The “Pioneer Profiles” series explores some of the interesting characters that define Colorado history. This article discusses the life of Spencer Penrose. *** Spencer Penrose got a rather inauspicious debut in Colorado Springs. Fresh from a Harvard education that taught him little but decent boxing skills, Penrose had been eking out a living in Cripple […]
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Hidden in the rolling prairie on Highway 83 near Franktown, Colorado, is Castlewood Canyon State Park. Don’t drive by too fast, or you’ll miss it. Many people don’t even know it’s there. It’s worth the drive from Denver or Colorado Springs, because this park has several unique features other local parks don’t have, such as:
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Patience is a virtue, or is it? The phrase doesn’t mean what it used to. Technology pervades our lives so much that patience is virtually obsolete. When I was a kid, I watched The Jetsons thinking that future technology would save us so much time that we’d finish our work quickly, then be pampered by
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Charles Fox Gardiner grew up in a rich family where he was coddled and spoiled. Because he was a sickly child, his parents didn’t force him to go to school. Instead, they took him with them as they traveled in Europe. During one such trip in 1870, he looked out his hotel window in Germany
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This series, “Pioneer Profiles,” explores some of the interesting characters that define Colorado history. *** Chipeta, a quiet, amenable woman, never expected to serve in a chief-like role among the Ute people, but many historians view her as an icon of female strength in the late 1800s. Married to Chief Ouray, this power couple served
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The Hastings Cutoff is not a familiar landmark, and it is a road few had traveled by the summer of 1846. Looking at a modern picture of where the Cutoff diverges from the main California Trail makes me think about Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” which speaks of the author’s finding a fork
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