Object Decade: 1910 - 1919

Colorado City was the first permanent settlement in El Paso County. Anthony Bott and a group of settlers established a trade supply post in 1859 along Fountain Creek. With no authority, they began selling lots through the “El Paso Claim Club.” By the winter of 1859-1860, upwards of 100 log cabins had been built and the town reached the peak of its prosperity. An 1863 census recorded 300 people in Colorado City, and it continued to dwindle so that by 1870 there were only 81 residents.

After Colorado Springs was founded in 1871, Colorado City remained outside of the city limits and was therefore exempt from its temperance laws. The town gained a reputation for saloons and gambling, outlawed in Colorado Springs. This reputation grew as the region industrialized and Colorado City became the working-class neighborhood for heavy industries such as the Colorado Midland Railroad that arrived in 1887, and then the four gold refining mills that processed ore from Cripple Creek. Adolphus Busch also started an early brewery in Colorado City, as well as the Colorado City Glass Company to make bottles. Immigrant labor poured into Colorado City to work the factories and railyards.

Nationwide temperance movements were gaining strength in the early 20th century to combat alcoholism among workers in the industrial cities. Colorado City grew tired of its raucous reputation and voted to go dry in 1913. In April, 1917, citizens voted to annex Colorado City into Colorado Springs. The rationale was the efficiencies that would result in lower costs and better public services, particularly for water infrastructure, the lower property taxes that would result, and the prestige for Colorado City residents to associate with Colorado Springs, which had seen unprecedented levels of wealth generated from Cripple Creek gold mining.

The annexation occurred on June 10, 1917. However, a small outlier remained outside of city limits. In response to the 1913 Colorado City vote to outlaw liquor, 37 west side residents voted to incorporate a new town of Ramona on August 22, 1913, located just north of today’s Thorndale Park on 24th Street. They immediately approved liquor sales and the small town prospered from its saloons. Ramona suffered the moral outrage of regional leaders, who refused water services and led gambling and prostitution raids in 1914. Statewide prohibition took effect in 1916, forcing Ramona to shut its saloons. It dis-incorporated in 1947 and was annexed in 1955.

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

The NAACP has a rich history in the United States working for the equality of people of color and the organization has played an important role in Colorado Springs since 1918. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is civil rights organization formed in 1909 with the mission of advocating for equal justice for African Americans. The organization was started by early civil rights leaders W. E. B. DuBois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells. Since its founding, the NAACP mission statement has evolved to include issues of police misconduct, questions of economic development and the status of black foreign refugees to “ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.”

The Colorado Springs branch of the NAACP was chartered in November 1918 at Payne Chapel east of downtown Colorado Springs. Led by Reverend A. Wayman Ward, Colorado Springs African Americans organized the local branch to promote political, social and economic equality in the Pikes Peak region. Throughout the 1930s, local NAACP members worked diligently to organize both black and Latino activists into a political force to face off discrimination and increase opportunities for local people of color. This effort was led by outspoken activists Kimbal Stroud Goffman and Charles Banks who would go on to become one of the city’s most important racial leaders.

As a national force, the NAACP has been influential in all aspects and iterations of the modern American Civil Rights movement helping to end segregationist Jim Crow laws and advocate for the passage the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively. Today, national NAACP initiatives continue to shape how the country treats racial minorities and include political lobbying for the advancement of African Americans and litigation efforts backing victims of hate crimes and police brutality.

In 2012, a bomb was left outside the unoccupied headquarters of the Colorado Springs NAACP branch. The pipe bomb exploded in the early hours of the morning, fortunately hurting no one and causing minimal damage to the building. The crime was investigated by the FBI as a possible terrorist attack and months later police arrested and charged a local suspect.
In Colorado Springs the NAACP continues to play an important role in the activist community regularly partnering with other local non-profits to promote their mission of racial justice and economic equality in the city.

