Object Decade: 1920 - 1929

The first official rodeo in Colorado Springs took place in the Garden of the Gods, as part of the 1913 Shan Kive celebration. Since then, the name and location have changed, but the spirit and goal of the rodeo remain the same: to preserve, celebrate, and share the western heritage of the Pikes Peak Region.

By 1922, with the help of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, the rodeo attracted cowboys and spectators from around the nation. Traditions surrounding the event began to take place; including that of the Rodeo Queen—now known as the Girl of the West. That year, Dawn Norris set out for Denver on horseback to invite the Governor to the Pikes Peak Rodeo.

As the rodeo’s ambassador, the main duty of the Girl of the West is to promote the rodeo and the Pikes Peak Region. She is one of the many characters of the annual event—which includes precision riders, cowboys, rodeo clowns and countless community volunteers. This is not a sport for the faint of heart, and those who participate are rewarded with cash prizes, or the coveted Spencer Penrose Buckle—named in honor the visionary behind local rodeo.

In 1928, the Colorado Springs Gazette prepared the crowds for a letdown: “Tread Softly, Shed a Tear, There Won’t be a Rodeo this Year.” After a pause during the Great Depression, rodeo returned to Colorado Springs in 1937, thanks to entrepreneur and philanthropist Spencer Penrose. The Will Rogers Rodeo, held on the Broadmoor Polo Grounds, was the beginning of the rodeo that we know today—so called the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo since 1949.

With deep ties to the identity of the region, all proceeds from the rodeo go to military personnel and their families. This tradition began in 1946, at the first rodeo held after World War II. Since then, the five military installations and numerous commands in the Pikes Peak Region are recognized and honored at each performance.

To ceremoniously begin five days of rodeo performances, the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Parade and the Colorado Springs Western Street Breakfast have brought the community together for over 75 years. Since 1949, these events are punctuated by the Pikes Peak Range Rider’s departure from the Street Breakfast in downtown Colorado Springs. From here, they begin a 5-day ride around Pikes Peak to promote the rodeo and western traditions.

Above all, the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo is a celebration — and an attempt to capture the energy and excitement—of those ranchers, cowboys and ambitious pioneer families, who first set out for the great wide open of the West, with visions of bright starry skies, and a rugged and wild fresh start.

Submitted by Hillary Mannion, CSPM Archivist

In late December 1922 five men decided to climb the 14,115 foot summit of Pikes Peak to celebrate New Year’s, rather than attend parties in Colorado Springs. The group was made up of five experienced climbers: brothers Fred and Ed Morath, Willis Magee, Harry Standley, and Fred Barr. Due to deep snow they opted to climb via the Cog Railway route rather than the trail Fred Barr had recently finished. High winds made the steep climb treacherous, but they pushed on and summited around five p.m. When the summit house was surrounded by massive snow drifts, they dug their way to a second floor entrance to get in. And although it had no heat or electricity, the summit house kept them out of the wind.

Before they left for the summit, the “Frozen Five” (their new nickname) told the Gazette they would fire a flare and rocket at exactly nine p.m. to announce they were successful. Fred Morath later shared that Joe Caldwell, a city electrician, was among those waiting for the sign. So impressed with their feat, he dipped the city’s lights for 30 seconds in salute. At midnight the group lit flares, set off rockets, and started a bonfire with old railroad ties. Despite partially cloudy skies, many residents witnessed the display. Some thought the summit house was ablaze and called the police and newspaper.

The formation of the club became official in March 1923 when the five got together and named themselves the AdAmAn Club, adding one new member each year. New members were to be chosen from those who had previously made the climb as guests of the club. New members are expected to lead the climb the year they are elected, and by the time they become members they’ve typically climbed with the club five to ten times.

