Hub Articles

FINDING CLUES IN COLORADO CITY HISTORY MYSTERY

2016-05-28T10:53:14-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, August 7, 2008

FINDING CLUES IN COLORADO CITY

HISTORY MYSTERY

Antique Store Yields Interesting West-Side Story

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

It is rare to ﬁnd anything really old marked, “Colorado City.” So it was a pleasure for me to spot in the now-closed Villagers Antique store years ago, and purchase, a rare old glass paperweight with pictures visible through the glass. It was dated 1901 — over a century ago. It also contained two mysteries. The paperweight shows side-by-side pictures with very faint, tiny handwriting at the bottom. It took a strong light and a jeweler’s loupe to decipher the, words through the thick and distorting glass. One picture is of a man in a black coat, vest, and white bow tie. The words beneath it say “Lester Hazlett a.m. PhD Pastor.” Under the other picture are the words in tiny print “First Church M. E. Colorado City 1901.” But the picture of the old church, complete with pointed steeple, at ﬁrst glance looks like a dead ringer for our History Society Building a block away! Our building was the First Baptist Church of Colorado City, built in 1889. The architecture is nearly identical, with a similar original steeple, square bell tower at the entrance, peaked roof lines, and arched windows.

Was the picture in the paperweight the same church? The Polk City Directories of 1900-1903 in our library cleared up the ﬁrst mystery. A Lester Hazlett was indeed the pastor of the First Methodist Church (M.E.) in 1901. The Methodist church was on the “NE. Corner of 3rd and Lincoln,” which is the corner of 23rd and West Pikes Peak today. That address would be 2232 West Pikes Peak today. It was one block away from our History Center building at the turn of the century! Identical churches! We always knew that the history-conscious Methodists still have the very old, small, pump organ that was in the old church. It's a beautiful piece of furniture.

Lincoln Avenue, one block north of Colorado Avenue (before it was changed to Pikes Peak Avenue after annexation in 1917), was “Church Row” with a church on every corner for many blocks. The churches and their out- spoken preachers offset “Sin Row" one block south of Colorado Avenue along Cucharras Street. The buildings on Pikes Peak Avenue are the remains of the titanic battles between the Wets and the Drys, the saloon keepers versus the church ministers, the madams versus the Women’s Christian Temperance Union ladies.

It sparked an intense morality war for over 50 years, until the good guys won and the saloons and brothels had to shut down in 1913. The two churches just one block apart looked so nearly identical I wondered if any hungover parishioners wandered into the wrong church on Sundays, when Saloon Row was at, its 1910 height, and north side “gentlemen” snuck through the tunnels to the southside. I've included pictures of all these buildings with this hub article (See the Old Colorado City online hub).

Further research revealed the First Methodist Church of Colorado City was organized in 1861 by the Reverend William Howbert, father of the famous Irving Howbert. That congregation ﬁrst met on south 25th Street today, then on Colorado Avenue in the 2500 block. Then, this steepled First Methodist Church of Colorado City in the picture in the paperweight was built for $11,000 in 1901 on that Lincoln Street corner. Many famous Colorado City pastors stood at its pulpit, with Howbert and Father Dyer — the Itinerant “Shoe Shoe Preacher" — among them. ,

Pioneer Henry Templeton came to Colorado City in 1862 and built the huge Templeton Building on Colorado Avenue across from Meadow Mufﬁns in 1891. He and his wife were very prominent members of the Church. The rare I901 paperweight was purchased by Hughes at the now-closed Villagers Antique store in Old Colorado City.

The Methodists were conscious enough of their history, many items that were in the original church were moved to the new church. The original pump organ, and two Cornerstones are there and visible to the congregation. Right next to the original church and part of the same property — not in the picture on the paperweight — still stands the much larger, auxiliary church building, that was, until recently the meeting halls.

Templeton supported enormously ﬁnancially and otherwise for 54 years until he died in 1914. But what happened to the old church? It’s a parking lot now! The Methodists — named “Trinity Methodist” after annexation — sold their two—building property in 1960 to the Odd Fellows fraternal society. The Odd Fellows tore down the historic 1901 church in 1962 to make a parking lot for their Lodge next door. The Methodists had moved to a much larger new church on north 20th Street which still exists. And the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) Lodge bought the old two church buildings. The new Methodist Church was built in 1941 as the Methodist congregation grew and they needed more room for church activities. For 40 years that building left behind was used by the Odd Fellows for their society meetings, and increasingly it was provided for westside community events.

At Thanksgiving, big charity “community” Dinners were held right up to 2003. Many poor west-side families greatfully ate there. When I ﬁrst started studying the history of the west side in 1975, I clearly remember that the ONLY sign on all the west side that had the words “Colorado City” on it ANY WHERE was a big wooden sign on the front of that building, announcing the “Colorado City Odd Fellows: Founded 1889”! That use by the Odd Fellows lasted until their members got too old to handle the building, so in 2003 they merged with an east-side Odd Fellows Lodge, and sold their large building. The remaining structure was converted into a 'dance studio, which closed about three years ago, sold again, then was made into the current a mix of small businesses such as hair salons, and living apartments. With the address 2228 West Pikes Peak Avenue on the door.

That corner has a lot of history and memories, and they were all discovered because of that rare and valuable paperweight.

THE SNOWSHOE ITINERANT PREACHER

2016-05-28T10:49:28-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, August 21, 2008

THE SNOWSHOE ITINERANT

PREACHER

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Those of us who live comfortable lives in Colorado, zip through the mountains on paved roads to go ﬁshing, hiking, or sightseeing, complain about the price of gas, trot up Pikes Peak on Barr Trail just for weekend kicks, expect helicopters will rescue us if we so much as sprain an ankle, and use cell - phones and satellite corrected compasses so we can’t get lost and die of exposure. We can’t imagine how really tough life was in those same mountains in the 1860s around the site of Father Dyer’s Mountain home in Buckskin Joe. How about leaving your modern down parkas and insulated thermos bottles, thermal underwear and cleated waterproof boots behind? Then step off in February through ﬁve feet of snow covering the trail over Mosquito Pass wearing a cotton cap and a threadbare wool coat, no socks, leather boots, and you just might appreciate how middle aged Father Dyer, the Snowshoe Itinerant, lived and came close to dying from exposure many times just to deliver the word of God and the Mail to discouraged, broke, isolated and armed men thousands of miles from their homes and families back in “the States.”

Now I grew up with the romantisized tales of Father Dyer the Itinerant Methodist Preacher, who travelled the Rockies wearing snow shoes — modiﬁed Norwegian skis actually — which of course we knew lay lightly atop the pretty powder snow, and was warmly welcomed into the mountain cabins and tiny mining camps after hours of trekking utterly alone, and then preached to those eager to listen. Right? How about being robbed by thugs while he slept, falling through the ice from log bridges on the invisible trail at 2 o’clock in the morning getting soaked to the hips with the temperature plummeting, stepping out of the skis to adjust them and sinking ﬁve feet through the snow that was 10 feet deep in places, getting caught in a blizzards with ferocious winds whipping his exposed ﬂesh, trying to help a helpless self—pitying tenderfoot with hyporthermia lying down in the snow to die six miles from any possible shelter, then resisting being forced to move, endangering both of them, ducking the rampaging Espinoza murderers who just killed anyone they met on the trail.

Finally having unsociable men turn him away from shelter in their cabins during night blizzards even knowing he was a man of the cloth. And, while the Civil War was reaching into the Rockies, he had to evade the Southern—sympathy Reynolds gang members around Hamilton who never could decide whether they should behave more as Confederate soldiers or just robbing thugs. Who, after killing and robbing and allegedly burying their loot, were rounded up, marched toward Denver — but managed to all be killed or murdered as prisoners —- because they “tried to escape."

Very rough frontier “justice” among depraved and covetous social outcasts who came west as much to escape everything as to build their bleak lives. And ﬁnally what about his learning about the mob of reckless armed men who took rumor as fact, came after his 39-year-old son, Judge Elias Dyer, storming into his Lake County Court- room in Granite, seizing him and debating while he barely had time to scribble a last letter to his father before they shot him to death in the courtroom for daring to preside - his sworn duty - over a trial trying men for murder, disagreeing with their vigi- lante opinion on who killed George Harrington.

Until I had a chance to buy and read an original rare 1889 yellowed copy of Father Dyer’s 382-page autobiography, I never realized just how tough a prolonged life he lived in the Rockies and just how unforgiving, wild and lawless was frontier Colorado from 1861 when he arrived and for a long time into the 1880s afterward. I was mildly interested in the fact he knew and preached beside Reverend William Howbert who came out of the mountains in 1861 to start a church in Colorado City, which Dyer visited numerous times.

I had almost forgotten when my own father was turned away in a blizzard out on the Colorado plains by a mean man in 1916.

While Dyer was born in Ohio in 1812, he became a Methodist minister in midlife, preaching in Minnesota until his wife, who bore him three sons and two daughters in 14 years of marriage, died in 1847. So he came further west just “to see Pikes Peak” when he was already 50 years old. And only then, and for 29 more years he went through incredible experiences, crossing 13,185 foot Mosquito Pass between Fairplay and Leadville several times a week in all kinds of weather and year round. Not only to preach the gospel and save souls whenever and wherever he could, but, as a means of support by carrying the US mail over as rugged a mailman route as any in the world. Having climbed a few 14ers, I know how unforgiving those mountains can be.

He even walked New Mexico, and saw up close and personal the puzzling self-ﬂagellating and cross- bearing excommunicated Penitenties and the very different way the devout Hispanics and even Indians worshipped in places and in ways where there had been very few priests since the 1600s. Dyer was not a particularly good writer, only doing his autobiography in his last 10 years of life when he became so ill he was told in 1889 he only had a short time to live. Well he made it to 1901, and was buried in Castle Rock, where both his father and his son Judge Elias F Dyer were also interred below one of the most verbose carved gravestone inscriptions I have ever encountered: Lines as they read on the tall, narrow, gravestone:

"Elias F Dyer Born Oct 8, 1836 Died July 3, 1875 A victim of the murderous mob ruling in Lake County. I trust in God and his mercy. At 8 oclock I sit in court. The mob have me under guard. I die for law, order and principle.

But Father Dyer, through all the vicissitudes of life, continued his mission. His oldest son died in Andersonville Confederate Prison, and the other had a foot shot off in the war. While Father Dyer during those times in the mountains never knew when an angry southern secessionist might simply kill him for his views on the evils of slavery. To my surprise he seldom encountered dangerous wildlife, which, given the sheer number of trips alone through the mountains, and over l00-mile treks to and from. Denver and Colorado City, was amazing. He trusted in God. The real threat were those dangerous two-legged animals called “men.” He was no pansy. He thrashed more than one drunken rancher who got in his face. He preached against drunkenness, gambling, and dancing! And married runaway teens. Even going back from Denver City to “the States’ to settle his son’s estate was so dangerous that he wrote “The Indians were hostile on the Plains. No company with a less number than forty armed men were allowed to start.” And so Father Dyer lived and died, a man of peace and God who helped civilize the raw and dangerous mountain frontier of Colorado.

PASTOR'S BICYCLE AND HIS BIBLE

2016-05-28T10:38:04-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, August 28, 2008

PASTOR'S BICYCLE AND HIS BIBLE

Rev. Albert Luce began the Easter Sunday Service in Garden of the Gods

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Albert Luce began the Easter Sunday Service in Garden of the Gods. Some oldtimers of the Pikes Peak region fondly remember the 70-year—long tradition of the Easter Sunrise Service in the Garden of the Gods. It was started by the Reverend Albert Luce, the pastor of the Church of Christ of Colorado City, 82 gears ago.

Where did his inspiration come from and where did it go? After arriving in Colorado City in 1916, Rev. Luce ﬁrst visited the nearby Garden of the Gods in his Model T Ford, when gas was a costly $.13 a gallon! But because Luce’s Church of Christ, which had Started in a tent in 1896 in Colorado City, was on the northwest corner of what is today 25th and West Pikes ,Peak, the red rocks were very close by. So the Reverend started regularly to ride his bike there to meditate and draw inspiration from nature for the theme of his next Sunday’s Sermon.

On one of those visits, Rev. Luce happened to open his bible to the Book of John and read “Now in the place where ’he was cruciﬁed, there was a garden — there they laid Jesus.” Of course! The “Garden” of the Gods. It would be a perfect place to share the Easter story with his ﬂock!

The magniﬁcent Rockies have always made men sense the handiwork and presence of God in nature. It is no accident that so many religious groups choose this area as their home. Rev. Luce shared his suggestion with his own skeptical Colorado City congregation just before Easter in 1919. Sunrise and Easter are chilly in Colorado! But they agreed to go along with him.

He held that ﬁrst service inside the Gateway Rocks which would be illuminated by the rising Easter sun. It was so successful the good Reverend shared the idea with the other churches along “Church Row” — West Pikes Peak Avenue — in Colorado City. Since Rev. Luce was ecumenically—minded, the service became inter- denominational. All faiths — Methodist, Baptists, and Presbyterians — were welcome. The natural setting was so inspirational for delivering and receiving the Easter message, it began to draw worshippers and churches from all across the Pikes Peak region.

Growing from about 750 attendees in the earliest years, it soon attracted thousands. The Colorado Springs Ministerial Alliance started helping out. Three tall cross-es were erected against the skyline in the open swale between the southernmost “Cathedral Rock," and a lower ridge. They remained in place all year round in that pristine setting as a reminder of the Cruciﬁxion story.