Generously Submitted by Alex Archuleta, Historian

In 1916 the Pikes Peak Auto Highway opened to usher in the modern era of automobile tourism in the region. An engineering marvel for its day, it was the brainchild of marketing guru Spencer Penrose. The nineteen-mile road cost $400,000 to build and required extensive use of draft animals, manpower and explosives to carve a road suitable for auto traffic up the mountain. To recoup his investment and that of his stockholders, Penrose charged a fifty cent toll. Anticipating the reluctance some tourists might have to paying the cost to reach the summit, Penrose launched an extensive marketing campaign. A 1916 promotional brochure urges, “Cost should not be considered. It would be foolish to allow the question of cost to deter one from making what is, and forever will be, the World’s Most Wonderful Trip!” Local newspapers predicted up to 5,000 automobile tourists would arrive in the month of August alone and urged business owners to prepare for them.

The exciting and unique tourist experience offered by the Pikes Peak Auto Highway thrilled visitors in the early twentieth century and continues to do so today. Acknowledging that all drivers and their automobiles might not be suitable for the challenging drive up Pikes Peak, enterprising entrepreneurs outfitted fleets of automobile touring cars to whisk visitors up and down the mountain. At the tender young age of 14, Robert K. Brown of Colorado Springs began working as a tourist driver on the Peak making several trips a day during the summer months. His passengers must have been delighted at the trip up the mountain and yet relieved to return home safely when they learned his age! Fleet drivers were known to make the trip as thrilling as possible in order to receive large tips at the end of the drive from grateful passengers.

To generate further excitement and publicity for the Pikes Peak Auto Highway and the soon to be opened Broadmoor Hotel, Spencer Penrose created the first annual Penrose Trophy. Putting up the $2,000 prize money himself, the Hill Climb Contest up Pikes Peak garnered so much national attention that articles about it appeared on the front pages of 650 different newspapers. Now known as the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb or the “Race to the Clouds,” it is the second oldest race in the United States next to the Indianapolis 500. Every summer, automobiles, trucks and motorcycles speed around 156 corners to the summit, a total distance of 12.4 miles. The race is legendary and draws an international audience with racers and fans coming from as far away as Germany, Japan and Dubai. The Pikes Peak Hill Climb has had a significant impact on local tourism and perhaps even more importantly, continues the legacy of Spencer Penrose in the region today.

Submitted by Leah Davis Witherow, CSPM Curator of History

Born in 1892 in Colorado Springs, Lloyd Shaw began distinguishing himself at Colorado Springs High School as an “excellent student” who played football and in his senior year won the state oratorical contest in Boulder. While attending Colorado College he played football, studied drama, English and biology and decided to become a teacher.

After teaching English at the Cutler academy and Colorado Springs High School, Lloyd was hired to run Cheyenne School in 1916. Lloyd was teacher, principal and Superintendent of Cheyenne School District until his death in 1951.

Early on, Lloyd coached football, basketball, and track. After coaching football for three years he talked the district parents into dropping football for the safety and the betterment of his male students. Shaw later wrote that he realized football did not harmonize with the educational philosophy he had for the school. He was not comfortable with the school defining itself in terms of victory over other schools, and he did not like the adulation given to athletes who happened to be physically bigger than other students. Shaw preferred activities in which all students could participate and which complimented the educational goals of the school.

Lloyd was happy sharing his love of the outdoors. One student, Eric Swab recalled, “with the first snow Shaw called juniors and seniors to the auditorium and told them they had 30 minutes to go home, pack a lunch, and be back at the school for a hike to the school cabin”, which was up on Cheyenne Mountain.

Shaw began teaching the students square dancing, for which, over the years, the dance teams gained national and international recognition. However, it was not teaching just square dancing to Shaw. Mrs. Shaw remembered that Lloyd used, “contras from England, running sets from the Appalachians, quadrilles and ballroom dancing.”

To quote from Richard Marold’s short article in a local paper in 2002, “…from 1916 to 1951 he gained national recognition for his educational approach, dance teams, drama productions, field trips and lectures. Ernie Pyle, the great World War II correspondent, after a visit to Cheyenne, called it the best public school in the country.” One student described her experience at the school this way, ‘Teaching was not confined to the classroom, nor did it require expensive equipment, just a very wise man and a tree to sit under.’” Lloyd Shaw – a true Renaissance Man!