Over the years some of the AdAmAn Club’s methods have changed but the overall tradition remains the same. Originally each climber might carry as much as 25 pounds of pyrotechnics on his back in addition to the other gear necessary for the climb. Over the years the firework display has grown in scale and the fireworks are now transported to the summit by the Cog Railway on the last train of the season, and stored in the summit house until they are needed. The AdAmAn Club added its first female member, Sue Graham, in 1997. The Club has since added others.

Although everyone looks forward to the midnight fireworks, the club also fires five bursts at 9:00 p.m. to salute the Frozen Five. These bursts once saved the lives of lost, hypothermic hikers who were not members of the club. Another club tradition takes place when club members flash handheld mirrors when they reach timberline, and people down below flash mirrors back in a show of support. Throughout the years, the AdAmAn Club has braved gale-force winds, temperatures in excess of 30 degrees below zero, wind chills of 75 below zero, and blizzard-like conditions to carry on this beloved tradition.

Generously Submitted by Luke Bohannon, Ph.D. Candidate, UCLA

“The Indian is a subject foreign to most of the American people for they are so engrossed in material things that they do not give much thought to other things. Even religion, the most important thing, is put in the background. I was born a little savage, but I always resented that term being applied to my people because I know they are peace-loving, hospitable, generous, and deeply religious,” Rev. Sherman Coolidge addressed the audience gathered in the El Paso County Courthouse on a summer day in 1927. He spoke that day about American Indians and Christianity, a popular subject for him as one of the most visible Native religious leaders in the United States at that time. Though he had moved to Colorado Springs with his family four years prior, he had spent the majority of his life advocating for American Indians on a national scale, as well as in service to the people of the Wind River Reservation, where he was born.

Born Des-che-wah (trans. “Runs on Top”) around 1860, he had been captured by Bannock warriors and later surrendered to American soldiers. His mother, who had escaped capture, chose to leave him with the soldiers, fearing he would otherwise be killed in skirmishes between the Arapaho and Bannock like his father years prior. He was adopted by Capt. Charles A. Coolidge and his wife, Sophie, and was placed into military school before deciding upon a path in the ministry. He finished his theological education in 1884, after which he was ordained as a deacon of the Episcopal Church. He was among the first wave of Native Episcopalian leaders who conducted missionary work within their own tribes, including the likes of Rev. Philip J. Deloria and David Pendleton Oakerhater.

Rev. Coolidge remained active in promoting American Indian causes and culture throughout his life, even while ministering to a largely white congregation in Colorado Springs. He co-founded the Society of American Indians in 1911, the first national organization for the advancement of Native people created by and for American Indians, as well as the American Indian Film Company in the 1920’s, created to promote visibility of American Indians in film and the hiring of American Indian actors in Hollywood productions.

Though Rev. Sherman Coolidge passed away in 1932 while visiting his eldest daughter in Los Angeles, his descendants still reside in Colorado Springs today.

Generously Submitted by Christian Valvano

Polo, often called the ‘Sport of Kings’ was apparently created in the 6th century BC as a training game for the elite cavalrymen of Persian rulers. The sport came to Colorado Springs in 1888, 12 years after New York publisher James Gordon Bennett organized the first polo match in America. Informal matches were played on a tract of land near the Broadmoor Casino, which was eventually leased by the Cheyenne Mountain Country Club.

Polo was then (and still is!) a dangerous, expensive and demanding sport beloved of athletic young men from moneyed families. The wealthy residents of Palmer’s little city included players while the Cripple Creek gold rush attracted and created even more. “By the turn of the century,” wrote Marshall Sprague in his history of the Cheyenne Mountain Country Club, “the club found itself able to support one of the liveliest centers of tournament polo in the country.” The Denver Post went even farther, referring to the club as the “leading center for polo in the United States.”

Outdoor Polo is played on field of 360 x 160 yards, approximately the size of nine football fields. Each team has four players, who work together to advance a small hard ball with wooden polo mallets into the opposing goal. Players are mounted on fast, agile and even-tempered horses (misleadingly called polo ponies) that may require years of training. Each player has to have a string of at least four ponies, using a fresh mount in each of four “chukkas.”

