USA > Colorado > History of the State of Colorado, Volume III > Part 33
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The first white inhabitant in El Paso County was Jimmy Hayes, from whom Jimmy's Camp takes its name. Here in 1833, Jimmy established himself as trader. A small and lonely cabin was Jimmy's, on the bank of a river of sand. A grove of cotton- wood fringed its edges, and in their branches the eagles built nests undisturbed. A spring supplied Jimmy with water, and his grain was ground between two mealing stones-Indian fashion. The Indians would not harm Jimmy, for when they saw from afar his bonfire, they knew it meant beads, axes, arms, and fire water! Once a year Jimmy departed with his pelts, collected from Indian customers, and toiled across the plains, returning with fresh supplies.
One night eleven wandering Mexicans came to Jimmy's cabin. They saw pros- pective booty and murdered him, his body falling across the bloodstained threshold.
2 White feldspar.
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When a party of Indians came to the post their rage and grief knew no bounds. The link binding to civilization and whiskey had been severed. They interred Jimmy within his cabin walls below the earthen floor. Stealthily they dogged the Mexicans' trail, till, as the latter were one night slumbering beneath a cottonwood, the avengers pounced upon them, and the eleven were hung to as many limbs of the big tree. So perished the first white man who had a home in El Paso.
A Kansas party of 1858 camped on the rivulet east of the Garden of the Gods, which has since been known as "Camp Creek." Their camp was submerged in a flood, when they took refuge in the cave at the gateway. Here the curious may find their names scratched on the rock, also the blackened traces of their campfire.
Certain of these searchers arrived from Kansas in July, 1858, under the leadership of John Tierney. Certain stragglers in their wake, under command of O'Donnell, mapped out on paper the magnificent town of El Paso. It never existed off the map, but it should have covered the town site of Colorado Springs. The sole actuality at the time was one log cabin, a number of tents, and some wagons collected near the Monument, on the present site of Roswell, and then called Red Rock Ranch. The tents and wagons eventually drifted over to Colorado City. William Parsons, one of these Kansas pioneers, returning there in the autumn, had much to tell of plains, peaks, climate, mines, etc., and his glowing narratives sent fresh recruits to El Paso. Many lots in the visionary town were sold even before they were platted. In the mean- time another enterprise was being organized, and Colorado City, the first actual town of El Paso, was surveyed. This township occupied a tract one mile wide and two miles long, extending from the neighborhood of Camp Creek toward the Monument. The men prominently connected with the inception of the new city were S. W. Waggoner, L. J. Winchester, R. E. Whitsitt, M. S. Beach, W. P. McClure, Lewis N. Tappan, T. H. Warren and E. P. Stout. In the earliest recorded deed of El Paso County, the Colo- rado City Company claims 1,280 acres as a town site, dated August 13th, 1859.
Colorado City sprang into being on the Ist of November, 1859. In less than one year it contained three hundred dwellings, and all the stream margins, cañons and springs in the neighborhood bristled with stakes of locators and homeseekers. Messrs. William Campbell, Hubbell Talcott, and John Bley built cabins along the Fontaine, and first turned its waters to the aid of the farmers-the beginning of those "water rights" now so highly prized. Claims, however, could not be legally held in the then unsettled state of the Pike's Peak region, and a primitive and local attempt at government was made in the El Paso Claim Club. It had its president, secretary, etc., a district re- corder (H. T. Burghardt), and was empowered to empanel jurors in cases of dispute or crime. There were, as in all frontier settlements, occasional appeals to Judge Lynch, but on the whole, law, order and decency were respected in El Paso.
The Rev. Mr. Howbert, coming into Colorado City to preach one Sunday, found a culprit about to suffer death for horse stealing. His doom had been decided by vote, every man in favor of death standing on a certain spot of ground, those inclined to mercy on another. A solid phalanx lined the guilty side, while that devoted to clemency was empty space. Here Mr. Howbert ensconced himself, begging his hearers not to break the law. "At least," he said, "hear me preach before you commit this illegal deed." "Oh, no," exclaimed a choice spirit, who voiced the crowd, "business
John Wolke
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before pleasure. We'll hang the man first and hear you afterward," which they did. When the Territory of Colorado had been duly organized by Congress and Governor Gilpin duly installed in 1861, El Paso County was recognized as an established fact, becoming one of the original seventeen counties of Colorado. Governor Gilpin had appointed M. S. Beach, Henry S. Clark and A. B. Sprague as commissioners to appoint precincts and arrange for the election of commissioners. November 16th, 1861, B. F. Crowell, A. B. Sprague and John Bley were elected county commissioners, and pro- ceeded with the county organization. George A. Bute was the first clerk.