Then came a difﬁcult time for Rev. Luce, because the church where it all started at 2501 West Pikes Peak burned to the ground in 1931 while improvements were being made to it. Without funds to rebuild the structure, Rev. Luce had to hold services in several places, including in the WCTU ofﬁces in the middle of what was once Saloon Row in the 2500 block on Colorado Avenue.

Then, in 1934 the school board sold the large red stone 1902 Longfellow school building at 20th West Pikes Peak to Rev Luce’s church. He had raised the $2,500 needed. The school building became the church, which was renamed the Central Christian Church. “Long-fellow” can still be seen carved into the arched redstone facing.

In 1967, the current and modern design Central Christian Church building was built on the original playground space and the two buildings — the old school building and the new church — were joined together. For years, an a cappella choir from Colorado Springs High School sang at the Easter service in the Garden.

By this time Colorado City had been dissolved, the west side was annexed to Colorado Springs, and all west side children attended the Colorado Springs High School, now called Palmer. They participated in the services.

The Easter service inspired even a richer offering than just the sermons and choral singing in a near perfect acoustical setting. A Liturgical Play began to be presented with barefoot and robed performers from the Colorado Springs Civic Players. They reenacted the Easter Cruciﬁxion story with the towering cathedral rocks as their stage. In 1923 KVOR ﬁrst broad‘ cast the service live. As the annual event grew — by 1955 to 25,000 — worshippers arrived by cars from all over including from out of town. Their cars were parked in ﬁelds on the east side of the Gateway Rocks. Even the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce — always alert to an opportunity to promote tourism in the Pikes Peak region — printed and mailed 50,000 picture post cards showing the previous year’s Easter Sunrise Services.

The event got national attention. It helped spur tourism during the Great Depression. By 1942 when the large Army base of Fort Carson started training soldiers to serve in World War 11, there was a strong bond between national security and the practice of religion. A Fort Carson Color Guard sometimes started the Easter services An Army Chaplain sometimes read the scriptures. And the service itself was broadcast to millions over CBS Radio. the Voice of America, and the Armed Forces Radio Network. That last feat was tricky, for early spring rain once in awhile wiped out the broad- cast.

On one occasion a bird perched on a microphone, and chirped along during the service, which was broadcast too, worldwide. But it was the politically correct Ecological movement which, in the end, actually destroyed the tradition. Ecologists who were more interested in saving land than the people who live on it decided the once-a- year Easter Service was too hard on the “fragile” ecology inside the park.

First, the city forced the services out of the inside of the enclosure of the park west of the Gateway rocks, to a place east of the rocks, where Chuckwagon dinners had been held for decades before that tradition too was forced out. That of course diminished the unique cathedral-like spiritual environment that the service inside the Garden provided. Services in the new pedestrian location were never the same. Attendance started declining until only about 8,000 attended by 1991. The last service was held Easter Sunday 2002 when about 5,000 attended.

But Reverend Albert Luce, in his beloved Garden. inspirtational idea lasted a very long time (70 years) before

environmental political correctness and religious political cynicism took over. . Luce himself served his Central Christian Church and the Easter service until 1947 when he retired after 30 years, even before the Easter Services reached their peak of attendance. Being always an active man. he still did a lot of cinema and other photography, and was part of a “Greater Colorado“ organization that had promoted Colorado during the Great Depression. - He died in 1962 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery.

His immaculate white - west side house still stands on Pikes Peak Avenue. The Central Christian Church’ still thrives at 2002 West' Pikes Peak Avenue. But today’s and future west side generations will never know what they missed Easter morning in “the garden.”

SPRINGS: CITY OF MISSED OPPORTUNITY

2016-05-28T10:28:48-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, September 4, 2008

SPRINGS: CITY OF MISSED

OPPORTUNITY

Colorado Springs' size, political approach responsible for dearth in local jobs

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

This is a timely story in two parts about the uncertain economic paths I think Colorado Springs has taken the last 70 years and why I believe they are dead ends. I have to start by saying Colorado Springs is a nice place to live, and the majority of residents have been tolerably satisﬁed with ev- erything including their jobs and incomes. Until recently. In fact we are now eight per- cent below the average in- come of the rest of the US. Colorado Springs is no longer, for younger people, a city of opportunity. Its economy and the welfare of many who live here is far too dependent on the decisions made far away, either in Washington or in the corporate board rooms in other distant cities. Colorado Springs has not developed the independent economy. It is not master of its own economic soul. Could it be? I think so. One ﬁrst has to grasp how it got here and why it — pretty much as a business and government “community” — made the choices it has.

In this city, business and government are joined at the hip and have been since 1940. When General Palmer came west and founded his city in 1871, it was largely with money from England brought here through the inﬂuence of Dr. Bell, founder of Manitou Springs. There was the combination of the appeal of the Rocky Mountains, the Garden of the Gods, the resort of Manitou Springs (whose waters were thought to have medical beneﬁts), alongside the real and demonstrable medical beneﬁts from the dry air, altitude and sunshine that helped people with respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis. That brought people here, many of whom had money. It became a health resort. And they rode on Palmer’s Railroad.

But that too faded when effective drug therapy took over. Some, able and wealthy industrialist businessmen came here for their health and recovered enough to stay and actually launch successful jobproducing enterprises. George Hagerman started the Midland Railroad in the mid-1880s, originally intended to only serve the Silver Mines of Aspen. The Midland became even more important serving Cripple Creek mines after the 1891 gold rush. It brought plants and jobs to Colorado City and the west side. Mine ownership opportunities from gold mining brought wealth across Colorado Springs. For a time. From 1891 to the 1930s, Colorado Springs had some money, earned locally Visionaries like Spencer Penrose and Thayer Tutt of the Broadmoor and El Pomar, whose fortunes actually came from Kennicott Copper ( after backing a copper engineer named Jackling) out of the early proﬁts they gained from the Colorado Philadelphia Gold Mill, looked even further ahead. They helped seed a tourism industry that was bound to grow as the automobile began to attract tourists. But when world conditions , promised war, a few local visionaries realized that gas rationing and other things would hurt the only growing sector the area had to offer: tourism. So the local business leaders fatefully begged Washington for an Army Base: Camp Carson. Federal dollars for construction and payrolls. They got it. But after WWII was over, and Camp Carson was actually not needed anymore, I somewhat cynically believe that 99 percent of the local motivation became, and still is — economic security, not National Security. Once Colorado Springs got a taste of the Federal dollar, it went back, and still is going back, for more. Now what is wrong with that? Nothing, if this overwhelmingly Republic region didn't pretend it was ﬁscally “conservative.” It proclaims from the editorial pages and policies of its largest newspaper, The Gazette, and in political campaigns, that it disdains expenditures of tax money on government bureaucracies, including on military waste.

Yet it has managed, with a straight political face for the past 50 years, to ﬁght for Federal tax dollars in the form of expansion and retention of local military facilities and relatcd defense industries. All the defense decisions that affect El Paso County’s economy are made in Washington. Why are we so sure there always will be 20,000 to 30,000 military jobs here, with all the civilian and contract work force accompany ing? What will we do if we enter a sustained period of “peace” after Iraq and Afghanistan? After the Korean War, Carson shrunk, and was almost closed. We are not going to have a ground war with China or Russia.

I think Carson will shrink again, even if it stays. And with the battle over Pinon Canyon, I see clearly that state and federal politicians will not ﬁght for Colorado Springs against ranchers, environmentalists or other jealous cities like Pueblo. Local and nationally elected politicians have been ineffective in bolstering the Army’s case for Carson and the Army’s need for training area expansion. For all the prestige of NORAD and Space Command, and the Air Force Academy, the total number of jobs they offer in comparison with the payrolls from Carson are pretty small. In the ’70s came a laudable effort by Steve Shuck and others to attract high tech manufacturing industries not related to defense. A Silicon Mountain scheme. That began to work. BUT you have to look at two big factors one recent, one endemic. First of all, the growing trend in overseas “outsourc- ing” of manufacturing to lower costs has robbed Colorado Springs of tens of thousands of jobs over the last 10 years. But Why have so many plants themselves departed from Colorado Springs? Why have IBM, and Digital, and Apple, and MCI WorldCom, and Intel, and now Hewlett Packard come and gone?

Well you have to look deeper at national and global trends. Colorado Springs is not big enough — which even Denver is — to attract the main headquarters and home plants of the biggest corporations including vola- tile high tech ones. Colorado Springs only can attract “branches” of large ﬁrms. And in this Future Shock“— accelerating change —"society, when even the largest tech corporations have it change rapidly or die, the ﬁrst thing they lop off are their “branches” or make radical changes.

Way before Intel’s large brand plant on Garden of the Gods Road was ﬁlled with promised jobs, the chip industry changed. And they shut down and now can’t even sell their gigantic $45 million plant. Finally the very political “conservatism” that keeps local taxes down, is also a huge obstacle in El Paso County to “competing” with other cities by giving prospective new businesses large incentives and tax breaks to locate in their towns. We will continue to lose on relocations on the manufacturing front.

Seasonal tourism can never support the half million now living in the Colorado Springs metro area. We are not a big university town, like Boulder. We are not a milling town. We are not a trans- portation hub. We are not an agricultural town. What are we?

Frankly, we have no fundemental economic reason even to exist. Ever thought of that? Yet, I have seen no sign that the business or political leadership of Colorado Springs or El Paso County have any fresh ideas about the growing economic problems of this region. There are no visionary leaders in El Paso County. There is a need for an entirely new vision for the economy of Colorado Springs. Next week, I’ll present one in Part 2: A New Economy of Colorado Springs.

YOUR CITY CITY OF MISSED OPPORTUNITIES PART II

2016-05-28T10:12:32-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, September 11, 2008

YOUR CITY CITY OF MISSED

OPPORTUNITIES PART II: THE

INTELLIGENT CITY

City of Colorado Springs needs a new Economic Model

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

In Part 1, “City of Missed Opportunities," I traced the up/down economic history of the Colorado Springs area from 1871 - English money, Health, Gold, Tourism, Military bases, Tech Manufacturing. Our population climbed from 20,000 to 500,000. But never became prosperous for all.

Now we have become far too dependent on Defense dollars, whose decisions are made in Washington, not here. We gain and lose High Tech branch manufacturing plants like a yo-yo because decisions about opening or closing here are made in other bigger cities. Tourism is too seasonal and small to fully support our bloated population. Now we are running out of water.

Growth for growth’s sake is no longer sustainable. If we stick to that path, the costs for a city of 1 million is not twice what it is for half million. It’s more than double. Already highly “conservative” city councils and subscribers in most parts of the county commissions can’t meet their budgets for basic infrastructure needs: maintained roads, police, ﬁre, parks, utilities, government services. Costs are going up faster than citizens are will- ing or able to tax themselves to pay for them. There is NO economy of scale in big city growth.

Bluntly put, the quality of life decreases the larger a city gets, while costs go up. But isn’t it the Quality of Life which draws and keeps us here, even as it degrades and per capita income declines? We gotta break that mold. We need a radical new economy. First of all we have to dis- enthrall ourselves from the idea that the only way we can grow economically is to grow physically. Developers don’t like such talk For after developing, they walk away. Even from the city. And leave the rest of us to pay the dollar and psychic costs of growth. ‘ ‘We have to be willing to actually build a New Economic Model for the entire city and county.

An “Intelligent City” model that projects, then measures and tracks over time, the ﬂow of money in and out of the Pikes Peak region, and how it circulates within it, from and to individuals, not just institutions. Now who can do this? For starters we already have in Colorado Springs many qualiﬁed economists, academics, business, government agency specialists, and independent researchers who can contribute.

For 30 years I developed and was able to derive an income from exporting my brainpower via ever more powerful Telecommunications from an acoustic modem and Radio Shack Model 1 computer in 1977 to the full Internet today and construct the model.

A Pikes Peak community-wide model, but not as it is now: a separate chamber of commerce model, a city govemment planning model, a county government model, a utilities department model, a homebuilders model.

Will developing such a *model cost money? Sure. But when the chamber of commerce asks Colorado Springs Utilities for money out of your rate pay for ofﬁcials to go and lobby manufacturing ﬁrms to relocate here, it sure can contribute hundreds of thousands of dollar to build and reﬁne the model. All sectors can contribute.

UCCS can be the home for the public/private study, model, and meetings We will have to gather large amounts of data, much of which is not even collected locally today, much less correlated with anything else.

For example, who knows the total Defense Department Retired Pay for residents of El Paso County? How many “home business” are there in El Paso County? How many computers, and robust net- works, or Independent programmers? How many local “Distance Learning” institu- tions are here with local instructors? All guesswork. Then we need to launch a set of initiatives for a city that wants to export its brain power via telecommunications, and import dollars.

How? The Internet, dummy! For the ﬁrst time in history, every person in El Paso County can, with personally owned, ever more affordable computers, operated from home, or from a nearby ofﬁce, or even school, connected locally to the global Internet, wired, wire- less, ﬁbered, sell and deliver architectural drawings, computer programs, educational services, ﬁnancial advice, art work in digital form, music, novels, stories, essays, medical consulting services, web designs, technical advice, survey analyses, marriage counseling, to distant markets, over the net at trivial real communications costs.

And we have a few assets to build on. We have an educated work force, even retired from-work force much of whom are already “Knowledge Workers." We can attract others who don’t need local jobs. And train the ones we have. We need to systematically educate our own populace on how to market themselves online to distant em- ployers and markets.