Polo was an upper class spectator sport – a social occasion for the country club/equestrian set, an excuse for non-players to have fun on a summer afternoon and mingle at post match parties.

In 1920, Spencer Penrose saw polo differently. It wasn’t just a clubby pastime for the idle rich, but a perfect marketing tool for his new Broadmoor Hotel. He paid to renovate the Country Club field, and created two more. One included a grandstand, a place where Broadmoor guests and respectable townspeople could watch matches. He even built an indoor venue on the western side of the Broadmoor Lake, which was ultimately transformed into a hockey and skating arena, the Broadmoor Ice Palace.

Spec’s bet on polo paid off handsomely throughout the 1920’s, and it looked as if polo would be a permanent feature of life in the Pikes Peak Region. But then came the Depression, decimating the fortunes of the polo-playing class and essentially ending polo’s 30-year run at the foot of Pikes Peak.

The party was over…time for golf and tennis.

Generously Submitted by John Hazlehurst, Journalist & Historian

The question of whether to provide water, electricity, and gas through public utilities or through private companies was hotly contested as Colorado Springs grew. A bond proposal to build a municipal water system was rejected by voters in 1875, but a second attempt approved in 1878. From that point on, the city built a vast public water infrastructure system, but gas and electricity services remained in private companies. The Colorado Springs Gas and Coke Company incorporated in 1879 and provided coal gas for heating and streetlights in a plant on West Cucharras Street, later moved to South Conejos Street. Commercial electric service began when the El Paso Electric Light Company organized in 1886 with their first powerhouse on Colorado Avenue between Tejon & Nevada. A second, larger generating plant was erected on the northeast corner of Sahwatch and Cucharras Streets in 1889. This company became the Citizens Light, Heat, and Power Company in 1900, which by 1910 had consolidated light, heat, and electricity and built a new power plant near the Papeton coal mines. In 1905 the city issued a franchise to a hydro-electric power plant in Manitou Springs, with a second built upslope in 1924. Despite these services, the relationship between the city and the privately-owned utility deteriorated as citizens complained of overpriced electricity. In 1923 the franchise lease was up on the Manitou hydro plant, and the call for public ownership of the electric utilities system grew. After serving as Governor, in 1924 businessman Oliver Shoup led opposition to the city purchasing the electric company. The Gazette called the argument put forth by the “socialistic” city council for a public utility “as specious as any document that ever went out from a socialist organization seeking to abolish private enterprise.” Despite this, in 1924 voters approved a municipal utility for gas, electricity, water, and sewer. They passed a $1.25 million bond to expand the electrical system and bought the electric utility in July 1925. A new steam Municipal Power Plant, renamed the Martin Drake Power Plant in 1960, began operation in October, 1925. Coal gas was superseded by natural gas pipelines from Texas, but voters turned down another offer in 1928 to sell its gas infrastructure to Colorado Interstate Gas. In 1939 the city created the Department of Public Utilities. Each year Colorado Springs Utilities pays “contribution in lieu of taxes” to city’s general fund.

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

In 1910 the Oklahoma State Legislature passed a “Grandfather Clause,” disenfranchising black voters. “Grandfather Clauses” stipulated that only men whose grandfathers were eligible to vote could now vote themselves. Along with prohibitive poll taxes, “Grandfather clauses” were routinely used after the Civil War to deny Blacks the right to vote.

A member of the Oklahoma Territorial Convention, Reverend Kimbal Dolphus Stroud voted against the statehood amendment, foreseeing the legalized discrimination that was to come. When Oklahoma legislators enacted a “Grandfather Clause” in 1910, Rev. Stroud, his wife Lulu Magee Stroud and their four children left the state and migrated to Colorado Springs.

The Strouds had been encouraged to come west several years earlier by Mrs. Stroud’s sister, Jennie Mitcheltree. When they they arrived at the train station in Colorado Springs, Mrs. Mitcheltree was not there to meet them. Married to a white man, Light skinned and “passing as white” herself, Mrs. Mitcheltree described how racial attitudes in Colorado Springs had hardened in a few short years and discrimination was now the norm.