Colorado City was later declared the Territorial capital of Colorado, and the old frame council building is still standing in the town in a state of serene dilapidation. Tradition says the primitive law-makers met in one of its three rooms for official busi- ness, slept in the second, and kept a bar in the third. In serious remembrance, how- ever, these men are recalled as earnest, practical law-makers, to whom is due the grate- ful recognition of those coming after. They were the first to evolve order out of chaos, and law out of license.
The civil war had rendered the Arkansas or southern "trail" to Colorado unsafe for emigrants, as the border country was infested by bands of raiders and guerillas, so by the South Platte route immigration flowed northward, and business and enterprise were focused in the neighborhood of Denver. As a facetious pioneer of Denver put it in discussing the capital question: "Denver had more wagons and more mules and most whiskey, and so we carried the day."
El Paso contributed her quota to the Union side in the civil war, in the First Colo- rado Battery which was recruited in Colorado City, and served in Missouri. The offi- cers were: Captain, S. W. Waggoner (the first judge elected in Denver); First Lieu- tenant Ayres, and Second Lieutenant Spencer. Some fifty or sixty men from Denver, desirous to ally themselves with the Southern cause, crept southward, and supplying themselves with horses from El Paso, continued their flight along the Arkansas. They were eventually captured and brought back.
The capital gone, El Paso withdrew in itself. In 1862 provisions were scarce, famine seemed imminent, and more than one unsuccessful miner sought to harvest golden grain, vegetable in lieu of mineral. In 1863 when surveys were made and farm- ers began to feel sure of plentiful water supply, and unassailable boundaries, agriculture became the important interest, and great tracts of land were cultivated. Between this period and 1868 three flouring mills were in active operation.
In November, 1863, the First Colorado Regiment, returning victorious from New Mexico encamped at Colorado City, and the slight stimulus afforded by the presence of these soldiers, their purchases of food, forage and horses, brought a semblance of renewed activity to the young settlement.
The plains Indians, whose near and nearer approaches caused a feeling of inse- curity in all the Colorado settlements, were frequently seen hovering about the settlers' homes, and in order to intimidate the savages, a party of ten volunteers surprised certain Arapahoes prowling near the Monument, took their weapons and ponies, and carried them away prisoners. In the darkness of the return march the Indians slipped away and made their escape, deprived, however, of all that which had made them formi-
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dable. A volley was fired in the direction of their retreat, which, according to the sub- sequent testimony of a squaw, left none of them unwounded.
In 1864 a party of Indians stampeded the horses of a company of soldiers en . camped on the Santa Fé trail. The crops of that year were harvested under the pro- tection of armed men. Company G, mounted guards of the Third Colorado Regiment, under command of Captain O. H. P. Baxter, were sent out to bear their part in the battle of Sand Creek.
In addition to Indian alarms, the year 1864 witnessed a terrific cloud burst on Cheyenne Creek, the Monument, etc. Thirteen persons perished in the wave, and much property was destroyed, A steamboat might have plied in the waters of Sand Creek.
The year 1865 was "grasshopper year." The scourge is dreadful enough in nat- urally fertile districts, but here where the "stubborn glebe" had just yielded its harvests after months of assiduous toil and irrigation,-harvests valued in proportion to the difficulty of cultivation,-the calamity was dire indeed.
Such was the public depression experienced after the inroads of the grasshopper, that work on the Ute Pass road was suspended. The earliest colonists had felt the import- ance of a highway between the mining and producing districts, and a road had been opened for wagons along the Utes' trail as early as 1860. The pioneers gave their time and strength to the work, and later about $10,000 was expended in improvements on this road.