Look at the ﬂood of television advertisements offering “Distance Learning — how to get a degree online.” We should systematically inventory the very large number of residents, including retired ones, who could teach, for pay, a very wide range of subjects online, and both help teach them HOW to teach online, and as a city offer their services to the rest of the world! The local cost of living is a function of the sum of all the costs for housing, utilities, food, services and, increasingly, transportation. Yes, gasoline costs and ALL the costs for buying, paying for, and then operating “go to/from work cars and driving.”

For all the vague promises of “going green” the reality is that owning two or more cars just so that breadwinners can “get to work" and students in the home can “get to school” is NOT going to go down. But working and studying from home, or neighborhood “work centers” can reduce those costs! To individuals AND government. By hugely reducing the daily volume of trafﬁc, not increasing it endlessly as we are now in the Old Economy. Both work and learning could and should be promoted from home! Both local governments and local companies and all academic institutions have to encourage and support and not prohibit their employees from doing all or part of their work and study from home!

Why should a clerk in the County Assessors ofﬁce drive round trip from Calhan just to sit in their costly — to maintain and equip — county ofﬁce building? Why should I drive to Memorial Hospital, have a technician put a wireless device close to me to monitor my pacemaker, when I could be monitored at home just as well, and without adding to road congestion, at lower cost to me, my medical insurance, the City, and hospital? -

Colorado Springs could become The Intelligent City. Increase income, lower costs. It will take Community Leadership committed to this idea. Who’s ready? Send an e-mail to me at dave@oldcolo.com

THE AGE OF ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY

2016-05-28T09:53:54-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, September 8, 2008

THE AGE OF ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY

Real Debate is Possible We're Not Seeing It Yet

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

One thing which has exploded during this Presidential Campaign is Online Politiking. Many more millions of Americans have seized their personal computers and gone online than those who used to write letters to their local newspapers or called into talk radio. Ev- erybody is Blogging Politics

Is this Progress? The jury is still out. I have long had a great interest in the potential of something I named long ago (1980) called “Electronic Democracy,” whose beneﬁts might emerge from personal computers and affordable connectivity. However, this was also supposed to raise the quality of political discourse. All American voters would be able to exchange their opinions “direct and unfiltered" online with each other as well as with ofﬁcials on issues.

The days of Randolph Hurst and yellow journalism were supposed to be over. For a brief moment, it was. In the infancy of pre Internet networks, a few promising things happened. I was able to set up the “Rogers Bar” BBS in 1980: a Radio Shack computer bulletin board with dial-in modem, where anyone with a computer, dial-out modem, and telephone could dial into the BBS, and exchange their opinions with each other on political issues. Many did.

Because their call went over local exchange telephone lines, local Colorado Springs residents dialed in because there was no long distance or computer access cost. They debated primarily about local issues and local candidates for elections I named it “Rogers Bar,” because the real Rogers Bar in Old Colorado City was where local political issues had been discussed, face-to- face, for years by west-siders over a beer or coffee. They could now glance at the paper or follow television or radio announcements, then discuss and debate the issues online with hundreds of others not just with their family and a few co-workers.

And they didn’t have to let editors or news anchors do the thinking for them. This was similar to the days of the New England Town Hall, when locals could walk a short distance to where someone wielded the gavel to keep order and keep the discussion moving. People debated and expressed their political opinions directly with others. The local news- paper owner stood by on the sidelines. As always, most just listened to both sides debate, argue, agree, or come to a consensus, and then the “silent majority” made up their individual minds before going to the polls to cast their own secret ballots.

Pure democratic process: Be informed, debate, listen, decide; then vote. I saw that it might be possible that pure examples of democratic process could be tried on as “Electronic Democracy" When people live too many miles from each other, cannot make meetings on every issue, the issues are many and more complex, and people don’t have that much time for politics.

Well, my BBS was responsible in the 1980s for halting political insider computer purchasing and contracting in the one-party County government, and for electing an unknown to city council, over a much better “publicly” known candidate.

This was to the dismay of both the Re- publican Power Brokers of Colorado Springs, AND the newspapers and television stations who thought they had a lock on all local political debate, while the “silent majority” had no voice.

One such case came when the political choice was that the Rogers Bar BBS worked. Whether to vote for Professor Bob Loevy as City Councilman — known to many because of Media going to ’him repeatedly as a college expert on local politics — or unknown Wayne Fisher, who ONLY became well known to me from the online discussions. Fisher put his campaign on my Rogers Bar BBS. Bob Loevy did not. All I did was act as the “Electronic Bartender" in that online “Bar,” keeping order, and keeping the discussion moving. When the votes were counted, Fisher beat Loevy by 180 votes out of 22,000 cast.

A total upset. The Gazette called me the next morning. “Did your BBS win the election for Fisher?” I said yes, it sure helped. Votes by those on the BBS who got to know Fisher beyond what little the newspaper and television said about him made the ra- zor thin edge difference. The Council tilted 5 to 4 against the old time, face-to- the mayor, who was ticked off. Councilmen all wanted a computer and access to a city owned BBS. They got it, at taxpayer expense.

Suddenly, Colorado, Springs awakened to the potential of the Personal Communications in City of Colorado Springs. They created the Telecommunications Policy Advisory Committee. And they put me on it. The rest is history. Colorado Springs took its ﬁrst baby steps into online politics and public administration. That very early example of electronic democracy was lionized across the country. Reporters from the Wall Street Journal, Time, NOVA, Wired Magazine, National Geographic, Rocky Mountain News, German Stern Magazine, and Japanese Yumura Shimbun all visited the REAL Rogers Bar, to meet me and report on the political “BBS.”

Personal Computer Electronic Democracy as an idea was born. Ah, but those promising days have now been eclipsed by telecom giants like Verizon, Comcast, Microsoft, AOL, and Google video, Real Audio and YouTube who have pulled the Internet and ‘ politics back into superﬁcial, top-down, mass ENTERTAINMENT. .‘

Sure, entertainment has " always been part of American politics, while serious debate often was secondary. But - as the two national conventions were being watched by over 30 million viewers each, there was still an over- whelming amount of enter— tainment and sound bite politics — from the scripted cracks by Sarah, repeated slips of the tongue by candidates OR the intentional , twisting of terms into quip slogans by campaign managers and biased reporters. But serious debate of issues online? Who is kidding whom?

It has become, for millions, all about whether Obama’s use of the term “lip- stick on a pig, is still a pig” was a crack at Sarah Palin or not. . This election may be de- cided 90% by entertainment and slogans, via paid ad- vertising. Mass media and snapshot politics still rule. But perhaps the scene will change as more people go , online to small quality blog sites owned by individuals ' _ few effective online moderators like the New England Town Hall man with the gavel or like me acting as the Electronic Bartender; much is just babble. So most blogs operate as a mob-ocracy, rather than de-mocracy. The potential is there, but rarely achieved. Maybe someday genuine electronic democracy will emerge.

I hope I live that long.

THE COLONEL AND THE PRIVATE

2016-05-28T09:46:54-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, September 25, 2008

THE COLONEL

AND THE PRIVATE

57 years later, two vets have become close friends

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

My wife and I just spent four great days with Mike and Colleen Verlarde from southern California. Fifty-seven years ago, Mike and I were also together, but under very different circumstances. I was “Lieutenant Hughes” and he was “Private Verlarde.” And we were in the middle of one of the bloodiest periods of modern war. I was a very recent West Point graduate and already had six months of combat under my belt leading my 30 man Infantry platoon through the bitter 1950 winter retreat from the Yalu River in the Korean War. Mike Verlarde joined us in the spring of ’51. Soon afterward I was put in command of Company K, 7th Cavalry — the proud descendants of Custer’s outﬁt — as we squared off against the huge, dug-in, implacable foe — the Chinese 65th CCF Army — on the hills south of the Imjin River.

Now this hub article is more about Mike than me. My record is well-known, played out over a long military career with many honors through two Wars during which I rose to the rank of full colonel before retiring. But Private Verlarde’s story as a typical young patriotic blue collar American has always been interesting to me. Even though he still calls me “Lieutenant Hughes” — for that is how he remembered me in those violent days of 1951 — we are today as close as two men (he 75 and I 80) could be, We had gone through the Gates of Hell together and survived. During our days together just last week, I pulled out of him and his wife Colleen, his life’s story I had never fully heard before, Mike was born of parents who had immigrated from Mexico to the vicinity of Hollywood, Calif. His father worked as a “pick- er” in the fertile produce ﬁelds of California — peach- es, cotton, walnuts — you name it. Mike, born in the US, worked in those ﬁelds alongside his brothers and sisters. It was backbreaking work: “The cotton cut our hands,” he told me. When the Korean War broke, out, Mike was an American pursuing his own dreams. He had learned English in school. He was a hell-raiser, getting into the minor trouble kids of his age always did, like pushing over outhouses on Halloween night. He fooled his mother, who could neither read nor write English, by getting her to sign a form which he told her was for permission to play on his high school football team. Except it really was the form giving parental permission to let an under- age male be enlisted in the Army! He pushed it even further. When he was sworn in he was still only 16! His - older three brothers served later in the same war. But he was eager to go now. Soon he was in Korea as a basic infantry riﬂeman. Riﬂemen the point of the spear of American foreign policy — don’t have very good odds of survival in combat. Frankly, I paid little special attention to the small, and pretty skinny Hispanic kid then. I had many men to command. Sixty—seven were killed in action in our company during that war. But I did remember he was the youngest soldier in Company K. And as reliable and upbeat as they come.

On one patrol in the spring, the Chinese opened up and he got shot through the hand. I lost the hearing in my right ear that same day when one of our tanks ﬁred its main gun while I was standing in front of it trying to get its buttoned up crew to aim at the Chinese machine gun on a hillsides

Verlarde was evacuated to a hospital in Sasebo, where he recuperated lying next to a soldier that later ﬁnished a full career as a Command Sergeant Major. Mike showed me, in a scrapbook Colleen kept for him, the ID card he used to go to town. Though he had already fought in a war for months, and had been wounded by the enemy, his card was marked in big red letters: “Minor.” He couldn’t enter bars in Japan!

After recovering, he was sent back to my Company K which was still in action. He said I looked at him when he reported in and only said .“You’re back?” I was businesslike, but obviously pleased. He was reliable, and now a combat veteran. He could teach and steady newer men. At that time, ready to go back into action myself, I had 170 enlisted men and six ofﬁcers in Company K. Short-handed, but enough. Then we started into 15 days of the most hellacious combat any U.S. Army Riﬂe Company has ever endured and survived to tell about it. Many men did not. It started on September 21, 1951 when I was ordered to defend Hill 339, which had been over- run twice by human wave attacks. For seven days and nights we were mortared, artilleried, probed, attacked, and sniped at, until the Chinese ﬁnally threw a ﬁve company, 600-man battalion at us the night of the 28th of September. It was a desperate ﬁght. Corporal (by this time) Verlarde defended his foxholes, killed and saw his buddies killed. When dawn broke, 77 dead Chinese were inside our perimeter, Hundreds more were down the slopes. Over those seven days and nights, I had lost 54 men wounded or killed in Company K and one more of my ofﬁcers. Verlarde was on the same patrol when he was hit. But we won that titanic battle and saved Hill 339. Mission accomplished, Then, without replacements, we were ordered into the attack to Line Jamestown. It took three days, and even more casualties even to ﬁght our way forward. I lost two more ofﬁcers and over 65 more wounded, and killed. 0n October 7, we were Ordered to seize the top of Hill 347, defended by a 600—man deeply dug-in Chinese battalion. Three assaults failed and my last ofﬁcer was wounded. Verlarde was somewhere in the midst of the last 30 men standing at the base of the hill when I went forth and led the ﬁnal extreme assault myself. He remembers me, his “commander,” about three men from him as we started up again. One of the innumerable potato-masher grenades hit him right on his helmet, bounced off and killed the man next to him. My submachine ran out of ammunition. But somehow we fought to the top, where over 250 enemy ended up dead in the trenches. I had lost all six of my ofﬁcers by then and all but 15 enlisted men. But we had won and had 193 whipped prisoners. Mission accomplished again, but at a great price.

Verlarde had rescued wounded men on the slopes and was awarded a Bronze Star for Valor for his actions that violent day. I was separately highly decorated later. He, as I, were still standing. He was still only 17 years old. I was 23. Hill 347, ever after named “Bloody Baldy,” stills stands guard, 57 years later, right in the middle of the Demilitarized Truce Line, northwest of Yonchon, protecting prosperous, free, South Koreans from the harsh and still dangerous dictatorship of the, north. Though we have long been separated by time and life’s “paths, Mike and I are " old friends, shaped by the crucible of war and those singular violent days and nights long ago.

IN THE INTELLIGENT CITY, WE SELL OUR WARES OVER THE WEB

2016-05-28T09:42:55-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, September 25, 2008

IN THE INTELLIGENT CITY,

WE SELL

OUR WARES OVER

THE WEB

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Colorado Springs needs a fresh economic vision. Could we develop ourselves internally and externally as the “The Intelligent City?” Could we capitalize on the only radically new economic engine since the automobile: personal computers as the means of production, and the Internet as the highway for the mind? In the ﬁrst part of this story I traced the economic history of the Colorado Springs area from 1871: English money, Health, Gold, Tourism, Military bases, Tech Manufacturing. Our population climbed from 20,000 to 500,000. But never became prosperous for all. Now we have become far too dependent on defense dollars and decisions made in Washington, not here. We gain and lose high-tech manufacturing plants because decisions about opening or closing here are made in other bigger cities. Tourism is too seasonal and small to fully support our bloated population. Now we are running out of water. Growth for growth’s sake is no longer sustainable. If we stick to that path, the costs for a city of a million residents is not twice what it is for half million. It’s more than double. Already highly “conservative” city councils and county commissions can’t meet their budgets for basic infrastructure needs: maintained roads, police, ﬁre, parks, utilities, government services. Costs are going up faster than citizens are willing or able to tax themselves to pay for them. There is no economy of scale in big city growth. Bluntly put, the quality of life decreases the larger a city gets, while costs go up. But isn’t it the quality of life which draws and keeps us here, even as it degrades and per capita income declines? We gotta break that mold. We need a radical new economy. First of all, we have to disengage from the idea that the only way to grow economically is to grow physically.

