Garden of the Gods Posted by Senad Rizvanovic on 18:19 4 comments

Garden of the Gods
Colorado Springs
How we got our name...


It was August of 1859 when two surveyors started out from Denver City to begin a townsite, soon to be called Colorado City. While exploring nearby locations, they came upon a beautiful area of sandstone formations. M. S. Beach, who related this incident, suggested that it would be a "capital place for a beer garden" when the country grew up. His companion, Rufus Cable, a "young and poetic man", exclaimed, "Beer Garden! Why it is a fit place for the Gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods." It has been so called ever since.

By the 1870's, the railroads had forged their way west. In 1871, General William Jackson Palmer founded Colorado Springs while extending the lines of his Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. In 1879, General Palmer repeatedly urged his friend, Charles Elliott Perkins, the head of the Burlington Railroad, to establish a home in the Garden of the Gods and to build his railroad from Chicago to Colorado Springs. Although the Burlington never reached Colorado Springs directly, Perkins did purchase two-hundred and forty acres in the Garden of the Gods for a summer home in 1879. He later added to the property but never built on it, preferring to leave his wonderland in its natural state for the enjoyment of the public. Perkins died in 1907 before he made arrangements for the land to become a public park, although it had been open to the public for years. In 1909, Perkins' children, knowing their father's feeling for the Garden of the Gods, conveyed his four-hundred eighty acres to the City of Colorado Springs. It would be known forever as the Garden of the Gods "where it shall remain free to the public, where no intoxicating liquors shall be manufactured, sold, or dispensed, where no building or structure shall be erected except those necessary to properly care for, protect, and maintain the area as a public park."

Dramatic views, towering cliffs, balanced rocks, snowcapped mountains in the distance and more than two million visitors a year. . . A description of one of America’s famous National Parks? It could be, but that description also fits the Garden of the Gods Park, a city park of extraordinary natural beauty.

The role of the Garden of the Gods as a “cultural crossroads” was further expanded as explorers, gold-seekers from the “Pikes Peak or Bust” Gold Rush, railroad builders, entrepreneurs and turn-of-the-century tourists all recounted stories of visiting this beautiful and mysterious area at the foot of Pikes Peak.

Dramatic views, towering cliffs, balanced rocks, snowcapped mountains in the distance and more than two million visitors a year. . . A description of one of America’s famous National Parks? It could be, but that description also fits the Garden of the Gods Park, a city park of extraordinary natural beauty.

Even though Garden of the Gods did not become a National Park, it has been designated as a National Natural Landmark by the Department of the Interior. The Garden is a unique biological melting pot where the grasslands of the Great Plains meet the pinon-juniper woodlands characteristic of the American Southwest, and merge with the mountain forest of the 14,110-foot Pikes Peak.

Awesome climbing! Sandstone, brittle in many areas - watch for loose rock! By lifetime I mean you can climb all over it and never get bored. Many different levels of climbs. Bouldering allowed.