Colorado Springs, Colorado

Learning about where I'm working this week

Colorado Springs is the second most populous city in Colorado, and the 40th-most-populous in the United States.1 It’s home to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Olympic Training Centers.2

Through the 1700’s, the Spanish and French settled in the area before President Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of Louisana Teritory in 1809. The city, itself, was founded in the 1870’s. In less than 30 years, the population grew “overnight” with more than 50,000 people colonizing the area, rushing for gold and spa resorts.3

Before it was “discovered,” settled, and colonized by the Europeans and new Americans, was the home to the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes. They lived at the base of Ta-Wa-Ah-Gath, the Ute Tribe’s name for Pike’s Peak, now named Pikes Peak after it was “discovered” by a government sanctioned Explorer, Zebulon Pike.

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Pikes Peak is the highest summit of the Front range of the Rocky Mountains in North America, in the Garden of Gods Park. It became the inspiration for Katharine Lee Bates’ poem—eventual song—America the Beautiful, in 1893:4

O beautiful for spacious skies,
   For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
   Above the fruited plain!
      America!  America!
   God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
   From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
   Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
   Across the wilderness!
      America! America!
   God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
   Thy liberty in law!

There’s plenty more to learn about the city itself, and as I’m heere throughout the week, I may continue on this learning & writing path. Evidently, Nikolas Tesla built a laboratory nearby in 1899, used unil 1901, and torn down in 1904 to pay off his debts!5

There’s lots of interesting history, shops, and things to do around the area. Plenty to write about while trying out a different sort of writing.

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