Developers don‘t like such talk. For after developing, they walk away. Even from the city. And leave the rest of us to pay the dollar and psychic costs of growth. We have to be willing to ac- Editor's note: This is the second part of a two-part se- ries about Colorado Springs' economy by YourHub writer Dave Hughes.

For 30 years I developed and was able to derive an income by using ever more powerful telecommunications, from an acoustic modern and Radio Shack Model 1 computer in 1977 to the full Internet today. We need to build a New Economic Model for the entire city and county. We need to develop an Intelligent City model that projects, then measures and tracks over time, the ﬂow of money in and out of the Pikes Peak region, and how it circulates within it, from and to individuals, not just institutions. Now who can do this? For starters we already have in Colorado Springs many qualiﬁed economists, academics, business, government agency specialists, and independent researchers who can contribute to and construct the model. A Pikes Peak community-wide model, but not as it is now: a separate chamber of commerce model, a city government planning model, a county government model, a utilities department model, a homebuilders model.

Will developing such a model cost money? Sure. But when the chamber of commerce asks Colorado Springs Utilities for money out of your rate pay for ofﬁcials to go and lobby manufacturing ﬁrms to relocate here, it surely can contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and reﬁne the model. All sectors can contribute. UCCS can be the home for the public/private study, model, and meetings. We will have to gather large amounts of data, much of which is not even collected locally today, much less cor- related with anything else. For example, who knows the total Defense Department Retired Pay for residents of El Paso County? How many “home businesses" are there in El Paso County? How many computers, and robust networks, or Independent programmers? How many local “Distance Learning” institutions are here with local instructors? All guesswork. Then we need to launch a set of initiatives for a city that wants to export its brain power via telecommunications, and import dollars. How?

The Internet, dummy! For the ﬁrst time in history, every person in El Paso County can, with personally owned, ever more affordable computers, operated from home, or from a nearby ofﬁce, or even school, connected locally to the global Internet, wired, wireless, ﬁbered, sell their products.

We can provide all we can create and deliver, from architectural drawings, computer programs, educational services and ﬁnancial advice, to art work in digital form, music, novels, stories, essays, medical consulting services, Web designs, technical advice, survey analyses and marriage counseling. We can provide all of it to to distant markets over the net at trivial real communications costs. And we have a few assets to build on.

We have an educated work force, many of whom already have knowledge of great value. We can attract others who don’t need local jobs. And train the ones we have. We need to systematically educate our own populace on how to market themselves online to distant employers and markets. Look at the ﬂood of television advertisements offering “Distance Learning — how to get a degree online.”

We should systematically inventory the very large number of residents, including retired ones, who could teach, for pay, a very wide range of subjects online. And we should teach them how to teach online, and as a city offer their services to the rest of the world!

The local cost of living is a function of the sum of all the costs for housing, utilities, food, services and, increasingly, transportation. Yes, gasoline costs and all the costs for buying, paying for, and then operating the cars we drive to work For all the vague promises of “going green,” the reality is that owning two or more cars just so that breadwinners can “get to work” and students in the home can “get to school” is not going to go down. But working and studying from home, or neighborhood “work centers” can reduce those costs to individuals and government by reducing the daily volume of trafﬁc, not increasing it endlessly as we are now in the old economy. Both work and learning could and should be promoted from home!

Both local governments and local companies and all academic institutions have to encourage and support and not prohibit their employees from doing all or part of their work and study from home! Why should a clerk in the county assessor's ofﬁce drive round trip from Calhan just to sit in their costly — to maintain and equip — county ofﬁce building?

Why should I drive to Memorial Hospital, have a technician put a wireless device close to me to monitor my pacemaker, when I could be monitored at home just as well, and without adding to road congestion, at lower cost to me, my medical in- surance, the city, and the hospital? Colorado Springs could become The Intelligent City.

Increase income, lower costs. It will take community leadership committed to this idea. Who’s ready? planted from seed this last summer. I won’t say which one of my children described the fruit [of an apple tree as ' it grew bigger, and bigger that turned out, upon my tour through their yard, to be a nectarine. But I will say the homegrown fruit was duly quartered and enjoyed by all, between grandmother and parents and grandchild. I would wish that all families could enjoy such fruits of their labor, even if only from a county or city lot.

Do we really need so many parks that residents don’t have a hope to work the soil in Colorado? Think of the health beneﬁts to children. What of all the unused land in El Paso County? I would be willing to chip in for irrigation if I had my own plot in which to grow vegetables. Would some- one out there be willing to donate old chain link fenc— ing to keep out the deer and the rabbits? Who else could use fresh vegetables next summer? Who out there would be willing to grow fresh ﬂowers for the supermarkets?

MISSED OPPORTUNITY PART II: THE INTELLIGENT CITY

2016-05-28T09:36:18-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, October 2, 2008

MISSED OPPORTUNITY PART II: THE

INTELLIGENT CITY

Answers for the Colorado Springs Economy

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Colorado Springs badly needs an entirely fresh Economic Vision for its future. One possibility can be based on the idea of developing ourselves internally as well as externally as “The Intelligent City." It can capitalize on the only radically new economic engine since the automobile — personal computers as the means of production — and the Internet as the Highway for the Mind. In Part 1, “City of Missed Opportunities,” I traced the up/down economic history of the Colorado Springs area from 1871: English money, Health, Gold, Tourism, Mili- tary bases, Tech Manufactur- ing. Our population climbed from 20,000 to 500,000. But it never became prosperous for all. Now we have become far too dependent on Defense dollars, whose decisions are made in Washington, not here. We gain and lose high tech branch manufacturing plants like a yo-yo because decisions about opening or closing here are made in other bigger cities. Tourism is too seasonal and small to fully support our bloated population. Now we are run- ning out of water. Growth for just growth’s sake is no longer sustain- able. If we stick to that path, the costs for a city of one million is not twice what it is for half million. It’s more than double. Already highly “con- servative” city councils and county commissions can’t meet their budgets for basic infrastructure needs — main- tained roads, police, ﬁre, parks, utilities, government services. Costs are going up faster than citizens are will- ing or able to tax themselves to pay for them. There is NO economy of scale in big city growth. Bluntly put, the quality of life decreases the larger a city gets, while costs go up. But isn’t it the Quality of Life which draws and keeps us here, even as it degrades and per capita income declines? We gotta break that mold. We need a radical new Economy. First of all we have to dis- enthrall ourselves from the idea that the only way we can grow economically is to grow physically. Developers don’t like such talk. For after developing, they walk away. Even from the city. And leave the rest of us to pay the dollar and psychic costs of growth. We have to be willing to ac— tually build a new economic model for the entire city and county. An “Intelligent City” model that projects, then measures and tracks over time, the ﬂow of money in and out of the Pikes Peak region, and how it circu- lates within it, from and to individuals, not just institu- tions. Now who can do this? For starters we already have in Colorado Springs many qualiﬁed economists, aca- demics, business, govern- ment agency specialists, and independent research- ers who can contribute to and construct the model. A Pikes Peak community-wide model — not as it is now: a separate chamber of com- merce model, a city govern- ment planning model, a county government model, a utilities department model, a homebuilders model. Will developing such a For 30 years I developed and was able income from exporting my brainpower via ever more powerful to derive an model cost money? Sure. But when the chamber of commerce asks Colorado Springs Utilities for money out of your rate pay for of— ficials to go and lobby man- ufacturing ﬁrms to relocate here, it sure can contribute hundreds of thousands of dollar to build and refine the model. All sectors can contribute. UCCS can be the home for the public/private study, model, and meetings. We will have to gather large amounts of data, much of which is not even collected locally today, much less cor- related with anything else. For example, who knows the total defense department retired pay for residents of El Paso County? How many “home business” are there in El Paso County? How many computers, and robust networks, or independent programmers are there? How many local “distance learning” institutions are here with local instructors? All guesswork.

We need to launch a set of initiatives for a city that wants to export its brain power via telecommunications, and import dollars. How? The Internet, dummy! For the ﬁrst time in history, every person in El Paso County can, with personally owned, ever more affordable computers, oper- ated from home, or from a nearby ofﬁce, or even school, connected locally to the global Internet, wired, wireless, ﬁbered, sell and deliver architectural drawings, computer programs, educational services, financial advice, art work in digital form, music, novels, stories, essays, medical consulting services, web designs, technical advice, survey analyses, marriage counseling, to distant markets, over the net at trivial real communications costs. And we have a few assets to build on. We have an educated work force, even a retired-from-work force, much of whom are already “Knowledge Workers.” We can attract others who don’t need local jobs. And train the ones we have. We need to systematically educate our own populace on how to market them- selves online to distant em- ployers and markets. Look at the ﬂood of television advertisements offering “Distance Learning -- how to get a degree online." We should systematically inven— tory the very large number of residents, including retired ones, who could teach, for pay, a very wide range of subjects online, and both help teach them HOW to teach online, and as a city offer their services to the rest of the world! The local cost of living is a function of the sum of all the costs for housing, utilities, food, services and, increasingly, transportation. Yes, gasoline costs and ALL the costs for buying, paying for, and then operating “go to/from work ” cars and driving.

For all the vague promises of “going green,” the reality is that owning two or more cars just so that breadwinners can “get to work” and students in the home can “get to school” is NOT going to go down. But working and studying from home, or neighborhood “work centers” can reduce those costs! To individuals AND government. By hugely reducing the daily volume of traffic, not increasing it end- lessly as we are now in the Old Economy. Both work and learning could and should be promoted from home! Both local governments and local companies and all academic institutions have to encourage and support and not prohibit their employees from doing all or part of their work and study from home!

Why should a clerk in the County Assessors office drive from Calhan just to sit in their costly (to maintain and equip) ofﬁce building? Why should I drive to Memorial Hospital, have a technician put a wireless device close to me to monitor my pacemaker, when I could be monitored at home just as well, and without adding to road congestion, at lower cost to me, my medical insurance, the city, and the hospital? Colorado Springs could be- come The Intelligent City. Increase income, lower costs.

It will take community leadership committed to this idea. Who’s ready? E-mail me at dave@oldcolo.com.

WHERE IS THE SUPPORT FOR ARMY EXPANSION?

2016-05-28T09:32:22-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

Where is

the support for Army expansion?

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Where is the support for Army expansion? Editor's note: This is the first part of a two-part story by YourHub contributor Dave Hughes.

Some of us in Colorado Springs are deeply angered by the antimilitary stupidity of the entire Colorado Springs congressional delegation — less the ineffective Doug Lamborn.

I was chief of staff at Fort Carson in the early 19708 when both the El Paso County and Pueblo County commissioners denied Fort Carson the ability to expand to the federal reservoir for needed cross-water (the Elbe in Europe) training.

Where are the senior ofﬁcers from El Paso County who understand mechanized warfare training needs? Why aren’t they speaking up?

Where are the really loud voices of the local politicians? Or the Chamber of Commerce? I’ll tell you.

They don’t care about the training needs of the Army at Carson, only that it pours federal dollars into El Paso County. They want a free lunch! Where is a really in-depth Gazette piece about how and why Carson was made a permanent fort after McNamara was ready to shut it down

And about why it had to expand, and then why it had to buy Pinon Canyon or be shut down for lack of training space on Fort Carson?

Where is the report about how it incurred huge costs to train so far away from the post?

Where is the in-depth look at the needs of the National Guard in Colorado — and surrounding states — which have to train on Fort Carson? Where is the parallel look at the needs for helicopter battleﬁeld operations? And why the Army says it needs the expansion (urban encroachment)? And why there are damned few alternative posts!

Am I the only local retired warrior who understands war and what it takes to prepare to ﬁght them across the entire spectrum. of warfare — nuclear, stand up tank and mechanized combat -— like Desert Storm — and large-scale insurgencies requiring mechanized transportation? If any training space for soldiers and their ofﬁcers and head- quarters is shorted here, I’ll be the ﬁrst in line to demand Carson be , shut down, no matter what that will do to the El Paso County economy, which never has, since I grew up here in the 1930s, been able to make a buck other than sucking at the fed- eral military payroll teat.

OLD COLORADO CITY HISTORY IS A MUSEUM FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE

2016-05-28T09:25:31-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, June 21, 2007

OLD COLORADO CITY HISTORY IS A

MUSEUM FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE

PEOPLE

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Thursday, June 21. 2007

Old Colorado City History Center is a museum for the people by the people. The Old Colorado City History Center is a museum and history center suitable for all ages. It is devoted to the original frontier Colorado City (founded 1859 at the base of Pikes Peak and Ute Pass.) The History Center is in Old Colorado City near the commercial and historic district. Hours of operation are 11 am. to 4 pm. Tuesday through Saturday. It is free to the public.

