My sister Susan and I, along with her dog Blackberry, drove down to Colorado Springs from Denver this past Sunday, and our first stop was the Garden of the Gods, that city's most popular park. I took the photograph on the left of the start of one of the many trails in the area. The Garden of the Gods is famous for it's very impressive red rock formations. It is said that back in 1859, two surveyors, who helped set up nearby Colorado City, visited the site, and one of them exclaimed that it would make a great beer garden. The other replied that it was a fitting place for the Gods to gather, and they settled on naming it the Garden of the Gods. However, after 163 years, there is still no beer garden located there. Bummer.
An early settler named Charles Elliott Perkins purchased 480 acres in 1879 that included part of the present day Garden of the Gods, and upon his death in 1909, the family gave it to City of Colorado Springs, on the condition it would become a public park. William Jackson Palmer, the founder of Colorado Springs, owned the Rock Ledge Ranch, which included the rest of the site, and it too was donated to the city upon his death. Soon after, the park was established. In addition to the 21 miles of trails, there is a perimeter road that circles the park, as seen in the photograph on the right, which allows people in both cars and on bicycles to enjoy the scenery.
Although I myself have visited the park a number of times, and even our parents and maternal grandparents visited it during a road trip to Colorado back in the late 1930s, this was my sister's first trip there, and she was quite impressed. In fact, she thought the park, directly beneath Pikes Peak, had some of the most spectacular scenery she has ever seen. Which is high praise indeed for a place that doesn't even have a beer garden. I'm just sayin'.
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