Ten years ago, Cripple Creek was a fun, exciting mountain town with a fascinating history from rough-hewn gold miners in the 1890s to cheerful casino visitors in the 21st century. It’s still entertaining and exciting - just more so! A little history: In 1891 a...
Drive west on Colorado Avenue through the historic Westside, and you’ll come to Old Colorado City (OCC for short), a miraculously intact 19th-century commercial district that evaded the wrecker’s ball a few years after the destruction of downtown. Thanks to visionary...
Ten years ago, Downtown Colorado Springs was on the verge of an unprecedented boom, one which would bring thousands of apartments, dozens of businesses and rapid change. Dozens of downtown advocates led by the formidable Susan Edmondson of the Downtown Partnership,...
Want to enjoy Pueblo’s downtown delights in true Colorado style? We have four delightful lodging options that offer unique settings: three historic mansions and one repurposed police station/city jail – all memorable, comfortable, and, most of all, fun. THE DOWNEN...
Downtown Colorado Springs is blessed with many full-service hotels. Without exception, they’re great places to get a drink or dinner, stay for a night or a week or just experience the color, clamor and fun of downtown. Here are four of our favorites, each unique in...
ABRIENDO INN This circa 1906 blond brick four-story mansion is one of the largest and most elaborately detailed Foursquares in Pueblo. It was built for Martin Walter, founder and president of the Walter Brewing Company. The Abriendo Inn offers its guests a choice of...
For much of the 20th century, Pueblo’s economy was driven by railroads and the steelworks of Colorado Fuel & Iron. Pueblo residents loved the strength, diversity and long history of their industrial city. Having survived the Depression, floods and fires, they were...
Long ago, in late April, 1896 two fierce conflagrations burnt the then-shabby city of Cripple Creek to the ground. It may have seemed like an apocalypse, but it turned out to be cleansing and invigorating. As the Cripple Creek Morning Times editorialized a year later,...
Not so long ago, Pueblo was the redheaded stepchild of Colorado’s Front Range cities. For much of the 20th century, the air was polluted by emissions from coal-fired power plants and the massive furnace blasts of Colorado Fuel & Iron and the Arkansas River had the...
Downtown Colorado Springs has seen explosive change in the last several years, creating a new geography that has transformed its built environment. Construction cranes, now year-round residents of our fair city, are creating public buildings that will enhance the city...
When the Colorado Springs City Auditorium opened its doors 100 years ago, its classical revival architecture harmonized beautifully with other grand downtown buildings, such as City Hall, the El Paso County Courthouse (now the Pioneers Museum), the Burns Opera House...
Founded in 1871, Colorado Springs was not the first city to rise at the foot of Pikes Peak. That honor goes to Colorado City, a once-rip roaring town founded in 1859 by four businessmen who hoped to profit from the Colorado gold and silver rush. Remember Pikes Peak or...
How do you get to the summit of Pikes Peak? You can walk, run, bike, ride, drive, ski, snowshoe, take the cog railway, jeep or bus tour, or even crawl up a trail pushing a peanut with your nose. In any case, it’s steep, exhilarating and often challenging. The first...
EL PUEBLO HISTORY MUSEUM Located downtown at 302 S. Union Ave., is a museum whose building is a recreation of the 1842 El Pueblo trading post which originally occupied this site. Archeologists first pinpointed the site in 1989, and the city partnered with the Colorado...
In 1890, the site of Cripple Creek was just rolling ranchland on the backside of Pikes Peak. Long inhabited by the Utes, the United States government had formally dispossessed them of their ancestral lands and forced them into reservations hundreds of miles to the...
The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center is the brainchild of executive director Darlene Kobobel, who cautiously adopted a wolf-dog hybrid in 1993. Â Chinook, a two-year old female hybrid, had been scheduled for euthanasia in a local shelter. Kobobel quickly became aware...
When Katharine Lee Bates wrote about her visit in 1891 to Pikes Peak, she marveled at the spacious skies, amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties. Had she scrambled over the summit boulder field and looked west, she might have added a verse about the...
The Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort is a family-owned, vintage hotel with a western theme. Located on a designated bike route connecting Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, the spacious cyclist-friendly establishment is close to multiple hiking/ biking/climbing venues...
At the beginning of the Pandemic in 2020, longtime Terra Verde employees (and Colorado Springs natives) Carrie Hibbard and Leah Riehl bought the iconic downtown women’s boutique from owner/founder Chris Sonderman. For Hibbard, it was a particularly poignant and proud...
One of the easiest, most interesting, and least stressful ways to experience the Pikes Peak Region is to ring “The Peak” by car. There are multiple routes, takeoff points, and degrees of difficulty. The Region doesn’t have specific boundaries — you’re in it if you can...
For many cities and regions, the seemingly endless months of the late and unlamented pandemic meant quiet streets, paused projects, deserted downtowns and dreary Zoom meetings. We had all but one of those in Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak Region, where...
It's 7:45 on a warm Saturday morning. We’re walking our dogs through Old Colorado City. Most of the stores are closed, but the 130-year-old commercial district is coming to life. At Carnelian Coffee half a dozen customers enjoy the sunlight streaming through the...
Strolling down Madison Avenue decades ago, I had an interesting interaction with a mega- snooty Manhattan gallery. An interesting painting caught my eye as I walked by the upscale business, so I tried to walk in and check it out. The door was locked, so I knocked and...
There are wolves, dogs, and wolf/dog hybrids – so what’s the difference? There are multiple answers to that simple question; one that has engaged dog lovers, wolf advocates and animal behaviorists for many decades. The domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) may have...
Cripple Creek, Colorado May 14, 2020.On this warm spring day, Colorado Highway 67--the twisty two-lane mountain road that winds between Divide and Cripple Creek--is deserted, except for a couple of cyclists. It reminds us of the days, 30 years ago, before casino...
There are thousands of trails, parks and recreation areas scattered throughout the Pikes Peak region. After eight decades climbing and hiking throughout this magnificent state, here are ten local favorites, ranging from a world-renowned city park to obscure getaways....
The first stake of the city of Colorado Springs was driven on Monday, July 31, 1871. The city’s founder, General William Palmer, was not present. His close associate, General James Cameron, represented him at the ceremony. The latter was something of a...
Olympic City USA will expand past the city core to showcase the world’s great athletes. Now slated to open in early 2020, well before the beginning of the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games on July 24, the $75 million United States Olympic Museum has been touted as a game...
Formally incorporated in 1870, Pueblo has long been a center of commerce. Native Americans settled near the confluence of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River, followed by Hispanic and European immigrants in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Until the end of the...
On sunny summer mornings in Colorado, it’s common to witness a steady stream of cars as they make their escape from larger cities. These mountain migrants are on the hunt for cool air, sparkling vistas, snowcapped peaks, and wildflowers in bloom — a fun day and a...
The Pikes Peak region attracts visitors from around the world, so it’s not surprising then that the region has a rich selection of historic hotels. Some are in their original buildings, some in repurposed historic buildings, and others have endured fire, demolition,...
The Pikes Peak Region is home to thousands of competent artists, working in every conceivable medium. Many exhibit at local galleries, with varying degrees of success. Most have other jobs, but a few are so persistent, talented, and inventive that art is their sole...
It’s scarcely news that the greater Pikes Peak region is home to scores of beautiful historic and contemporary neighborhoods. Visitors are often first drawn here by the region’s extraordinary recreational and scenic amenities and then think about living here. If such...
Neon signs have intrigued Pueblo native Joe Koncilja since his boyhood when neon signs lined business thoroughfares in cities large and small throughout the Pikes Peak region. Such signage fell slowly out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s as urban planners and...
If you haven’t smoked weed since high school or college you’ll find that a lot has changed since then. Remember that old song that from Easy Rider— “Don’t Bogart that joint, my friend/Pass it over to me?” Burst out in song at the dispensary, and no one will understand...
As cities and towns gentrify, they often become safer, cleaner, and more diverse while offering more dining options, but those dining options tend to be more expensive and oriented toward millennials. What happens to good, old-fashioned neighborhood bars? In some...
