Garden Of The Gods And Manitou Springs - Tourist Destinations Since The 1870s

My sister Susan and I headed down to Colorado Springs from Denver this past Wednesday to revisit both the Garden of the Gods and Manitou Springs.  Unlike most of the other frontier towns in Colorado, both Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs were established to be vacation destinations. William Jackson Palmer and his business partner, William Abraham Bell, founded Colorado Springs in 1871 and Manitou Springs in 1872. Later on, Palmer and his friend Charles Elliot Perkins left their ranches, which became the Garden of the Gods, to the City of Colorado Springs, on the condition they became a free park, which it still is. The entrance to the park can be seen in the photograph on the left.

When you drive through the Garden of the Gods, you can either stop at various parking lots along the way and hike along the trails or simply keep driving until you exit the park, which soon leads to Manitou Springs. At first, the big draw was the "healing waters" from the mineral springs that the Ute Indians had been drinking from for years. The big attraction these days are all the 19th Century commercial and residential buildings sitting right at the foot of Pike's Peak. Also, if you drive out of the downtown area and head up the road seen in the photograph on the right, you will reach the depot for the Manitou and Pike's Peak Cog Railroad, which takes visitors to the top of Pike's Peak, at an altitude of 14,115 feet.

Another big attraction in Manitou Springs is Miramont Castle, which was built in 1895 as a private home for John Baptist Francolon, a French born Catholic priest. It is now a museum and can be seen in the background of the photograph on the left. He immigrated to the United States in 1878 after being recruited by Bishop Lamy of Santa Fe to serve as an assistant priest. He returned to France for health reasons but came back to the US and settled in Manitou Springs to restore his failing health. That is the official story, anyway. The unofficial story was featured in the Denver Gazette, which said that Francolon was actually poisoned as he sipped from a chalice during Mass by Spanish priests he was feuding with, and left New Mexico for Manitou Springs in hopes of restoring his health. Evidently, he was not liked very well in Manitou, either, and escaped from there to avoid a lynch mob, never to return again. Sounds like a lot of drama for such a small town. It seems much quieter now. Probably for the best.