Object Decade: 1870 - 1879

Gen. Palmer establishes a town and a college

In 1871, General William Jackson Palmer, founder of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, laid out the city of Colorado Springs along his new line from Denver. Palmer envisioned a place of beauty, culture, and substance that would benefit both the body and spirit of its residents. Twenty acres in the townsite set aside for a college represented an integral part of Palmer’s plan.

Colorado College held its first classes on May 6, 1874, only three years after Palmer founded the city and two years before Colorado became a state. From the moment of its inception, Colorado College was a coeducational institution, “open to both sexes and all races.” Twenty-five students were in attendance, among them 13 men and 12 women in the first class.
In the early years, Colorado College gathered a small faculty whose roots ran to traditional New England scholarship. The college struggled for financial viability early on, surviving through the generosity of wealthy eastern friends. Under the leadership of President Edward P. Tenney (1876-84), the school gained its first permanent building, Cutler Hall, an 1880 stone structure designed by the nationally prominent architecture firm of Peabody and Stearns. All of the college functions took place in its classrooms, laboratories, offices, and a small auditorium.

In the depths of the Great Depression, Colorado College built a long-awaited chapel, Shove Memorial Chapel, which is considered one of the finest examples of Norman Romanesque architecture in the state. The completion of Palmer Hall in 1904 capped a construction-filled period and provided the campus with one of its best-loved landmarks. Thousands of students have passed under the peachblow sandstone arches of the central entrance and been inspired by the carved inscription overhead: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

The college in recent times

Colorado College is now ranked among the top 25 liberal arts colleges in the nation (in a field of about 500 colleges), and is distinctive for its Block Plan. Instead of taking multiple classes at a time, CC students study one class at a time for three and a half weeks, allowing for intensive work with faculty, and opportunities for hands-on, experiential field study locally and globally. Colorado College was the first college to create and adopt a block approach; there are now a handful of colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, and Australia that use a block schedule.

The 99-acre campus is located in the heart of Colorado Springs, and serves approximately 2,100 students from Colorado, the nation, and the world.

Generously Submitted by: Colorado College, Office of Communications

As the nation focused on east-west rails connecting the coasts, General Palmer saw the opportunity for a north-south route that could intersect all transcontinental lines and open trade with Mexico. The D&RG incorporated October 27, 1870, listing its proposed route from Denver, through Colorado Springs to Pueblo, up the Arkansas River and over Poncha Pass, then on to Santa Fe and El Paso. Palmer faced daunting odds. His railroad was to be built without federal subsidy through an undeveloped region, at a time when capitalists were reluctant to invest in new railroads.

Begun January 1, 1871, the first line from Denver followed the Plum Creek wagon road over Palmer Divide through what is now the town of Palmer Lake, then down Monument Creek to its junction with Fountain Creek. The first passenger train arrived in Colorado Springs on October 27, 1871, beginning service on the 65-mile route that took 5 hours at a pace of 15 miles per hour.

The little narrow-gauge line became the vital conduit which enabled the founding and growth of Colorado Springs. The railroad conveyed land to real estate and coal mining companies, which developed places along the routes to generate traffic for the railway. The D&RG engaged in fierce competition with the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe (AT&SF) Railroad, losing access over Raton Pass to Santa Fe in 1878, but eventually gaining the route up the Arkansas River through the Royal Gorge and all the way to Leadville, which it reached on July 31, 1880.

The direct connection to the booming Leadville mining camp kept the railroad profitable. This and an agreement with the AT&SF not to connect to Santa Fe caused D&RG officials to focus on serving mining and agriculture in the Colorado mountains. At full buildout, the D&RG created the vital market connection for mining towns, many of which today are mountain resorts, for example, Crested Butte, Aspen, Telluride, Durango, Salida, and Glenwood Springs.

The D&RG had a profound impact on the settlement and industrialization of the entire state, especially when Palmer built the steel mills in Pueblo to manufacture rails. Palmer set up a second line in 1889 that became the Rio Grande Western to connect with Salt Lake City and the transcontinental line to the west coast. The two Rio Grande lines connected on March 30, 1883, completing a 735-mile Denver-Salt Lake City route (via Colorado Springs and Pueblo) that took 35 hours.