The History Center can be found at' 1 South 24th St., across from Bancroft Park, which has an original 1859 log cabin in the middle of the 1898 Victorian architecture. Old Colorado City buildings date from the 1890s Pikes Peak Gold Rush era. The log cabin depicts a diorama of the 1862 Civil War battle of La Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, which involved the ﬁrst Colorado Volunteer Infantry and Colorado City long before Colorado Springs existed; a blown up display of the one- man sled down the Cog Rail- road from Pikes Peak; displays of the rip roaring 21 Saloons of Colorado City, railroad memorabilia, photo displays of Colorado City from the beginning; many historical books and booklets, maps, photographs of the‘early Pikes Peak region. Kids love to ring the old church bell in the History Center’which was once a church, with steeple.

The Old Colorado City History Center was formed because, in spite of the fact that there has been a city tax supported Pioneer’s Museum in downtown Colorado Springs for a long time, it really has been a Museum of, by, and for, upscale Colorado Springs — not about pioneers like those who founded Colorado City a decade before Colorado Springs existed.

So west siders created their own museum and center where research can be done. It also is a place where events and programs are held, and displays about early El Paso County — the civil wars Colorado Springs never went through —— ﬁghting hostile Indians and befriending others like the Utes, the great gold mills and Midland Railroad, the rip roaring saloons and gambling days, and the ﬁghts with the preachers along church row are displayed.

Earliest Colorado Facts: 1861 Colorado made a territory out of Kansas.

President Abraham Lincoln appoints ex West Point Cadet Gilpin Governor to “Save Colorado for the Union."

Colorado City voted Territorial Capital 1861.

Of 25,000 Gold Rushers already in Colorado 6,000 are Southerners and Secessionists

Secessionists confront loyal Unionists.

Shootouts in Denver City. Spies in Colorado City. Outnumbered rebels go underground as guerillas. Incite Indians to attack settlers.

Newspaper accounts full of the Civil War news, including capture of 42 Rebels and a six-pound canon near Buelah, west of Pueblo, tell of Company F, lst Colorado (Mounted), camped in Colorado City 1861 enroute south to escort the prisoners back to Denver City under Marshall Townsend. Private Hollister describes in his journal “Prisoners tried for Treason.”

The ﬁrst Baptist Church of Colorado City was built in 1891 at l South 24th Street. It is now the Old Colorado City History Center. Was built in 1891. The tall church steeple was 9"“ st’mk by ughtmng’ FOR

ABOUT THE WRITER: Gunn is a contributor to the Old Colorado Historical Society

SAVED FROM THE JAWS OF PROGRESS

2016-05-28T09:21:25-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, May 17, 2007

SAVED FROM THE JAWS OF PROGRESS

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Saved from the jaws of progress Yeah, it is sometimes called “the west side” and at other times “Old Colorado City.” But whatever it’s called, people love its glimpses of a history neither Colorado Springs nor Manitou Springs lived through. And they love it for its architecture, which isn’t as upscale as that in Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs. The west side’s architectural roots were laid down in the rough log cabin and wooden framed buildings beginning in 1859 and lasting into the 1880s. Old Colorado City got its ﬁrst economic boost after uppity Colorado Springs, where there ain’t no springs, and pretentious Manitou Springs, which has springs, yet never went through real frontier days (but pretends it did,) were founded after the Civil War in the 1870s by easterners and Englishmen. ’ There was trickle-down income in Colorado City as the resident stone masons, iron workers, carpenters and working men built the wealthier towns ﬂanking it. And then came Cripple Creek gold in 1891. All the gold seekers and gam-. blers had to change trains from the narrow gauge Denver and Rio Grande, which ran up Cucharras Street to Manitou, to the full-gauge Midland Railroad in Colorado City — carousing all night between train rides. ' This brought in a little more money and capitalized the Victorian Brick commercial buildings, 21 saloons, the red light district on Cucharras and the gamblers on the second ﬂoor of buildings which still stand and are at the heart of what you Dave Hughes

And so a bundle of papers has recently been sent to the Colorado State Historical Fund to try and get the seed money for the creation of something called a Colorado Springs city "Historical Overlay Zone" which carries with it tax incentives, over no less than 3,600 west side homes, that can help save the west side from a fate worse than death - PROGRESS! Known as “Old” Colorado City. Minus the gambling - we think —- grin.

But the flow of money also quietly paid for widespread west-side residential building from Monument Creek to the Manitou city limits. Some call it Carpenter Victorian architecture -—- the modest homes of the gold mill, railroad, store front and saloon workers and their families. They are hardly the fancy homes on Wood Avenue or on Lake Avenue in the Broadmoor. But many people love ‘em. These homes are the soul of the ‘west side and its friendly people. They are the heritage of hard-work-ing, God-fearing, blue-collar conserva-tive west siders who produced four mayors for Colorado Springs. But are they worth saving? You bet! At least in the opinion of many west siders, new and old, and me. So your “neighborhood” organization, the long-lived “Organization of Westside Neighbors,” or OWN, has been struggling to do something about it for over 10 years now. They asked me. I helped form OWN way back in 1978 while my energies were turned to revitalizing the three block “Old Town” district to rejoin them and use whatever talents I have to help them save those architectural gems before the developers tear them down and replace them with modernistic whatevers, such as the endless duplexes which are popping up now. , So even though I am getting long in the tooth at 79, I said I would. And so a bundle of papers has recently been sent to the Colorado State Historical Fund to try and get the seed money for the creation of something called a Colorado Springs city “Historical Overlay Zone” which carries with it tax incentives, over no less than 3,600 west side homes that can help save the west side from a fate worse than death — PROGRESS! I’ll add in this blog the bits and pieces of what that all means, and solicit your input and commentary on the whole issue of saving the west side. So what do you think?

IMAGINATION NEEDED FOR GREENWAY

2016-05-28T09:18:29-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, May 31, 2007

IMAGINATION NEEDED FOR

GREENWAY

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Imagination needed for Greenway One offshoot of the proposed $250 million upgrade and expansion of Highway 24 between 1-25 and Mani- tou Springs is a sub-project called, loosely, the “Greenway” Project. The Greenway is the name CDOT has given to plans for what the Fountain Creek corridor on both sides of US 24 could be like in the future. I agreed to be the OWN Board representative in a collaborative effort with a number of stakeholders from the city, parks, county, Manitou Springs, Trails and Open Space Coalition, Friends of Red Rock Canyon, OWN, OCCA — and west siders — to formulate what that area could look like and how it could serve . 'I’m very skeptical about the whole costly CDOT planning exercise for both the highway and the Greenway Project. However, I am willing to suspend disbelief and go through the independent Greenway planning process itself for one big reason. If Highway 24 is changed under any of the schemes being debated, sooner or later there must be an accompanying plan carried out for how to handle the myriad issues — the 1OO year ﬂood plain for example — before anything can change drastically. I’d like to see a plan implemented ‘with public imagination and input, a plan that satisﬁes the soul.

Few west siders knew they dodged a bullet in 1973 when the city, reﬂecting only a technical solution, made a plan for Fountain Creek and its ﬂooding problems that would have constructed one big, ugly concrete ditch from Manitou to Monument Creek. Somewhat like the Camp Creek ditch through Pleasant Valley. Functional but unappealing. It was never built. Some of this stretch could become wooded walkways, even ﬁshing ponds, wetlands. uncontaminated water, or in conﬁned areas, a creekwalk - all accessible by foot, hike or vehicle. But we still have a Fountain Creek full of tires and beer bottles, grass- less medians, and the remains of Colorado City’s unappetizing, if historic, industrial past. It’s an ugly approach to Colorado Springs from the mountains, or from 1-25 to the mountains, for a “beautiful” city at the base of Pikes Peak.

I tried to get some “beautiﬁcation” of that corridor through OWN some 20 years ago. Some things were done and the ﬁrst “Midland Plan” was drafted. But there is no comprehensive vision and little was done. The Greenway meetings have produced three broad citizen-generated themes: Restoration, Gateway, or Creek Walk. 0r combinations ' of these. Greenway planning is some-what independent of the Highway 24 planning itself. Parts of the Green- way, funded by very different entities, public or private, may be implemented before, during, or after the high- way‘is modiﬁed. Some of it already has been — such as the Midland Trail along the old railroad right-of- way. In all cases, Fountain Creek has to be dealt with for its ﬂooding and water-quality potential. Some of this stretch could become wooded walk- ways, even ﬁshing ponds, wetlands, uncontaminated water, or in conﬁned areas, a creekwalk - all accessible by foot, bike or vehicle. The area’s history could be told with interpretive signs, or perhaps with solar-powered short-range Wi-Fi broadcast stations that can, through web illustrations, tell the story of the great Golden Cycle and other gold mills, the legendary Midland Railroad, the Czechoslovakian green-Glass Factory and the Hassell Decorative Iron Works. I believe that the ugly industrial corridor can, with public art, imaginative. treatment of necessary metal work or cement walls, celebrate and highlight the unique industrial history of Colorado City and the west Side. Certainly signage will be important, which also invites those on the highway to turn off, park, picnic, and sample the business heart of Old Colorado City and its lodgings. It just takes vision and will. Meanwhile, west siders, dream a little and offer your own suggestions.

CATCHING WESTSIDE READERS WITH A NET

2016-05-28T09:14:49-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, May 10, 2007

CATCHING WESTSIDE READERS

WITH A NET

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Catching west-side readers with a net Holy Cow! So The Gazette has ex- tended a print version of YourHub to every community West of Interstate 25! It will cover the west side of Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Cas- cade, Green Mountain Falls, and Woodland Park. I don’t know whether it should be praised or pitied. The Gray Old Lady Gazette, which has put out a sedate newspaper for 125 years now — ever since General Palmer made Colorado Springs a teetotaler place while Colorado City was still a wild frontier town, with its own paper — is showing its age, as are print-only newspapers all over the world. So the Gazette is trying a facelift by joining the Internet Revolution. The net is where people increasingly get their news, talk to each other, and gather around their virtual community blogs more than they access print publications across their home- towns. It’s an era where people know peo- ple across the world better than they know their next door neighbor. I know the feeling — one of my close friends I frequently chat with over the Internet is a Sherpa on Mount Everest. So I guess The Gazette’s publisher and editors have tried to take a swig from the Electronic Fountain of Youth and hope to take their green eye shade journalism from the Gutenberg-only past and launch it into the digital, as well as hybrid-print, future. Now, I think I understand what they’re trying to do. They started with their online hubs, each tailored.

Dave Hughes Hughes is a West Point graduate, west-side resident and an internet pioneer “The net is where people increasingly get their news, talk to each other. and gather around their virtual community blogs more than they access print publications across their hometowns." to different neighborhoods across sprawling Colorado Springs. They made it so anyone with a computer and Internet connection could post illustrated stories, start blogs, announce events, and get feedback comments.

Community reporters. I have tried putting Old Town history in the YourHub subsection called Old Colorado City. Other ‘neighborhood’ reporters have posted things that interest them, and they hope, other locals. It’s an interesting experiment, even though they have a ways to go. As one who was online long before most local people — including The Gazette — even knew the Internet existed, I have seen many efforts come and go. It’s a long way from the day when I put up the ﬁrst dial-up computer bulletin board and served as the ‘Electronic Bartender’ in 1980 in Roger’s Bar where we discussed local political issues via telephone modem on Radio Shack computers. Your Hub attempting to wirelessly stimulate Internet community reporting is a very interesting experiment. I hope people don’t end up talking to themselves. Now this paper version of YourHub will be even more interesting to watch, because it covers ﬁve of the most diverse 'neighborhoods' imaginable. The west side is not Manitou Springs, Green Mountain Falls or Cascade. The inhabitants of Ute Pass are not too much like growing Woodland Park with its head in the clouds. Can neighborhood reporters post online stories that are interesting enough to read in the print edition by their neighbors, even ones without computers? Can the hubs ﬂourish and eventually even make money for the newspaper; which is certainly one of its goals? There’s no free lunch in this publications business. Either on or ofﬂine. Let’s wish them well and give it a try. But remind them that The Gazette was not always friendly to the west side. It looked down its nose at our blue-collar folks, from hard drinking railroad workmen to Minnie the Gambler in the Oxford Club. It’s somewhat ironic that parts of the west side and the people up Ute Pass are now technically way ahead of traditional downtown Colorado Springs folks. Maybe we can help teach those old dogs new tricks.

THE INFORMATION AGE PROVIDES MORE THAN ONE WAY TO GET NEWS

2016-05-28T09:07:58-06:00

THURSDAY, February 14, 2008

THE INFORMATION AGE PROVIDES

MORE THAN ONE WAY TO GET NEWS

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

Thursday, February 14, 2008

We’re blessed with more sources than television, news— papers and the Internet to get real news and tolerable music. It is all coincidental, of course, that we have two complimentary FM radio stations — KCME and KRCC — that ﬁll the void other media do not. As I grew older, like many people, I started turning on my bedside radio at night to listen to music of my taste while falling asleep. I listen and happily contribute to KCME for the quality of music it has provided to me for over 25 years. It has classical music with very little talk 24 hours a day. And for for all of us old guys who grew up during World War 11, 40s and 50s music on Saturday mornings. Occasionally, such as on Saturday afternoons, I listen to live opera. I am also comforted to know I could live anywhere in the world where I had an Internet connection and could listen to that little, non— proﬁt gem of a local radio station managed by Jeanna Wearing, Even Denver listens to it from down here. But that is not enough. I also want to know what’s going on in the world in ways the advertising-dominated radio does not . Television just doesn’t deliver either. Nor do ad- fat newspapers. So I have gotten into the habit of listening to a at very particular times — the Colorado College public-radio supported KCME 91.5 FM. I say “at particular times" because there are other times, such as starting at 9 am, when I can‘t stand its modern music. Starting at 2 am. I tune to a unique source of world news I can't get anywhere else It’s international BBC, on most nights from 2 to 5 am. BBC has the ability to get live, interesting reporting from reporters and knowledgeable com— mentators in every corner of the world. From the country- side of Myanmar (once named Burma — aha, gotcha!) when monks marched in protest, to the rebel ﬁring in clashes around the palace in Ndjamena, Chad. Then between 4 and 5 am. it often has really in depth interviews with noted , people from other nations, or a good roundtable discussion by ex- perts on the state of the world economy, science, politics or on- going wars. Interesting, intellectual, and articulate locals one would never encounter in mass media in print or by television— to get news. Great insight into the rest of the world I only need-about four hours sleep per night at my age, and whether I turn in at 10 pm. and sleep until 2 a.m., or go to bed late, and then listen from 2 to 4, then sleep a couple hours, its always there. Then at 5 am. National Public Radio comes on from which I can get, without opening my eyes, pretty rounded reports about domestic US events by familiar American voices. So KCME anytime and KRCC sometimes, are my daily fare, even though I read The Gazette every morning, usually for the business section and monitor the editorial page for amusement. And I grab some news off television periodically, along with football in season While choosing only the History and History International channels, the National Geographic and Military Channel, or the occasional good PBS programs the rest of the time or during prime time. I reserve the Internet for the really obscure and technical stuff, voice chats via Skype with people around the world, and e-mail. Dunno about you, but that is how I stay sane and calm, while the world goes to hell around me.