In 1868 occurred the most serious Indian outbreak in the annals of the county. About eighty Cheyennes and Arapahoes bearing credentials as friendly Indians appeared in the county, and began to make their presence felt by the murder of some Utes in the mountains. Sheltering themselves in the pine woods, they crept back toward the settlement and began operations by stampeding a hundred or so of horses belonging to Mr. Teachout of Edgerton. The whites at scattered points flocked to the settlements for safety, and a stockade fort left standing since the alarm in 1864, was strengthened and repaired. A party of local scouts consisting of less than fifty men, were surrounded by some five hundred Indians. The whites defended themselves on a mound where they threw up hasty earthworks. This was not far from Bijou Basin, where, on Fremont's Peak, Fremont had in former years been similarly surrounded, and like him, these were without water. "Texas Bill" bravely volunteered to ride through the enemy's lines to summon aid, and succeeded in escaping, though pursued by innum- erable bullets. The hostiles, aware that help was coming, grew uneasy and departed hastily, just in time to escape a scouting party from Denver.
Not again did the Indians meet the El Paso pioneers in open combat. The red men continued to hover in the vicinity of Colorado City through the month of Sep- tember, and watched their opportunity to drive off stock and kill the defenseless. Charles Everhart and the two Robbins boys were killed and scalped-the last before their mother's eyes. Almost a victim was Judge Baldwin, who had left his scalp with other savages in South America. The old gentleman defended himself valiantly, dealing vigorous blows with his boot, which he had drawn over his right arm. The Indian seized him by his remaining hairs, the knife was lifted-but the scalp was already gone! After his two bouts with bloodthirsty Indians Judge Baldwin eventually
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met his death by accidental drowning in a well. The murders were all committed on the mesa which has since become the site of Colorado Springs. On the Divide the victims were more numerous, much stock was driven off, and a fine farmhouse (that of Mr. Walker) was burned, including his stores and valuables. During the summer about twenty people were killed in El Paso, and five hundred cattle were driven off. So far as known, not an Indian perished. The settlers were not provided with long range rifles as were the Indians.
As cool weather warned the Indians to establish winter quarters, the people crept back to their deserted homes, overgrown gardens and rotting grain fields, and the phantoms of danger faded away. This was the last Indian raid of note, though the region was visited by hunting parties for years. As late as 1878 a large number of Utes made their summer encampment in the Garden of the Gods,-their last appearance in El Paso County.
Colorado Springs .- It was the shining steel magnet of a railroad which eventually drew prosperity to El Paso County. A partial account of the inception and building of the pioneer railway is to be found in the first volume of this history, and its completion in the current volume. In company with ex-Governor Hunt and another friend, Gen- eral Palmer rode down from Denver to inspect the country south of the "Divide," that he might select a site for a new colony to be founded on the line of his projected rail- way. Ex-Governor Hunt, familiar with the region, had proposed the stream-bounded mesa, south of the "Divide," sloping gently to the south from a line of yellow, pine- clothed bluffs to the Fontaine. But as snow-capped mountain-spur, sparkling streams and fantastic bluffs came into near view, in the still blue clearness of a Colorado autumn day, our pioneers were chagrined to find the tableland blackened over with the devas- tation a prairie fire leaves in its wake. This temporary disfigurement could not veil the many advantages presented by this town site, and it was definitely decided that a new city should nestle at the foot of Pike's great "Mexican Mountain." A number of Philadelphians had substantially aided the new enterprise with subscriptions and pur- chases of stock, and to this were added large investments of foreign capital, obtained through an, English friend and fellow explorer of General Palmer's. Next in order to the incorporation of the railway company, came that of the Mountain Base Investment Company-later and better known as the National Land & Improvement Company. This company purchased ten thousand acres of land in El Paso County, on the Monu- ment, and five hundred villa sites on the Fontaine. Some of this land was bought from the government at a dollar and a quarter per acre, and the remainder from settlers who had already pre-empted it. These purchases were intended to include all the valuable mineral and agricultural lands of this vicinity, and those suitable for town sites along the proposed railroad, all mineral springs, etc.