As a former school teacher, Baptist minister, law student and politician, Reverend Stroud soon found that his employment options in Colorado Springs were limited by the color of his skin. Local schools did not hire African American teachers and the Post Office did not hire African American clerks or carriers. Instead, the graduate of Langston University took a job loading coal at the Pikeview Coal Mine to support his family.

Kelley “Dolphus” Stroud was a standout athlete and scholar at Bristol Elementary, Colorado Springs High School and Colorado College. He was awarded the prestigious Perkins Scholarship after his sophomore year at C.C., an honor given to one male and one female student with the highest grade point average. He graduated cum laude in 1931 and was the first African American Phi Beta Kappa at Colorado College.

Stroud was also a phenomenal athlete. On March 5, 1928 he broke a twenty-five year old record for the fastest round trip climb of Pikes Peak, accomplishing the feat in three hours and ten minutes. In June of that year he won the 5,000 meter run in the regional track and field trials in Denver. Participants in the race were informed that the winner would be awarded paid transportation and expenses to the national Olympic Trials in Boston.

However, race officials denied the offer to Dolphus, a decision he and his white track coach L.M. Hunt believed was the result of racism. Without a sponsor and with little money in hand, Stroud was determined to reach the Olympic trials on his own. With a golf club as a walking stick and wearing a sign reading Denver to Olympia, Dolphus Stroud walked, ran and hitchhiked the 1,765 miles to Boston. Unfortunately, he soon ran out of money and arrived at Harvard Stadium just six hours before his race. Mentally and physically exhausted, Dolphus was unable to finish the competition. Denied equal access and accommodations — the Olympic dreams of Dolphus Stroud had come to an unfortunate end.

Submitted by Leah Davis Witherow, CSPM Curator of History

One movement for racial tolerance shone a ray of hope for minorities in Colorado Springs during a particularly dark period in the state’s history. The Ku Klux Klan wielded great influence and power in Denver and in state politics in the 1920s. In 1925 Governor Clarence Morley and most Republicans in the both the House of Representatives and Senate answered to the state Grand Dragon, Dr. John Galen Locke. Administrative appointments were made to Klan loyalists and appropriations to most state agencies cut, arousing the ire of two Republican state Senators from El Paso County, Lewis Puffer and David Elliot, who led a fight against Klan-backed legislation.

City leaders woke up after a near-win by Klansmen in municipal elections on April 6, after which a Civic League quickly formed to fight Klan influence in El Paso County (Note that an earlier Civic League existed from 1909 to 1914 that advocated for women’s suffrage and acted as a shadow government to scrutinize elected officials). Thousands of local residents signed on with this movement that spread statewide, and Colorado Springs arose as the leader and home of an anti-Klan rebellion. National Klan leaders came to the state to discuss the problems caused by the anti-Klan movement in Colorado Springs.

Klan leaders in state government vowed to undermine Colorado Springs elected representatives and eliminate any support for the city. The Gazette ran articles and editorialized against this menace, calling it a civic duty to purge government of this threat to democracy. Eventually Klan influence diminished in the state. Although the anti-Klan movement was largely led by business interests worried about the ill-effects on attracting commerce and industry, there were genuine concerns about racial tolerance, social tranquility, the general prosperity, and the very real threat to representative governance. The community stance against the Klan, while largely unknown today, stands as a bright moment in the city’s history.

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

Colorado granted women the right to vote by popular referendum in 1893, a full 27 years before the 19th Amendment in 1920. This achievement is significant but not without controversy. The Colorado Territorial Legislature had an opportunity to grant women suffrage during the state’s constitutional convention in 1876, but they demurred. Instead, they conceded to women voting in local school district elections only. Additionally, they placed a measure on the ballot for voters not legislators to decide on women’s suffrage. With enormous opposition from saloon owners, church leaders and newspapers, the measure was defeated by a 2 to 1 margin.