HUGHES: CITY HAS NO ECONOMIC REASON TO EXIST

2016-05-27T21:19:44-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, 2009

HUGHES: CITY HAS NO ECONOMIC

REASON TO EXIST

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

STORY ID:

This is a timely story in two parts about the uncertain economic paths I think Colorado Springs has taken the last 70 years and why I believe they are dead ends. Colorado Springs is a nice place to live, and I think res- idents have been tolerably satisﬁed with everything, including their jobs and in- comes. Until recently. We are now 8 percent below the average income of the rest of the US. Our economy is far too dependent on the decisions made in Washington or in corporate board rooms -in other cities Colorado Springs has not developed an independent economy. It is not master of its own economic soul. Could it be? I think so. One ﬁrst has to grasp how it got here. In this city, business and government are joined at the hip and have been since 1940. When General Palmer came West and founded his city in 1871, it was largely with money from England brought here through the inﬂuence of Dr. Bell, founder of Manitou Springs. People were attracted by the Rocky Mountains, the Garden of the Gods, the resort of Manitou Springs (whose waters were thought to have medical beneﬁts), alongside the real and demonstrable medical beneﬁts from the dry air, altitude and sunshine that helped people with respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis recover. Many who came here had little money but the area became a health resort. Some wealthy industrialist businessmen came here for their health. They recovered and launched successful enterprises.

George Hagerman started the Midland Railroad in the mid1880s. The Midland served the Cripple Creek mines after the 1891 gold rush. It brought plants and jobs to Colorado City and the west side. Mine ownership opportunities from gold mining brought wealth to Colorado Springs. From 1891 to the 1930s, Colorado Springs had some money, earned locally. Visionaries like Spencer Pen- rose and Thayer 'Iutt of the Broadmoor and El Pomar, helped seed a tourism industry that was bound to grow as the automobile began to attract tourists But when world conditions promised war, local visionaries realized that gas rationing and other things would hurt tourism. So the local business leaders begged Washington for an Army Base: Camp Carson. They got it, plus federal dollars for construction and payrolls. But after WWII, Camp Carson wasn’t needed. I somewhat cynically believe that 99 percent of the local motivation became and still is economic security, not National Security.

Once Colorado Springs got a taste of the Federal dollar, it went back, and still is going back, for more. Now what is wrong with that? Nothing, if this overwhelmingly Republican region didn’t pretend it was ﬁscally “conservative.” It proclaims from the editorial pages and policies of its largest newspaper, The Gazette, and in political campaigns, that it disdains expenditures of tax money on government bureaucracies, including on military waste. Yet it has managed, with a straight political face for the past 50 years, to ﬁght for Federal tax dollars in the form of expansion and retention of local military facilities and related

All the defense decisions that affect El Paso County‘s economy are made in Washington. Why are we so sure there always will be 20,000 to 30,000 military jobs here, with all the civilian and contract workforce accompanying? What will we do if we enter a sustained period of “peace” after Iraq and Afghanistan? After the Korean War, Carson shrunk and was almost closed. I think Carson will shrink again, even if it stays. And with the battle over Pinon Canyon, I see clearly that state and federal politicians will not ﬁght for Colorado Springs against ranchers, environmentalists or other jealous cities like Pueblo. Local and nationally elected politicians have been ineffective in bolstering the Army’s case for Carson and the Army’s need for training area expansion. For all the prestige of NORAD and Space Command, and the Air Force Academy, the total number of jobs they offer in comparison with the payrolls from Carson are pretty small. In the ’70s came a laudable effort by Steve Shuck and others to attract high-tech manufacturing industries not related to defense. A Silicon Mountain scheme. That began to work. But you have to look at two big factors one recent, one endemic. First, the growing trend in overseas “outsourcing” of manufacturing to lower costs has robbed Colorado Springs of thousands of jobs. ' But why have so many plants departed? Why have IBM, and Digital, and Apple, and MCI WorldCom, and Intel, and now Hewlett Packard come and gone? You have to look deeper at national and global trends. Colorado Springs is not big enough to attract the main headquarters and home plants of the biggest corporations. Colorado Springs only can attract “branches” of large ﬁrms. And in this society of accelerating change, the ﬁrst thing corporations lop off are their “branches.” Or they make radical changes in the way they do things, like outsourcing.

Finally, the very political “conservatism” that keeps local taxes down is also a huge obstacle in El Paso County to “competing” with other cities that can give prospective new businesses large incentives and tax breaks to locate in their towns.

Tourism can never support the half million now living in the Colorado Springs area. We are not a big university town, like Boulder. We are not a mining town. We are not a transportation hub. We are not an agricultural town. What are we? Frankly, we have no fundamental economic reason even to exist. Ever thought of that?

Yet, I have seen no sign that the business or political leadership of Colorado Springs or El Paso County has any fresh ideas about the growing economic problems of this region. There are no visionary leaders in El Paso County.

TEXANS LIED ABOUT GLORIETA PASS

2016-05-27T20:41:14-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, October 2, 2009

TEXANS LIED ABOUT

GLORIETA PASS

Document Claimed a Confederate Victory

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

I have come into possession of the text of a rare document from the Civil War: An ofﬁcial report by General Sibley’s Texas Army to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, concerning the outcome of the Battle of Glo- rieta Pass in Northern New Mexico in March, 1862. That campaign should be of interest to all westsiders who have followed the history of Colorado City, founded years before Colorado Springs even existed, and who celebrate that history within the National Historic District of Old Colorado City, from Territory Days to touring our museum at Bancroft Park. In fact, you can read the whole Glorieta story on myWeb site – davehugheslegacy.net

Now, after all these years, surfaces a document in which Texans bragged after one of the worst defeats the Confederates ever suffered at the hands of the Union’s “First Colorado” at Glorieta Pass. Yet the Texans claimed it was a glorious victory! Those Texans never change! You can credit west-sider Jay Lowery, who grew up locally and took an early interest in the history of Colorado Territory (and even wrote, as a high school student, a paper about Glorieta) for turning up this incredible document and sharing it with us. He recently found it in — what else — a 1958 book titled “A Confederate Reader” full of Civil War articles and documents, including “Texans Invade New Mexico” from the Southern view- point,

Here is the report: "‘San Antonio, Texas, April 27th, 1862 “His Excellency, President Davis: I have the honor to inform your Excellency of another glorious victory achieved by the Confederate army of New Mexico. 0n the 27th of March, Lt. Col. Scurry, with 1,000 men from 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th Texas volunteers, met, attacked, whipped and routed 2,000 Federals, 23 miles east of Santa Fe. Our loss was 33 killed and 35 wounded - among the killed was Major Ragnet, and Capt. Buckholtz, of the 4th, and Major Shropshire of the 5th Texas mounted volunteers, Lt. Col. Scurry, commanding was twice slightly wounded, and Major Pyron, commanding battalion T.M.R., had his horse blown from under him by a shell. The enemy’s loss was over seven hundred killed and wounded — ﬁve hundred being left on the field. Their rout was complete, and they were scattered from the battle ﬁeld to Fort Union. The Confederate ﬂag ﬂies over Santa Fe and Albuquerque. At the latter place, the ﬂag was made of a captured United States ﬂag, raised upon a United States ﬂag- staff — the salute ﬁred by a captured United States battery, and Dixie played by a captured United States band. The Federal force defeated at Glorietta, consisted of 1,600 Pike’s Peak volunteers and 600 regulars, under command of Col. Slough. I have the honor to inform your excellency, that I will wait upon you with impor- tant despatches in a few days. Very respectfully, Tom P. Ochiltree Assistant Adjutant Gen- eral, - Army of New Mexico"

Now EVERY Coloradan knows that Jefferson Davis tried to invade New Mexico up the Rio Grande in 1862 with a 8,600-man mounted Texas Army led by General Sibley, in order to capture Fort Union where ample arms were stored, then drive toward Denver City to capture Colorado’s capital and its gold to back the worthless Confederate dollar. Then to establish a western “empire” all the way to the Paciﬁc.

And every Coloradan knows that 80 Texans were captured in the ﬁrst day’s clash in Apache Canyon, causing the rebels to change their derisive label of “Gilpin’s Pet Lambs” to “The Regular Demons” by the end of the first day’s battle. And every Coloradan knows that forceful abolitionist Major John Chivington, once a minister, turned ﬁghter-leader, led 480 Coloradans around the ﬂank of the Texas Army’s main force which was pushing back the badly outnumbered Colorado main body under Colonel Slough.

Chivington descended on the rear of the Texans, utterly destroying all the supplies and animals for the entire Confederate Army including 80 full wagons and 500 horses and mules. With only one casualty! It was a brilliant strategic blow which forced the Texas Army to hastily bury their dead and start a 300-mile retreat, ending back in Texas with only seven wagons, and less than 1,000 men, burying some of their Artillery in Albuquerque. A total and absolute defeat. The Confederacy never tried again.

Yet Sibley’s adjutant reported it as a glorious victory with huge exaggerations! He never even mentioned the loss of all their Supplies! ' Davis might have wondered why the report was sent from San Antonio, Texas if Sibley had won the day and occupied the Glorieta battleﬁeld of New Mexico after his “victory!”

He retreated, all Jefferson Davis’ plans dashed. In Colorado the campaign is called the “Little Gettysburg of the West” and it saved Colorado for the Union! ' ,

Then it was 131 years later, after 31 of Sibley’s soldier’s bodies were unearthed by farmer in a mass grave on' the Glorieta battleﬁeld in 1987.

They were reburied in a Santa Fe U.S. Veterans Cemetery in 1993. Confederate gray- uniformed Texans came north again to honor their dead. They were unarmed this time. And now they bring money, not guns. But Texans never change! ‘ Now if you would like to tour the Glorieta Battleﬁeld“ this fall or in early spring, just e-mail your interest to our Society. We are planning an overnight shared-cost trip in a rental passenger van, similar to our very successful trip to Sand Creek Battleﬁeld last year. We, would leave the ﬁrst morning from the Old Colorado City History Center, drive all the way down 1-25, eat lunch in Trinidad, visit the, Fort Union National Monument and its great book. store and stay overnight in the open-reservation Baptist Convention Center on' Glorieta Pass, Then on the second day, we’ll go down‘ to the Pecos National Monument where a Monument, guide will guide us over the. battleﬁeld where unguided; visitors are prohibited. No walking. We’ll drive back to Colorado Springs and should, arrive by late afternoon. The cost would be around $150 each, all costs including your meals and rooms. We can inform you of a more exact cost and possible dates when we ﬁnd out how many are interested.