Generously Submitted by John Orsborn, CSPM Volunteer Educator

Among a wealth of impressive philanthropic gifts in Colorado Springs’ history, the Myron Stratton Home ranks as one of the most unusual, as well as one of the longest-lived. The legacy of Winfield Scott Stratton (1848-1902), and named after his estranged father, the home nearly did not see the light of the world. Winfield Stratton was a carpenter-turned-multimillionaire, thanks to his discovery of gold in what became the Cripple Creek and Victor Mining District, but admittedly, he was burdened by the weight of his wealth.

After his premature death at 52, his will was contested by many—family, friends, the city, and the state. Even his mental competency was questioned. All this because it was his wish to apply the lion’s share of his fortune to fund “a free home for poor persons who are without means of support and who are physically unable by reason of old age, youth, sickness or other infirmity to earn a livelihood,“ rather than leaving his money to established private or public institutions, as was expected.

Naysayers predicted an influx of what they considered the least desirable subjects of society and the resulting reputation of Colorado Springs as “the poorhouse” of the nation. The legal hurdles took over a decade to clear, but the Myron Stratton Home finally opened its doors in the winter of 1913/14. Instead of living down to the low expectations of its opponents, the home became a beacon of hope for many, as well as a self-sustaining enterprise.

Mr. Stratton’s trustees invested in land south of town along South Nevada Avenue/Colorado Highway 115, land large enough to accommodate ranching, farming, a dairy, plus its own power plant. Each resident was expected to work according to her or his age and ability in order to contribute to the functioning of the home. The elderly resided in cottages, children lived in dormitories. They attended school on the premises, until the decision was made to enroll them in local public schools, and they were either taught a trade, or had their college education financed. As an outward expression of the home’s philosophy that emphasized a person’s dignity, residents had access to numerous pastime activities, including tennis, swimming, music, and books.

While the Myron Stratton Home has adapted to changing times and no longer cares for children, it continues to provide senior housing and services, according to Mr. Stratton’s original vision.

Generously Submitted by Tanja Britton, CSPM Volunteer Educator

Founded in 1919, the Broadmoor Art Academy was the brainchild of Julie Penrose, the engaging spouse of mining magnate and Broadmoor Hotel owner Speck Penrose. The couple donated their former family residence at 30 W. Dale St. to house the new art institution and also helped fund the ambitious art school startup.

Julie and the four prominent Colorado residents who served with her as founding trustees (Anne Gregory van Briggle Ritter, D.V. Donaldson, Francis Drexel Smith and Charles L. Tutt) sought to create a focal point for regional art and artists. The BAC would hire resident artist/instructors of the highest caliber, provide studio and exhibition space in the renovated mansion, and serve as a multidisciplinary facility. When opened, it hosted the local music society, the drama league and a dance studio, as well as offering apartments and private studios to local and visiting artists. The trustees hired two of America’s most famous artists, Robert Reid and John F. Carlson, as instructors – and paid them well.

The first three-month summer school session began in June 1920. Carlson didn’t expect much. “I thought 15 students in the first year would be all we could hope for,” he told the Colorado Springs Gazette midway through the summer term on July 27, “But now we have more than 50 students and more coming.” That early success continued, and the BAC lived up to Julie’s unlikely expectations. It created an “art colony” which would vault our little city into the artistic stratosphere, and lead to the construction of the Fine Arts Center 16 years later.

As well as their pay as instructors, Reid, Carlson and their future colleagues found buyers for their art among the prosperous gentry of Colorado Springs and Denver. Dr. Gerald Webb of Colorado Springs commissioned Reid to paint his daughter Marka, while Denver banker John Evans bought Reid’s magnificent “Moonlight, Garden of the Gods.” BAC students such as Tabor Utley, Lawrence Barrett, Charlie Bunnell and Archie Musick remained in Colorado Springs and became prominent artists in their own right. Springs native Laura Gilpin, a “professional member,” became a nationally renowned photographer. She had a studio at the Academy, promoted it through her work and served as a trustee of the BAC’s successor, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Contemporary photographs document an engaging truth about the BAC. While instructors and students spent a lot of time painting the abandoned mining towns and spectacular landscapes of the Pikes Peak Region, they also knew how to have fun. A 1920 photo shows Reid, Carlson and a dozen other BAC denizens dressed up for an epically silly Beaux Arts Ball at the building. Artists and their pals partying wildly two years after the 1918 flu pandemic? May we all be so lucky!