Generously submitted by Dr. John Harner, Professor of Geography & Environmental Studies, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Colorado Springs is nationally known for its local breweries and alcohol production has become a major cultural feature of the city, which is surprising when you consider that when Colorado Springs was established it was illegal to sell alcohol of any kind within the city limits. The Colorado Springs Company issued land deeds to early settlers. These deeds contained a clause which expressly prohibited the sale, production, and consumption of alcohol in any form. Anyone found violating this clause would forfeit their deed, which would revert to the Company.

Almost immediately there was resistance to the alcohol prohibition clause. A case challenging the clause started in 1873 and by 1879 had reached the United States Supreme Court, who ruled in favor of the Colorado Springs Company, allowing them to retain and enforce the clause. By 1884 it had become clear that the residents of the city preferred regulation to prohibition. A city council committee outlined how the city could issue permits to licensed pharmacies or large hotels to distribute liquor in a safe, controlled, moderated manner. The loosening of the laws in no way meant that booze was free flowing. There were restrictions on the sale of types and quantities of alcohol.  Plenty of druggists had their licenses revoked for selling small bottles of beer or high alcohol content whiskey at their counters. Eventually in 1916, 4 years before the nation would follow step, Colorado outlawed liquor, temporarily muting the issue of Colorado Springs’ anti-liquor land deeds.

After national alcohol prohibition ended the City established a tentative truce where deed holders could pay a fee to nullify the clause in their own deed. The final, and fatal, challenge to the liquor clause would come in 1961. A local attorney, Robert Cole, challenged the Colorado Springs Company’s right to his deed based on their uneven application or non-enforcement of the liquor clause. The case reached the Colorado Supreme Court in 1963. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cole. The Court’s ruling established that since the Company claimed a right to revert deeds, yet did not enforce it, they had forfeited that right.  This means the clause has no legal power yet, surprisingly, many such clauses remain in Colorado Springs deeds to this day. Many businesses and residents would be happy to know the clause is no longer enforceable, and Colorado Springs’ brewery tradition can continue to thrive.

Generously Submitted by Patrick Lee, CSPM Museum Technician

Leaders of the Colorado Springs Company recognized the need for a reliable water source to ensure the success of their new city. The mesa on which Colorado Springs was platted was a semi-arid, short grass prairie devoid of trees. A canal to bring water would provide for washing, livestock, and irrigation which, while serving the needs of settlers, would also boost property values and hence profits of the company.

Leaders immediately invested in a project to bring water from Fountain Creek, diverting water near today’s 30th Street, two miles above Colorado City. The El Paso Canal was contracted on August 4, 1871, only four days after the founding of the town, and first delivered water to the city on Nov. 28, 1871. At first about 6 ½ miles long, the canal took water along the west-side foothills and crossed Monument Creek via a quarter-mile-long flume about 2 miles north of town in the Roswell neighborhood.

Laterals were dug along margins of Cascade, Nevada, and Wahsatch Avenues, with cross-street laterals dug at regular intervals to provide water to the remaining streets. Excess water flowed into what was Boulder Street Reservoir until 1900, today’s Boulder Park. The canal was extended in 1875 to irrigate the city’s Evergreen Cemetery, then in 1890 a diversion was used to fill Prospect Lake in Memorial Park, which became a popular swimming, camping, and tourism site.

At its height, the canal was eleven miles long. While the canal was an important water source for irrigation, drinking water initially came from wells, then from projects to tap into Ruxton Creek and the south slope of Pikes Peak by 1878, with pipelines and reservoirs delivering fresh water to the city by 1880. Further development of municipal drinking water projects made the canal obsolete. The El Paso Canal remained in use until 1956 when it was finally shut down. You can still walk beside the relict canal on the trails just west of Sondermann Park.

Generously Submitted by Dr. John Harner, Professor of Geography & Environmental Studies, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Fates entwined: As goes the town, so goes the Gazette

The Gazette and Colorado Springs have risen and fallen and risen again together.

Just a year after William Jackson Palmer founded the city, he founded a newspaper originally named Out West.

In its 149-year history, The Gazette took on five different names and four locations — each symbolic of broader changes in the community.
When the city was small, The Gazette was small. It was started in a two-story frame house on the northeast corner of what is now Tejon Street and Colorado Avenue, where the U.S. Olympic Committee now sits.