In the following decades, both male and female suffrage activists across the state continued to advocate the issue. In Colorado Springs, Major Henry McAllister was on the Executive Committee of the state-wide Colorado Women’s Suffrage Society, and Mary Shields, a leader of the Colorado Women’s Christian Temperance Union were tireless. Additionally, Eliza Tupper Wilkes, the first female ordained minister in Colorado and founder of the original Unitarian Congregation in Colorado Springs, was also an outspoken advocate. Newspaper support in Colorado Springs was mixed, dependent on the editor and publisher at the time.

In 1893, another ballot measure was proposed. Colorado along with the rest of the nation was struggling to recover from the greatest economic downturn to date, the Panic of 1893. Across the state banks, businesses and mines were shuttered and thousands were out of work. With $25 dollars in the bank and only 28 members, the Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association organized a grassroots campaign with a powerful strategy. They would win the vote with four Ps: Populism, Press, Pulpit and Prohibition. Two key leaders of this campaign were Elizabeth Piper Ensley, an African-American educator and community leader, and Ellis Meredith, a Denver-based journalist often called the “Susan B. Anthony of Colorado.”

By appealing to laborers out of work, women’s suffrage proponents offered a solution to working-class economic woes by doubling the power of the Populist voice in Colorado. Additionally, suffrage activists sought to outmaneuver alcohol & saloon interests through a quick-moving, ambitious campaign. They also made personal contacts with clergyman and newspaper publishers a priority, seeking assurances that if those in the pulpit and press could not endorse women’s suffrage – they would at least not vocally oppose it. And their work paid off – they received support from approximately 75% of newspapers in Colorado. The Colorado Springs Gazette was a notable exception. The results of the 1893 election were: 35,698 votes in favor of women’s suffrage, 29,461 against.

Submitted by Leah Davis Witherow, CSPM Curator

The Alexander Film Company specialized in producing short advertisement clips shown in movie theaters. Founded by J. Don and Don M. Alexander, the company moved from Englewood, Colorado, to their 260-acre North Nevada Avenue plant in Colorado Springs in 1928.

By the early 1950s, the Alexander Film Company was producing up to 3,000 films annually covering 8,200 different subjects. The company also produced advertising films for 75 of the nation’s leading manufacturers that were shown in theaters. Production facilities in Colorado Springs included a stage capable of housing 32 full size motion picture sets; laboratories for black and white and color film processing; a sound recording department; and an art department capable of creating cartoon animation and other special movie effects.

The company also had its own maintenance and engineering department to repair and design new stage equipment. All company publications were printed in the on-site printing department. It employed 600 people and the annual payroll exceeded $2,500,000. The Alexander Film Company became the world’s largest producer of theater film advertising before its demise in the 1960s. The Alexander Film Company also tried producing advertising films for television but this business venture met little success.

Early on, company engineers developed their own lightweight airplane for sales trips, then began to manufacture this plane, the Alexander Eaglerock. The Alexander Aircraft Company was created in 1924. Sales of the Eaglerock boomed and the firm became the second largest builder of airplanes in the world with 33 distributors and 143 dealers throughout the nation.

When the firm moved to Colorado Springs, the Chamber of Commerce purchased 90 acres of land for an airfield for its use. The airfield operated east of Nevada Avenue and north of Fillmore Street, just south of the Cragmor neighborhood. Designers developed another aircraft called the Bullet, a low-wing monoplane with the first retractable landing gear, but the market crash of 1929 ended demand. The Alexander Aircraft Company filed for bankruptcy in 1932.

Following the death of J. Don Alexander in 1955, the Alexander Film Company was sold numerous times. As financial difficulties worsened, new owners in 1974 announced that all production would cease. While much of the production facilities still exist on North Nevada Avenue, the beautiful mission revival headquarters building was torn down for a parking lot.

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