest or stroll in—an idyllic reverie in the age of transcendentalism.
Of course Pikes Peak dominated the landscape then as much as it does now. It drew thousands to our city. Visitors must experience its grandeur for themselves. It’s hard to explain how breathtaking that mountain still is, no matter what the season, but it’s easy to understand why an early city ordinance disallowed any tall buildings. The mountain dominates the western view and is snow-capped most of the year. Its rose-granite face reflects some of the most amazing sunrises anywhere. Sunsets often blaze bright orange as the Peak sets the city in shadow.
Early residents of the city were awed by the beauty and majesty of the Front Range. Some wanted to put this awe into words. Katherine Lee Bates did in 1895 after she spent a harrowing day using a combination of wagon ride and mule to get to the top of Pikes Peak. A teacher at the Colorado College, Bates shared a love of Colorado Springs with her father. He was a minister at the First Congregational Church where she spent a summer teaching Sunday school. Many people think she wrote “America the Beautiful” from the top of the mountain as she stood there. In fact, she only jotted a few things in her notebook to preserve the memory. She later noted, “When I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.” Yeah. She voiced what we all feel.
Early maps of Colorado Springs show several thriving businesses. Livery stables, butcher shops, general stores, and boarding houses sat along with irrigation ditches that linked the town with nearby water supplies. Residents diverted water for animals and yards from Fountain Creek. However, they originally brought in barrels of drinking water from Bear Creek. It came from 15 different town wells.
The city originally spanned a mere six square miles. Most people had everything they needed within walking or riding distance. Wind whipped through the town, with few large buildings or trees to stop it. One of the big problems was the flies that manure attracted. People either cursed the wind or were thankful for it because there were no window screens. McAllister, who built the first brick home in the city, found the wind so powerful that he had his house’s walls built 22 inches thick. That’s part of the reason the house still stands today.
Today, visitors to downtown Colorado Springs will find few tall buildings since that old ordinance is still in effect. Residents appreciate the wide streets and avenues that can fit two lanes in either direction, plus a center median. Buildings erected at the turn of the century with the help of Winfield Scott Stratton, gold king and philanthropist, are the landmarks of our city’s heritage. The courthouse building is now the Pioneers Museum. the Mining Exchange is now a hotel. Even the post office and the city hall buildings hearken back to those earlier times. These were days when Colorado Springs was just a “queer embryo-looking place,” as Isabella Bird once put it. Some people might be creeped out if they knew the old Colorado City Cemetery was where the El Paso County Judicial Building is now.
Still, every time the wind blows through the city, or the Peak gets a fresh painting of snow, I am reminded of the early years of this city and what draws people to her. It must have been hard to start life here when there was not much to start with, but Colorado Springs has grown into one of the most livable places in America. In fact, it always ranks high on US News and World Report’s “Best Places to Live.” Based on affordability, job prospects, and quality of life, “Colorado Springs is the only city in the top 10 to have received a perfect score.” Palmer would be proud of what she has become.
