A 1930s Era Colorado Road Trip

My sister Susan and I, along with her dog Blackberry, drove down to Colorado Springs from Denver last week and visited the Garden of the Gods, Manitou Springs, the Broadmoor Hotel, and Cheyenne Mountain. While touring these sites, I thought about a trip my parents, maternal grandparents, and my mother's best friend took there back in (I think) 1938. My Grandfather Spillard did all of the driving from Chicago to Colorado, and my mother Mary told me it was just hellish getting there. There were no interstate highways back then, it was hot as hell, and my grandfather would repeatedly start thinking about something, slow down to a crawl, and then speed up again, making for a long long trip, although they had a good time once they got there. Happily, they took a lot of photographs, one of which is of the Garden of the Gods, and seen in the photo on the left. Since it is black and white, you can not see the deep red color of the rocks, as you can in the photographs I took of them and posted on this blog last Tuesday.

In addition to the Garden of the Gods, they also visited Seven Falls, which has been a privately run tourist attraction since 1885, and not too far from the Broadmoor Hotel, which now owns that attraction and shuttles tourists there from the hotel's parking lot. As the name implies, Seven Falls started out as a scenic natural wonder featuring seven different waterfalls, although over the years, due to floods and other effects of nature, that number has now (I think) been reduced to five. In any case, the photo on the right is of one of those falls, in front of which are, from left to right, my father Nelson, maternal Grandmother Louise, my mother's best friend Peggy, and my mother Mary. My Grandfather Bill Spillard was no doubt taking the photo.

They also drove up to the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun on the top of Cheyenne Mountain, seen in the photograph on the left. From left to right in the photo are once again Peggy, my father, mother, and grandmother. My sister Susan and I could see this monument from the highway, but could not visit it because it is now part of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. You have to buy an admission ticket, and then drive through the zoo to access the road to the top. I have visited this monument several times, and as I recall, did not have to drive through the zoo to see it. I tried to verify this by researching the history of this road on the internet, but could find nothing at all concerning a change in way the monument is accessed. Am I remembering wrong? Has it always been part of the zoo? Have I forgotten that I had to pay an admission fee and drive through the zoo to see this place? Are the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and the City of Colorado Springs trying to rewrite history? Am I going crazy? Don't answer that.