In that simpler era, when the budding city had just 2,000 residents and a subscription to the four-page weekly Gazette cost $3 per year, the building was divided up. Palmer had his office in the front. The newsroom/ printing plant was in the middle room, and the paper’s editor/publisher/printer/reporter, J. E. Liller, lived in the back room with his wife. Upstairs was the town meeting room where the church services were held, the first school’s classes were held, the fire department was organized and the town militia met when there was news of Indian raids.

When the city thrived, The Gazette thrived.

In 1891, The Gazette moved to a stately, new, four-story building on Pikes Peak Ave. just as gold was discovered in Cripple Creek, fueling the growth of both the town and the newspaper.

The Gazette held a party for 1,000 people on the opening night of the grand new building, but the party would not last. When the gold boom faded, many people who made it rich left town. Over the next several decades Colorado Springs barely grew, and the Gazette was sold and sold again.

But during World War II, the huge influx of troops, construction, and other businesses breathed new life into the local economy and The Gazette. The Gazette merged with the Telegraph in 1947 to form the Gazette-Telegraph and the paper was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for feature writing.

In 2012 Philip Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group bought The Gazette and moved it back downtown just as downtown was coming back to life, and retooled the paper for its digital future.

The Gazette won its second Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for national reporting on combat veterans who were discharged “other than honorably.”

In 2020, The Gazette unhooked its fortunes from the town for the first time, launching a new digital newspaper, the Denver Gazette, that will expand its reach statewide and, hopefully, far into the future.

Generously Submitted by Vince Bzdek, Editor, The Gazette

In 1867 William A. Bell travelled to the United States and soon signed on to a Union Pacific Railroad Eastern Division survey party, first as a photographer, and then later as a physician. The railroad was eventually renamed the Kansas Pacific Railway, and the survey party sought a southern route from Kansas to California. On the expedition Bell became good friends with General William Jackson Palmer, the survey party leader. Bell later described, “On that survey we shared the same tent for many months and over the campfire we discussed Palmer’s plans.”

After leaving the survey, Bell travelled back to England where in June of 1868 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and in 1869 published New Tracks in North America. Well received in England and in America, the book is a detailed account of the survey expedition including chapters on people and cultures of the Southwest, geography, climate, and flora and fauna. 

In 1870, Bell welcomed Palmer to England and they met with potential British investors and immigrants, while also consulting engineers about new narrow-gauge railroads. “We visited the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales and adopted a three-foot gauge for the planned new railroad.” By late October 1871, their Denver and Rio Grande Railway was completed from Denver to Colorado Springs. In 1872, the track was finished to Pueblo and the Canon City coal fields, opening up Southern Colorado for development.

Bell and Palmer forged a lasting partnership with a shared vision. In addition to the D&RG, Bell founded the town of Manitou Springs. After the D&RG built a spur into Manitou, the two conducted a campaign to promote the health benefits of the resort’s waters. This success earned Manitou Springs the nickname “Saratoga of the West” after Saratoga Springs, New York. Interestingly, good friend and business partner General Palmer – along with other residents in Colorado Springs – always referred to William A. Bell as Dr. Bell, although he never held an M.D.

In early 1872, Bell married Cara Scovell in England. Returning to Manitou Springs, they built their Victorian home, Briarhurst Manor, on the banks of Fountain Creek. With Bell’s continued promotion of Manitou Springs, easterners and investors from England came. Quickly a community grew with luxury hotels, parks, and shops. Wealthy visitors brought their families and household staff and stayed for months at a time. Due to the influx of British residents, their penchant for afternoon tea and English sports – Colorado Springs became known at least for marketing purposes, as “Little London” for a time in the late 19^th century.

By 1890, William A. Bell liquidated many of his holdings in the United States and retired to England. He returned in 1909 when General Palmer died. William and Cara Bell last visited Briarhurst Manor in 1920, and Dr. Bell died on June 6, 1921.

Organized in May 1871, the Colorado Springs Company was the brainchild of Civil War general and postwar railroad developer William Jackson Palmer. Bringing his Denver and Rio Grande Railroad line here, he and the company positioned the 2,000-acre townsite for a boom, making “Fountain Colony” one of the more successful railroad colonies. Their town, Colorado Springs, would be their outpost of eastern civilization, while the spa-resort for health seekers would be nearby Manitou Springs. Palmer chose the backdrop—Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak—upon his first visit.