HUGHES: CITY HAS NO ECONOMIC REASON TO EXIST

2016-05-27T15:58:52-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, 2009

HUGHES: CITY HAS NO ECONOMIC

REASON TO EXIST

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

STORY ID:

This is a timely story in two parts about the uncer- tain economic paths I think Colorado Springs has taken the last 70 years and why I believe they are dead ends. Colorado Springs is a nice place to live, and I think res- idents have been tolerably satisﬁed with everything, including their jobs and in- comes. Until recently. We are now 8 percent be— low the average income of the rest of the US. Our economy is far too dependent on the decisions made in Washington or in corporate board rooms -in other cities Colorado Springs has not developed an independent economy. It is not master of its own economic soul. Could it be? I think so. One ﬁrst has to grasp how it got here. In this city, busi- ness and government are joined at the hip and have been since 1940. ' When General Palmer came West and founded his city in 1871, it was largely with money from England brought here through the inﬂuence of Dr. Bell, founder of Manitou Springs. People were attracted by the Rocky Mountains, the Garden of the Gods, the resort of Manitou Springs (whose waters were thought to have medical beneﬁts), alongside the real and de- monstrable medical beneﬁts from the dry air, altitude and sunshine that helped people with respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis. Many who came here had money and the area became a health resort. Some wealthy industrialist businessmen came here for their health. They recovered and launched successful en- terprises. George Hagerman CITY HAS NO ECONOMIC REASON TO EXIST The huge $45 million Intel Building. being shut down before it even fully operated. started the Midland Rail- road in the mid—1880s. The Midland served the Cripple Creek mines after the 1891 gold rush. It brought plants and jobs to Colorado City and the west side. Mine own- ership opportunities from gold mining brought wealth to Colorado Springs. From 1891 to the 19305, Colorado Springs had some money, earned locally. Vi- sionaries like Spencer Pen- rose and Thayer 'I‘utt of the Broadmoor and El Pomar, helped seed a tourism indus- try that was bound to grow as the automobile began to attract tourists But when world conditions promised war, local visionar- ies realized that gas ration- ing and other things would hurt tourism. So the local business leaders begged Washington for an Army Base: Camp Carson. They got it, plus federal dollars for construction and payrolls. DAVE HUGHES, YOURHUB CONTRIBUTOR But after WWII, Camp Carson wasn’t needed. I somewhat cynically believe that 99 percent of the local motivation became # and still is — economic security, not National Security. Once Colorado Springs got a taste of the Federal dollar, it went back, and still is going back, for more. . Now what is wrong with that? Nothing, if this over- whelmingly Republican re- gion didn’t pretend it was ﬁscally “conservative.” It proclaims from the editorial pages and policies of its larg— est newspaper, The Gazette, and in political campaigns, that it disdains expenditures of tax money on government bureaucracies, including on military waste. Yet it has managed, with a straight political face for the past 50 years, to ﬁght for Federal tax dollars in the form of expan- sion and retention of local military facilities and relat- It was supposed to get $190 million in- vested in it and 1,000 employees. ed defense industries. All the defense decisions that affect El Paso County‘s economy are made in Washington. Why are we so sure there always will be 20,000 to 30,000 military jobs here, with all the civilian and con- tract workforce accompany- ing? What will we do if we enter a sustained period of “peace” after Iraq and Af— ghanistan? After the Korean War, Carson shrunk and was almost closed. I think Car- son will shrink again, even if it stays. And with the battle over Pinon Canyon, I see clearly that state and federal politicians will not ﬁght for Colorado Springs against ranchers, environmentalists or other jealous cities like Pueblo. Local and nationally elected politicians have been ineffective in bolstering the Army’s case for Carson and the Army’s need for training area expansion. For all the prestige of N RAD and Space Command, and the Air Force Academy, the total number of jobs they offer in comparison with the payrolls from Carson are pretty small. In the ’705 came a laudable effort by Steve Shuck and others to attract high-tech manufacturing industries not related to defense. A Sili- con Mountain scheme. That began to work. But you have to look at two big factors one recent, oneendemic. First, the growing trend in overseas “outsourcing” of manufacturing to lower costs has robbed Colorado Springs of thousands of jobs. ' But why have so many plants departed? Why have IBM, and Digital, and Apple, and MCI WorldCom, and In- tel, and now Hewlett Pack- ard come and gone? You have to look deeper at national and global trends. Colorado Springs is not big enough to attract the main headquarters and home plants of the biggest corpo- rations. Colorado Springs only can attract “branches” of large ﬁrms. And in this so— ciety of accelerating change, the ﬁrst thing corporations lop off are their “branches.” Or they make radical Chang: es in the. way they do things, Harlin 1, Do .Wallt-rs, liNl‘-( like outsourcing. Even before Intel’s huge plant on Garden of the Gods Road was ﬁlled with prom— ised jobs, the chip industry changed. And it shut down. Finally, the very political “conservatism” that keeps lo« cal taxes down is also a huge obstacle in El Paso County to “competing” with other cit~ ies that can give prospective new businesses large incen— tives and tax breaks to locate in their towns. Tourism can never support the half million now living in the Colorado Springs area. We are not a big university town, like Boulder. We are not a mining town. We are not a transportation hub. We are not an agricultural town. What are we? Frankly, we have no fundamental economic reason even to ex- ist. Ever thought of that? Yet, I have seen no sign that the business or politi- cal leadership of Colorado Springs or El Paso County has any fresh ideas about the growing economic problems of this region. There are no visionary leaders in El Paso County.

TEXANS LIED ABOUT GLORIETA PASS

2016-05-27T15:47:53-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, October 2, 2009

TEXANS LIED ABOUT GLORIETA PASS

Document Claimed a Confederate Victory

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

And every Coloradan knows that Territorial Colorado’s ﬁrst governor, William Gilpin, swiftly raised the First Colorado Volunteer Infantry Regiment by issuing script on the Federal Treasury. There was not enough money for horses for all 1,200 recruits — including those from Colorado City, then the Territorial Capital. So it marched on foot 400 miles south in only 13 days, got to Fort Union before the Texans did, and sallied forth to do battle with the braggart Texans who had managed to bottle up Union General Canby and the New Mexico Militia in Fort Craig in southern New Mexico, before marching through Albuquerque and Santa Fe. And every Coloradan knows that 80 Texans were captured in the ﬁrst day’s clash in Apache Canyon, causing the rebels to change their derisive label of “Gilpin’s Pet Lambs” to “The Regular Demons” by the end of the first day’s battle. And every Coloradan knows that forceful abolitionist Major John Chivington, once a minister, turned ﬁghter-leader, led 480 Coloradans around the ﬂank of the Texas Army’s main force which was pushing back the badly outnumbered Colorado main body under Colonel Slough. Chivington descended on the rear of the Texans, utterly destroying all the supplies and animals for the entire Confederate Army including 80 full wagons and 500 horses and mules. With only one casualty! It was a brilliant strategic blow which forced the Texas Army to hastily bury their dead and start a 300-mile retreat, ending back in Texas with only seven wagons, and less than 1,000 men, burying some of their Artillery in Albuquerque. A total and absolute defeat. The Confederacy never tried again. Yet Sibley’s adjutant reported it as a glorious victory with huge exaggerations! He never even mentioned the loss of all their Supplies! ' Davis might have wondered why the report was sent from San Antonio, Texas if Sibley had won the day and occupied the Glorieta battleﬁeld of New Mexico after his “victory!” He retreated, all Jefferson Davis’ plans dashed. In Colorado the campaign is called the “Little Gettysburg of the West” and it saved Colorado for the Union! ' , Then it was 131 years later, after 31 of Sibley’s soldier’s bodies were unearthed bun farmer in a mass graveaon' the Glorieta battleﬁeld in 1987 and reburied in a Santa Fe U.S. Veterans Cemetery in 1993, that Confederate gray- uniformed Texans came north again to honor their dead. They were unarmed this time. And now they bring money, not guns. But Texans never change! ‘ Now if you would like to tour the Glorieta Battleﬁeld“ this fall or in early spring, just e-mail your interest to our Society. We are planning an overnight shared-cost trip in a rental passenger van, similar to our very successful trip to Sand Creek Battleﬁeld last year. We, would leave the ﬁrst morning from the Old Colorado City History Center, drive all the way down 1-25, eat lunch in Trinidad, visit the, Fort Union National Monument and its great book. store and stay overnight in the open-reservation Baptist Convention Center on' Glorieta Pass, Then on the second day, we’ll go down‘ to the Pecos National Monument where a Monument, guide will guide us over the. battleﬁeld where unguided; visitors are prohibited. No walking. We’ll drive back to Colorado Springs and should, arrive by late afternoon. The cost would be around $150 each, all costs including your meals and rooms. We can inform you of a more exact cost and possible dates when we ﬁnd out how many are interested.

INTELLIGENT CITY RESIDENTS WILL SELL WARES VIA WEB

2016-05-26T20:26:36-06:00

INTELLIGENT CITY RESIDENTS WILL

SELL WARES VIA WEB

INDIAN LEGEND OF CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN

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PIONEER WAS TOUGH, BUT SAW HUMOR IN HIMSELF

2016-05-26T13:14:36-06:00

THE GAZETTE

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THURSDAY, March 12, 2009

PIONEER WAS TOUGH, BUT SAW

HUMOR IN HIMSELF

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

With an eye for practical protection against the marauding Plains Indians, 1862 El Paso County pioneer Sylvester Buzzard built a home into the high bank of an intermittent stream out on the plains east of Colorado City. He designed it in such a way that Indians could only approach it from one direction — not from above or behind. This was told to me by Buzzard’s 87-year-old granddaughter, Louise Solberg, who still lives on Buzzard’s family’s land, right off Curtis Road near Falcon. Curtis road was named for Sylvester’s son in law. Sylvester Buzzard was as tough and resourceful a Colorado Territorial pioneer as any of the more well known Colorado City pioneers: Bott, Beach, Howbert. His is a story of a rugged pioneer who ranched, farmed and worked from Colorado City, the Eastern Colorado plains, South Park, to Utah and Montana. He endured adventures that could have cost him his life. He was, by testimony delivered in 1923 to the El Paso County Pioneer Association, a restless man. He moved from his home in West Virginia, to Ohio, then to Illinois where he cast his first vote for Lincoln — then Iowa, then Missouri. Finally, with some friends and three teams of oxen, at 24 years of age, he set out across the plains for the Rockies as part of the Pikes Peak or Bust gold rush. He never struck it rich, but he stayed to try to make a go of it on the frontier. His recitation of all the challenges his party faced — where he was, as he says, a cook and roustabout — is as detailed as any I have read. He writes about crossing the plains in a covered wagon, teams breaking down, drinking alkali water (which required they stuff strips of bacon down their animal’s throats) shoeing them after their hooves wore down and they couldn’t walk, encountering the first Indians, and generating heat by burning buffalo chips. And an hilarious accounting of his ﬁrst encounter with swarms of mosquitoes where he tried everything from bacon grease to gum camphor — nothing working. Finally he crossed the broad Platte River, by holding onto the tail of a cow, while the critter swam across. What is unusual about the reﬂections Sylvester wrote down in his own handwriting — with surprisingly vivid prose typed out later by others — was his often humor- ous self criticism even while he was trying to “make it” under incredibly hard conditions. - His memories manuscript has lain in the archives of the Pioneer’s Museum for the last 75 years, known largely only to his family and one or two diligent researchers, until one of his great grand— daughters, Linda, contacted me last year at our Historical Society. I then went out onto the open plains of Eastern Colorado and interviewed (by videotape) Sylvester’s 87-year-old granddaughter. Then I got a copy of his entire Memories manuscript from the Pioneer’s Museum Louise Solberq Sylvester Buzzard who lets us use it, crediting them. After passing through Denver in 1862 (which he considered “seedy looking” with every other building a saloon) he quickly was disillusioned looking for gold around South Park. He worked with shovels with placer sand until his hands blistered, he got a toothache, neuralgia, and rheumatism. He never found a “paying wage.” So he reverted to cooking in the only hotel in the town of Lincoln, which has completely disappeared. At night he played cards with the miners who all were “batching it" in log cabins with dirt roofs, cooking in their ﬁreplace with skillets turning ﬂapjacks, and lining up in the morning to get, from the town butcher, one slice of beefsteak and suet impaled on a stick which they would carry back for breakfast. He met legendary Father Dyer, the itinerant snow- shoe preacher who would drop by, create a “church” with boards and chairs, and sit down with the gambling, drinking miners. At the end of a round he'd say, “Now boys, when this game is out, let’s all go to church.” Which they almost always did! He hurried to get out of the mountains before the snows came, and teamed up with Milner Brothers, struggled with the cows and oxen coming down Ute pass, trying the famed Soda Springs while he was very thirsty, which so bloated him he never tried again. His goal was the Randall and Sweet lands Ranch near Bachelor Flats southeast of today’s Colorado Springs where he would help them farm. He passed through Colorado City (the ﬁrst time) getting a canteen full of local whiskey rather than a meal. Which, while he was trying to drive the cows across Monument Creek, made him so drunk he had such a hangover he was sick for days. He had his ﬁrst hunting I adventure with Mose Simpson, who was a good hunter. He tried to bring back antelope. His amateurish efforts trying to bring down one with his long barreled “muzzle-loading-squirrel- riﬂe” showed just what a greenhorn he was. When he ﬁnally got one he dined on antelope liver that night. , You can go into our old Colorado City History Center and see in one display the same type of riﬂe Buzzard describes, right down to the round shot, muzzle loader and wooden ramrod, exactly the kind of riﬂe Buzzard describes. And you can see a hand-hewn oxen yoke which was actually used on a wagon heading for Colorado.

Buzzard was in and out of Colorado City many times. He wonderfully describes dances in the early El Paso House (only hotel in town) when the married women came and all lay their "babies” on a mattress in an ad- joining room, and all rushed to check on them when one squalled, holding candles to see whose baby was crying. He ﬁnally married at 46 and numerous descendents still live out on the plains he pioneered, and ﬁnally home- steaded.

picture 851

HONORING A PIONEER PALEONTOLOGIST

2016-05-25T19:42:43-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

Thursday, February 26, 2009

HONORING A PIONEER

PALEONTOLOGIST

Celebrating Charlotte Hill's 160^th Birthday

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

One would think a young woman who married at 13 years old in the earliest days of Colorado City — 1863 — just three years after the frontier town was founded, and bore seven children, one of whom died in infancy, two others later, would not have had much time for being anything more than a home- maker for her carpenter husband Adam Hill and family. They lived continuously in Colorado City into the early 1870s. Then were back in the 1880s into the ’90s. But Charlotte Hill was an amazing woman whose 160th birthday was just observed on February 15, 2009 in the small community of Florissant, some 40 miles west of “Old” Colorado City. For Charlotte Hill is now, belatedly, being recognized and honored as the prime mover in getting the rich Florissant Fossil Beds recognized, studied, leading to it being eventually designated a National Monument in 1969.

