Fountain Creek: Big Lessons from a Little River 

Fountain Creek: Big Lessons from a Little River

with Author and Photographer Jim O’Donnell

Saturday, September 12, 2026

2:00 – 3:00 p.m.

The Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum presents the 2026 “We The People: Colorado at 150” lecture series. To honor the America 250/Colorado 150 commemorations, this series will explore the diverse experiences and voices of Coloradans. $5 suggested donation. Registration is required.  

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

From its headwaters high up Colorado’s legendary Pike’s Peak to suburban concrete-lined canals, Fountain Creek has endured nearly everything humans could do to a single watershed. It has been dammed, diverted, drained, poisoned, restored, exploited, ignored—and yet it has survived. 

Author and photographer Jim O’Donnell grew up exploring among the beavers and discarded beer bottles that have long populated Fountain Creek. Irreverent, deeply knowledgeable, and endlessly curious, O’Donnell guides us through the contradictions and complexities of one of the most heavily urbanized areas in one of the fastest-growing states in the nation. 

Fountain Creek is at once a reflection of our ever-changing relationship to the natural world and a challenge for each of us to reexamine the many ways we are connected to the world around us, to water, and to each other.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Jim O’Donnell is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in Sierra Magazine, El Palacio, and elsewhere. After a career in archaeology and journalism, O’Donnell continues to work as a community conservation activist and wilderness advocate in the American Southwest where he fights to protect and restore wetlands and watersheds. Born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado, O’Donnell teaches US History at Taos High School in Taos, New Mexico.