A Colorado Springs Company was organized in May, 1871, which purchased these lands, and a sub-organization, the "Fountain Colony of Colorado" came before the public with a prospectus, its officers as follows: (President not selected); vice-presi- dent, General Robert A. Cameron; secretary, William E. Pabor; treasurer, William P. Mellen; assistant treasurer, Maurice Kingsley; chief engineer, E. S. Nettleton. The trustees were General Wm. J. Palmer, Dr. Robert H. Lamborn, Josiah C. Reiff, General R. A. Cameron, Colonel W. H. Greenwood, and William P. Mellen. The following
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selections from the first circular of the Fountain Colony will give an idea of its regula- tions, aims and resources: "By arrangements with the Colorado Springs Company, the Fountain Colony is to have two-thirds of all the town lots and lands owned by said company; also two-thirds of all the villa sites on four hundred and eighty acres about the famous mineral springs, with the exception of one hundred acres, reserved for the springs proper. A town is being laid out in the center of the larger tract, under the name of Colorado Springs, which will be the present terminus of the Denver & Rio Grande Railway. The town will be subdivided into business and residence lots, varying in price from fifty to one hundred dollars. The adjoining lands next to the town will be cut into small subdivisions for gardening and fruit growing, at an average price of two hundred dollars for each tract. The profits arising from the sale of lots and small sub- divisions of land, will be devoted exclusively to general and public improvements, such as building irrigating canals, ornamenting public parks, improving streets, building bridges, erecting a town hall and schoolhouses, construction of roads to mountain scenery, with the payment of surveying and necessary current expenses.
"Any person may become a member of the Fountain Colony of Colorado, who is possessed of a good moral character and is of strict temperance habits, by the payment to the treasurer or assistant treasurer of one hundred dollars, which will be credited to him in the selection of such lots and lands as he may desire.
"As fast as the lands are surveyed, one-fourth of the lots and lands will be opened for selection by members actually on the ground. A second fourth will be open for a drawing on the first Tuesday in September, 1871; the third fourth at a drawing on the first Tuesday in March, 1872; and the remainder to be open for a drawing on the first Tuesday in May, 1872: Provided no selections shall be made except by persons actually present. Each certificate of membership will entitle the holder to select either a business and residence lot, or a residence lot and a piece of outlying gardening or farming land under the colony canals; or, in lieu of the above named selections, a villa site at La Font, in the immediate neighborhood of the Springs.
"Within four months from the date of selection every member will be obliged to make such improvements, on some portion of his land, as his means will justify, such improvements to be satisfactory to the board of trustees, or an executive council here- after to be chosen from among the members of the colony. If such improvements are not made at the expiration of four months, the locations will be considered abandoned; but the member may have the privilege of making a new location, subject to the same conditions as before; and if on the third location, at the end of a year from the first location said member makes no improvements, his or her money will be returned, with- out interest, if demanded." Then follows a general account of the resources and advantages of the country.
At the foot of Nineteenth street, Denver, July 27th, 1871, the first rails of the Denver & Rio Grande Road were laid. By the 21st of October the seventy-six miles of track between Denver and Colorado Springs had been completed, and the first narrow gauge train swept into Colorado Springs, three months after the first town' stake was driven (July 31st, 1871), in a piece of ground now occupied by the Antler's Annex. The town an established fact, no pains were spared to make it attractive and prosperons.
Colorado Springs occupies the center of an amphitheater of mountain and mesa,
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pine and plain, six thousand feet above the level of the sea. The town proper was laid out in rectangular shape on the line of Monument Creek, one and a half miles long and about one-half mile wide. Avenues of one hundred and forty feet in width alter- nate with streets one hundred feet wide, sidewalks sixteen feet wide. Visitors jokingly declare they "feel lost upon a boundless prairie" when crossing the streets. The lots were subdivided into business lots 25x190 feet and residence lots 50x190, 100X190, 200X190, according to the distance from the center of the town. Forty-eight blocks 400 feet square were first laid out, and thirty-two additional blocks were laid out two months later, making seventy blocks in the town proper.
