Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, and the Air Force Academy — Colorado at Its Most Dramatic
Colorado Springs sits at the foot of Pikes Peak — the 14,115-foot summit that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write 'America the Beautiful' in 1893 — and adjacent to the Garden of the Gods, a National Natural Landmark of red sandstone formations that rises straight from the prairie floor. The Broadmoor resort, opened in 1918, is the longest-running Forbes five-star hotel in the world. The US Air Force Academy is here, its spectacular 1962 chapel — 17 spires of aluminium and glass — is one of the most visited structures in Colorado. Manitou Springs, a Victorian spa town at the base of the Incl…
Colorado Springs was founded in 1871 by General William Jackson Palmer, who planned a resort colony specifically to attract wealthy Eastern and European settlers to the front range of the Rockies. The 1891 gold rush at Cripple Creek, 45 miles to the southwest, flooded the city with mining wealth and produced a Gilded Age building boom that funded the Broadmoor, the Fine Arts Center, and many of the city's grand mansions. Pikes Peak was the first fourteener measured by the US government (in 1806 by Zebulon Pike, who reported it was unclimbable — he was wrong) and the inspiration for the phrase…