Generously Submitted by John Hazlehurst, Journalist & Historian

Born in 1853 in Portland, Maine to Scottish immigrant parents, James F. “Jimmie” Burns came to Colorado Springs in early adulthood and found work as a plumber and pipe fitter. He and James Doyle staked out a claim for the Portland mine on a crest of Battle Mountain. As the Portland was surrounded by other claims, Burns and Doyle mined secretly in the dark of night. They stashed their ore until they built up a significant war chest to pay court fees and fight off the inevitable lawsuits that would come from surrounding claims. And they won!

James and his wife Olivia Belle Parker Burns enjoyed attending theatrical and musical productions. Witnessing a need for a world-class theater to attract leading acts to Colorado Springs, Jimmie Burns commissioned architects Hetherington and Douglas to build a theater at 21 – 23 East Pikes Peak Avenue. The stately 3 story structure with gleaming white façade of glazed terra cotta tiles was completed in 1912. The building held shops and offices as well as a 1,470 seat theater. The seats were olive green velvet trimmed with rich woods. The theater’s interior was done in Italian marble, imported at fantastic expense including staircases, walls, even restrooms.

Opening night was standing room only. As reported in the Gazette: “The occasion was a decided success, beyond even the most sanguine expectations… The magnificent Burns Theatre, ablaze with light and filled to capacity with music lovers and social leaders. Chester Alan Arthur II rose to speak, ‘Mr. Burns, I have been requested by a committee of the citizens of Colorado Springs to voice the general public sentiment of gratitude to you, which the opening of this beautiful theater inspires.’ Burns, rising in his own box, thanked Arthur and pledged his theater to be the mecca of Colorado Springs culture.”

The Burns was converted to a movie theater in 1927 for $80,000. Paramount-Publix leased the theatre from 1928 to 1933. Westland Theatre Corporation took over the lease in 1933, renaming it The Chief Theatre. Motion pictures became the primary entertainment, although some stage shows and vaudeville acts continued until the end of World War II. Generations of local residents fondly recall attending the Chief Theatre and were distraught when it was torn down in 1973 and replaced with a drive-up teller and parking lot for Exchange National Bank.

Submitted by Leah Davis Witherow, CSPM Curator of History

At 7:00 in the morning, Wednesday, May 6, 1914, the Colorado-to-the-Gulf Sociability Tour began in front of the Burns Theatre, where the Chamber of Commerce offices stood, in downtown Colorado Springs. The purpose of the tour was to highlight road travel by automobile, and the importance of good roads.

The sociability tour included 30 or so men, prominent in their communities, from Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, and Pueblo. They were bankers, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians. The plan was to travel  from Colorado Springs to Galveston, Texas by automobile.  The advertising motto was, “Drive to warm country in the winter (southern Texas) and drive to cool country in the summer, (Colorado).”

What they found were roads in Texas that were in terrible shape due to heavy rains and flooding but very welcoming towns and cities of people who went out of their way to make Colorado visitors feel welcome. After having reached Galveston the wet return trip to Colorado was too much for their automobiles, and they had to ship the cars and themselves back to Colorado by train. The trip definitely highlighted the need for better roads for all involved.

Another sociability tour, announced in the May 1915 issue of Town Development Magazine stated, “…for the purpose of advertising Colorado’s automobile highway throughout the East, the Colorado Sprins, Colo. Chamber of commerce made plans for a 3,000 mile automobile sociability run.” It started on April 5, taking 3 weeks, and getting as far east as Indianapolis, Indiana.