Living up to Palmer’s plans, on July 31, 1871, colony officials struck the first stake at the corner of Cascade and Pikes Peak avenues. Next day, August 1, they began selling lots. Each investor paid $100 for membership alone. Residential lots were $50, business lots $100. Exotically named were the “villa sites.” Meanwhile, “colony cabins” were the first housing available, made of raw timber, one room each. Early guests—such as Rose Kingsley, daughter of British theologian Charles Kingsley—stayed in tents, as howling “prairie wolves” (coyotes) scavenged through town at night. By first year’s end, members had to pay their balances and show proof of improvements to receive their titles. For tourists and extended-stay visitors, Palmer’s Colorado Springs Hotel opened on New Year’s Day 1872.

Town residents were to be of “good moral character and strict temperance habits,” with deeds carrying liquor prohibition clauses. Irrigation being essential, the company designed, dug, and operated the El Paso Canal and irrigation ditches, augmented by wells, in 1872, gardens encouraged. General Palmer insisted on wide, tree-lined streets. It should be a “City of Trees” and the streets should have electric streetcars. Thus, the company advertised on February 1, 1873: “Trees wanted!” They must be “5,000 young, round-leafed cottonwoods with plenty of roots.”

Social cultivation was also essential. Palmer’s wife, Queen Mellen, opened the first school, hosted the first Christmas, and sang in concert. Palmer and company imagined a “City of Churches,” the “greatest university in the West,” and a women’s college like Vassar. Thus, Presbyterians opened a church in 1872 and Colorado College in 1874. That year, Out West magazine was born to promote the area to easterners. In 1872, enthusiasts formed the “Fountain Society of Natural Science” with the first circulating library, while the town became the El Paso County Seat. General Palmer’s utopia was well on its way.

Generously Submitted by Katharine Scott Sturdevant, Professor of History, Pikes Peak Community College.

This is a fragment of the American flag that flew over Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor at the beginning of the Civil War. After four days of extensive artillery bombardment by newly formed Confederate armed forces, Union Commander Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort and lowered the battle-torn flag with a solemn ceremony that included a 50-gun salute. Anderson then sailed for New York with the precious flag and upon arrival, throngs of patriotic citizens greeted him and rushed him off to a rally in Union Square with more than 100,000 people. Anderson toured the North with the tattered flag in tow, evoking patriotic fervor at every stop. He had become a national hero and the flag had become a powerful symbol of loyalty and patriotism in the North.

The Union army rewarded Anderson for his efforts with a promotion to brigadier-general and command of the Army of the Ohio. He asked a relatively unknown officer, Captain William Jackson Palmer, to command a troop of men that would act as his personal escort. Palmer hand-picked 110 Pennsylvanian men of high character for the troop, many of whom shared his Quaker faith. Under Palmer’s leadership the troop performed admirably in the field and began to be used less as a personal escort and more as an elite scouting unit. As a result of the troop’s success, Palmer was ordered to expand the size of the troop to a battalion (400) and then a regiment (1200). Within two weeks the recruitment was complete and Anderson’s Troop had evolved into the 15th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry with Palmer at the helm. This regiment is also known as Anderson’s Troop or the Anderson Cavalry.

Palmer’s recruitment of an elite cavalry regiment caught the eye of a merchant in Philadelphia who had awaited the right opportunity to join the war effort. That merchant was Henry McAllister Jr. McAllister’s mature and steadfast service throughout the war gained the attention of Palmer who asked him to be on his staff as Acting Assistant Adjutant General. After the war, McAllister and Palmer were reunited when Palmer was looking for reliable men for a business venture which would be, as Palmer declared it, a town of “schools, colleges and science…The most attractive place for homes in the West.” He hired McAllister as both the Philadelphia based land agent for the newly formed Denver and Rio Grande Railway and an officer in the Union Contract Company that would build it. Once the initial funding for the Railway was in place, McAllister joined his old Anderson Troop commander out west to assist in efforts to develop the town now known as Colorado Springs.

Generously Submitted by the McAllister House Museum