Seven thousand cottonwood trees were bought by the founders at a cost of $15,000, and were planted along the streets twenty-five feet apart. A canal six miles long was dug, bringing water from the Fontaine to the northern limit of the town, and in narrow channels this supply flowed along both sides of each street. Miles of these ditches ramify the town and cost nearly $50,000. An experimental garden was laid out (now the hotel Antler's Park) to test the agricultural possibilities of the place; and in the first five years $272,000 were expended upon the site by the colony company. In an early number of "Out West" may be found a "Special Request" from the colony company begging that "straw, papers and shavings may be burned and not allowed to collect in the acequias, also that no one shall 'hitch' horses to trees, and above all that tin cans shall be buried in pits dug for the purpose." That the last request was not heeded we know from ocular demonstration, for one ingenious settler flattened out the tins, and covered his house with them, roof and sides. It formerly glittered in the steady sun- shine near the Denver & Rio Grande depot.
The church and the school early took precedence over other institutions. Land was donated to each Christian denomination, and gifts of money were added. When it was proposed to issue $20,000 in bonds for the purpose of erecting a public school- house, there were ninety-eight affirmative votes and but one negative.
From the foregoing facts it will be seen how Colorado Springs in three respects differed from the typical frontier town. First it offered inducements to persons of high moral status, in lieu of the riff-raff, the disreputable camp followers who straggle after the army of pioneers. Secondly, its prohibition clauses were stringent, while the usual new camp has its saloon before it is fairly surveyed. Thirdly, it was not compelled to wait in embryo till the railway came to develop it, but was the creation of the road, and expanded as the latter grew. Such have been important factors in the unparalleled development of Colorado Springs .*
"Happy," says the proverb, "is the nation which has no history." The annals of Colorado Springs' nineteen years of existence are "short and simple," though they could scarcely be called "of the poor." In fact, they teem with statistics of steady growth and material prosperity. But from the very character of the settlement the "blood and thunder " incidents which light the lurid pages of dime novels said to portray frontier life-are conspicuously absent.
In 1871 an Episcopal Church was organized in Colorado Springs. The first relig- ious service held in the town was in "Foote's Building" on the southeast corner of Huer-
*See Vol. I of Ilistory, pages 523-525.
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fano street and Cascade avenue. The place had no resident pastor then, nor for some time afterward, and Rev. J. E. Edwards, rector of the Pueblo Church, conducted the initial services.
July 31st, 1871, the first frame house in Colorado Springs was begun by James P. True. Governor Alva Adams built a house in August of this year. At Christmas of this year there were but few women in the colony; among whom are remembered Mrs. Giltner, Mrs. Palmer and Miss Rosa Kingsley, daughter of Canon Charles Kingsley, who with her brother Maurice occupied a flimsy board shanty during this exceptionally cold winter. It is from Miss Kingsley, the first woman to ascend it, that Monte Rosa derives its name.
In August, 1872, Capt. M. L. DeCoursey erected the structure commonly called the "Gazette" building. It was the office of "Out West," the pioneer weekly. An addition to its height made it the first two-story building in town, and the upper hall might be called the first public center of the city. The Episcopalians held their services there, and the editor of "Out West, " J. E. Liller, an accomplished Englishman, after his journalistic labors of six days were ended, was often called upon to officiate the seventh day as lay reader. This hall was used as a meeting place for an early historical society, as a free reading room, and for the debates of the local lyceum, such as the trial of Judge Conklin for being "found sober." As participant in these last, it is said Hon. Alva Adams learned and practiced that fluent speech which eventually placed him in the governor's chair. This hall was courthouse and also schoolroom, and drill room for the Pike's Peak rangers. (Mrs. General Palmer inter- ested herself in establishing the first school in Colorado Springs and taught and sup- ported it in its first feeble session). License advocates and prohibitionists held their meetings in this same structure, and plotted one against the other at rival sessions. Here the fire department (Volunteer Fire Company No. 1) was organized, and the first town officers were nominated.
In 1877 the El Paso club leased the old public hall, but in a year the "Gazette" which had succeeded "Out West" in 1873, and had become a daily, took possession of the entire building. In September of 1872, at a meeting of the El Paso County com- missioners, Colorado Springs was incorporated as a town, with the following board of trustees: W. B. Young, Edward Copley, John Potter, R. A. Cameron and Matt France.
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