Sociability tours were done in-state to assess the various roads over mountain passes and the road built next to rivers, for their viability for leisure travel by automobile. What better way to assess the condition of roads than to travel on them? And what better way to travel than make a planned tour so the advertising travelers in their automobiles could announce their plans to the towns along the route where they were planning to drive? The towns would then be obliged to welcome the travelers and planning for local road improvements would be discussed and promotion of the improvements made to the local citizens.

With the federal government taking on the task of building new highways and improving older roads, the sociability tours soon faded out. Colorado Springs advertising continued in many other formats.

Generously Submitted by John Orsborn, CSPM Volunteer Educator

First cases were at Colorado College among the Student Army Training Corps. Ticknor Hall was made an influenza infirmary, and 8 students and 1 instructor died.

The YWCA Building was also made an influenza hospital under Red Cross supervision and accommodated 176 patients in December.

Two vaccines – one from the Mayo Clinic in October, and a second prepared by the City Chemist using material from Chicago’s Cook County Hospital – were brought to be used here.

The shutdown of public gatherings was continued until closing regulations were relaxed on December 22.

Colorado Springs fared far better than many cities. Philadelphia, as a leading example, had high overall and daily death rates with 500 bodies, stacked, awaiting burial on Sept. 10. With 485 police officers and 850 telephone employees sick, city services essentially shut down. There is new evidence that the rapidity of shutdown in 1918 was related to how well a city did. Thus Colorado Springs perhaps owes more to Dr. George Gilmore, its 1918 Health Officer, than before realized.

With the arrival of 1919, the pandemic waned in Colorado Springs, still with 58 deaths that year. On into the twentieth century the causative influenza virus was identified, studied, and the knowledge so gained used to make drugs to treat acute influenza illness and to make vaccines to prevent epidemics. Small genetic changes in the virus were identified which make annual vaccination with material altered to counter those changes necessary. So far, there has not been another influenza pandemic, but the disease regularly occurs as random cases in the population causing some 410,000 hospitalizations and 24,000 deaths annually and also flares as occasional larger epidemics.

Although it was not influenza, another pandemic did arrive in Colorado Springs 102 years later. Covid-19 came to Colorado Springs in March, 2020.

Generously Submitted by Dr. Darryl Thatcher, CSPM Volunteer Educator

World War I truly reached Colorado Springs with the announcement of the creation of Battery C, First Field Artillery, Colorado National Guard on May 25, 1916. At the beginning of June, the National Defense Act of 1916 became law, greatly expanding the National Guard. By the end of June, under command of Captain Victor Hungerford, Battery C went to a mobilization camp in Golden, Colorado. Battery C arrived in Europe in February of 1918. In 1919, three years and one day after the announcement of its creation, news came that Battery C would return home.

Women also supported the war effort on the war front. Sidney J. Walker worked 14 to 15 hour shifts in the surgical dressing department of the Red Cross in Paris. Helen Anderson and her mother travelled to Paris to work with the Y.M.C.A. A Colorado Springs contingent of nurses also went to serve at base hospital No. 29 on the front, including Augusta Browning and Edna Younker.

There was active support of the war effort from Colorado Springs residents. Battery C received food and clothing made for them by local Colorado Springs women while they were in training. There was also a city-wide War Garden campaign that took place in 1917. Despite bad weather the gardening campaign was a success. Local school children organized as garden tenders and worked with professional growers and horticulturists to make the most out of the Colorado Springs climate.
After the entry of the United States into the war in 1917, and on a rising wave of nationalism, Woodrow Wilson passed an executive order requiring German born men who were not naturalized to carry registration cards. There were worries that German spies would try to infiltrate the United States. Many Coloradoans of German ancestry, naturalized or not, experienced prejudice and degradation. Anti-German sentiment crept into every facet of life as German language classes were removed from school curriculum and politicians fell over one another to prove who was the most anti-German. Mesa County residents offered to convert the Teller Indian School into an internment camp for Germans.

Colorado Springs reflected and embodied national sentiments during World War One. The willingness to commit men and women to military service, communally organize to support the war from home, and participate in xenophobic fervor were all federally led efforts that took root and flourished locally.

Submitted by Patrick Lee, CSPM Museum Technician