For Charlotte was a budding, self-taught amateur paleontologist from Colorado City of all places! Instead of just looking for crystals and semi-precious stones that many rock- hounds and geologists look for in the mountains, she looked for and found fossilized million-year-old plants, insects, and other ancient critters. She is given credit in scientiﬁc literature for some of her ﬁndings with entries like this: “1878: Charlotte Hill collects a well-preserved fossil butterﬂy, later named Prodryas persephone, from I am told by Dr Herb Meyer, the Fossil Beds Paleontologist who has spent years creating a database of all her known specimens, that there are at least 169 in formal collections.

Now how did the Old Colorado City Historical Society, get involved with or even learn about her story? Much less help her Hill and Coplan (Charlotte's family name) descendants ﬁgure out just where she, her husband, and other relatives lived in or around Colorado City before they took advantage of the 1862 Homestead Act and homesteaded near Florissant in 1869. And moved there in the early 1870s. Well, in anticipation of the entire Hill, Coplan, Nickell families (13 individuals) traveling to Colorado from diverse places in California, to attend the celebration in Florissant one family member, Patty Shepherd, found our Web site because, of course, when she put the reference “Colorado City” from family records into Google, she discovered our Historical Society Web site: http:// historyoldcolo.com. And we, being very responsive help- ing people, ﬁnd locations in or around early El Paso County (and Teller County and thus Florissant was part of El Paso County way back then) related to their forebearers, tracked down where Charlotte and Adam lived, where they had a “rooming house” for a time, and even where the great great grandfather of the Nickell branch.

Eight members of the Hill family who came to attend the Celebration of Charlotte's 160th birthday at the Florissant National Monument. The log building she lived in was razed in 1959 to make room for a modern building. But Lorene Englert saved the logs, and we have three of them — guaranteed to be from 1859 and that log building — at the History Society!

So when eight of the 13 family members came to our History Center the day before the Florissant all-day celebration, I showed them on large maps and early city photographs where their kin had been long ago. I also photographed them standing in front of one of those 150-year—old logs that came out of the building their Charlotte Hill lived in. I also discovered something that none of the family (who obviously had done extensive genealogical work from family documents) nor the National Park Service agents knew. Charlotte Hill had – a museum in Colorado City! ll wager it displayed specimens she brought down from the Fossil Beds, 40 miles away by horseback or carriage. No trains to or through Florisant existed for four more years!

Amazing. Colorado City was too SMALL to have a museum. Right? Of course in the breezy early “directories” you seldom found addresses, so we don’t know what building the museum was in exactly. Just between, by that time, four Old Town saloons, one hotel and horse barns. Charlotte Hill was a real Colorado City pioneer. I want to be sure she is recognized as such.

So there was a grand time held by all up the pass Sunday, February 15, 2009 honoring an accomplished lady from 160 years ago.

She was most responsible for putting the Florissant Fossil Beds on the national scientific map.

Florissant Scientiﬁc Society Events —Welcoming Reception

* Hors Doeuvres

Superintendent, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (Keith Payne)

President, Pikes Peak Historical Society (Celinda Kaelin)

Representative for the Florissant Scientiﬁc Society (Tim Brown)

Vice President, The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds (Sally Maertens)

Speaker Herb Meyer - The homesteader who made the difference: Charlotte Hill’s role in unveiling Florissant’s place in world fame '

Steven Veatch - Charlotte Hill and the Princeton Scientiﬁc Expedition of 1877

A Field Trip to overlook the site of the Hill Homestead February 15, 2009, 11:30 a.m. to 4 pm. Florissant Library Reception Hall

A lot of researchers, such as Dr. Beth Simmons, did a lot of work researching, not only the work that Charlotte did at the Fossil Beds, but also the family lineages of the C oplens back to 1700s. All in preparation for the celebration, but also for the continuation of the historical and scientiﬁc record.

We in the Old Colorado City Historical Society wiII be pleased to have copies of those, and we will exhibit them at our center. Delightfully, several of the Hill and Nickell family have decided to join the Old Colorado City Historical Society.

The Florissant Formation in of the family had a Colorado staff apparently knew.

David Atkins from afar wrote about Charlotte Hill and her successful research on their 35 million years old site”

The Colorsdo Cityb“Business Directory” for “Homesteaders,

Her found Fossils, had an inﬂuence on paleontologist

At least three specimens (most are at the Smithsonian, Yale, and Harvard) have her name attached: But the real zinger is that the address they had where they operated a rooming house‘, 10 years before her name surfaces in an 1894 directory,

THE IRON FENCES OF COLORADO CITY

2016-05-25T19:23:00-06:00

THE GAZETTE
YourHub
v0.2 I No.39 I COPYRIGHT 2009

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2009

THE IRON FENCES OF COLORADO CITY

Colorado City Workers Created Beautiful Wrought Iron Fences

BY DAVE HUGHES
YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR
STORY ID: 578749R

Colorado City workers created beautiful wrought iron fences.

Colorado City was home to one of the most interesting “artistic”
companies in all of El Paso County in the 1880s Not “art” as in Manitou’s sometime hippie Commonwheel art group. Or “art” as in the effete Broadmoor Art Colony. But art as in a smoke belching, hot-furnace iron foundry, whose anvil-wield ing, beer drinking, Colorado City ironworkers, turned out the most beautiful wrought iron fences seen west of the Mississippi The Hassell-Talcott iron foundry was across Fountain Creek in the Midland area, on Colorado City’s south 5th Street (today’s 25th Street). It was built and started operating in the early 18805. While it also manufactured useful iron goods and wire works, shipping them by rail, it made a variety of attractive and distinctive fences and gates that can still be seen all over Old Colorado City and West- side neighborhoods. While such fences were initially more expen- sive than those made of wood, they were virtually maintenance-free, and of course, long lasting. That is why you can see so‘ many Hassell Iron fences still standing 125 years ‘with their distinctive style and often the foundry’s name on their gate decorations.

The Foundry caught ﬁre in 1896, and burned down. The loss was calculated at $5,000. Hassell dissolved his partnership with Talcott, and rebuilt just the Hassell Iron Works on Sierra Madre south of downtown Colorado Springs, and it shifted its emphasis to providing practical iron goods for the Cripple Creek Gold Boom. But it continued producing — and advertising — decorative iron for years to Come.

Many of the Wood Avenue and Cascade Avenue “Millionaire’s Row” mansions sported goods from Hassell Iron - urns, settees, window guards, ﬂower stands and ornate castings. The original Colorado City factory went “up town!” So historically appealing were these iron gates and fences, even 35 years ago when large numbers of west-side buildings were run down and blighted, that some of us running the Pikes Peak or Bust by ‘76’ Centennial/Bicentennial Commit- tee happily endorsed and funded a project to research, photograph and document the iron fences still visible close to Old Colorado City and in the near west-side. Then we would make it into a self-guided walking tour. Elaine Freed, who had earlier studied and written papers about iron fences in upscale Colorado Springs for the Colorado State Historical Society, undertook, with a grant from our Centennial Committee and the Springs Beautiful Association to produce an “Iron Goods and Wire Work” walking tour handout. Less than a book, but far more than just a ﬂier. ' That walking tour that describes the iron works at 33 different 01d Colorado City and near west-side addresses, still exists. It has never been reprinted since the last copies of it disappeared into people’s scrapbooks or school books over 30 years ago. And was never under copyright.

Now our Old Colorado City Historical Society is undertaking to reproduce it. I am posting the entire publication here on the Hub where it can be read, printed out, followed, and you can go on your own self—guided tour. Or you can visit the Old Colorado City History, Center/Museum at 1 South 24th Street, across from Bancroft Park and, for a small do- nation of any amount to our “Sesquicentennial Monument Fund” pick up a handy, folded, paper copy of the guides It’s a classic and a keeper.

Of course I know that iron fences at some of the addresses shown may not exist anymore after all these 35 years. And we also know that such fences and their gates are still so historically attractive that they were stolen regularly over the years. Nobody makes such things of beauty anymore. But the guide will work for most ad- dresses. While not in the brochure, even the still standing 1890s Jacob Schmidt’s brick Beer Hall at 2711 West Colorado still sports Hassell iron on the balcony and along the grassed area west of the building that now houses Mountain Sports. Jacob had good taste in architecture even during Colorado City’s rip roaring Saloon Days!

I have scanned in the original guide and it is posted here in 8 captioned graphics. To read the text click on the pictures themselves and they will enlarge some what. But be warned some of you may - depending on your eye— sight, computer screen size and resolution — have difﬁculties reading the original text online. But you can get a paper version at our center which is open 11 a.m. to 4 pm, Tuesday through Saturdays, staffed by our volunteers. Don’t forget a small donation! Reproducing it was at our own cost. What was also interesting when Ms.Freed undertook the job in 1975 to produce the Iron Fence Guide, she recruited history students from the west-side’s Coronado High School to help her with the “ﬁeld work?’ While all their names are in very small print on the brochure, let me list them again here. Let’s see, 1976 high school age students? They ought to. be 50~year~old fogies by now and their Faculty Coordinator, Dr Robert Smith, must be well retired and in his 705 or 80s. Let’s see if any of you Hub readers know any of the then-students who contributed so nicely to the History of their west—side that still lives! You .can tell them their names are in Hub Print! Or comment here that you found one or more of them, and he or she remembers doing ﬁeld work searching out the famed Hassell Iron Fences - Beth Brooks, Becky Bliss, Tim Barbari, Dan Starch, Ann Burnett, John Cox, Erica Jessen, Regina Walter. Who said Colorado City’s red- necks and shady ladies had no‘ art or culture? _

If you have trouble viewing the following images, click HERE to see them in a single PDF.

THE QUIET IMMANUEL MISSIONARIES

2016-05-25T16:25:23-06:00

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THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2009

THE QUIET IMMANUEL MISSIONARIES

Mission Bought Garman Building in the 1930s

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

They were the quiet people. The ones who lived on West Cucharras, and everyone noticed when they ‘walked around the west side, be- cause they wore similar clothing.“ The women and girls almost al- ways wore very modest long print dresses, and always plain shoes. The men were not always as easy to distinguish, but usually wore dark suits and ties. They were obviously a deeply religious group, largely staying to themselves. Over time everyone came to know them as the Im- manuel Missionaries.

They ﬁrst appeared on the west side in 1936. It was a period of Depression in the country. Empty commercial buildings were cheap to rent and vacant lots cost little to buy. The west side offered this religious movement a permanent home at last, which it has now occupied for over 70 years. It was ironic that the place that the People’s Bible College chose for their place of education and worship had been, just 20 years earlier, part of the saloon, brothel, and gambling “Old Town” district — the original wide open Colorado City —- before the town voted dry in 1913, the town legally dissolved, and was annexed into Colorado Springs in 1917. Only three buildings from that era still existed on West Cucharras. The missionaries were not reluctant to use them, even though two of them had been linked by one of the infamous tunnels of Colorado City. Immanuel Missionaries had, and still have, their own values and don’t worry about that of others. But who were they, exactly, these Immanuel Missionaries? Where did they come from? Sometimes they are mistaken for Mennonites, which they are not, although they welcome visiting Mennonites who often travel to Colorado for vacations. Nor were they related to the Amish. I had a wonderful opportunity to ﬁnd out when the daughter, Elise Cadwell, of a longtime church member, Florence Cadwell, came into our History Center looking for some early building information for her mother. We happened to meet. This was fortuitous. I, like many other west-siders and our Historical Society really didn’t know much' about the Immanuel Missionaries who had been such an unmistakable part of the westside and such good neighbors for such along time. When I learned that Elsie’s mother was not doing too well (understandably at her age of 92), I knew I wanted to interview her for our Historical Society before it was too late to learn from one of the few persons alive who knew the Immanuel Missionary story from its origins. Her mother was happy to oblige. And so, helped by her son Carl, whose memories as a boy growing up in that faith and their neighborhood helped ﬁll in gaps, I was able to have two one-hour long tape recorded interview sessions. I learned that the People's Bible College was established by the Immanuel Association, formerly known as the' Immanuel Missionary Church. Its theological roots were in quiet Wesleyan Method. Missionary work was at the heart of its activities. In order to .prepare its younger members for their life’s work, a major task was Education. From that stemmed their four-year Immanuel Missionary Bible College. The Immanuel Missionaries’ prayers for sufﬁcient space for their college, were answered when they were able, in 1936, to buy the very large empty building at 2418 West Colorado Avenue.

Having been once the National Hotel, and the First National Bank of colorado City, even a Drug Store, it was then largely empty and on the market \for $80,000. But Depression times were tough. So the church was able to buy it for only $15,000! A large sign high on the building let every west-sider know what was inside. Other existing buildings on West Cucharras were gradually incorporated into their plans. The earliest one was at 2709 Cucharras. Another, the very small old 1909 “Stone” building at 2626 Cucharras, is still standing, as is another one at 2616. That two—story brick structure was built in 1899. It became a Woman’s Dormitory for the College for a time.

After the WWII 2nd Air Force headquarters east of downtown -— where Ent AFB and the Olympic Center later located — was closed down and demolished in 1948, the church was able to buy govemment surplus building materials, enough to build a new dormitory. Butler Memorial Hall still stands today at 2713 West Cucharras. The nearby original building at 2709, was taken down in 1950. Most church members lived in private homes across the west side, gathering for church services at the Grace Tabernacle at 2703 Cucharras, which they were able to build in 1948.

That is when west-siders most noticed their parishioners on the streets gathering for services, always quiet and content in their faith and very modest way of life, shunning modern conveniences such as radio and television. Under the leadership of Reverend R. G. Finch, both church and bible college attendance grew -— as the accompanying photograph in front of the Colorado Avenue building shows. . Now I had been aware of this church’s existence growing up on the east side of Colorado Springs because one of their women…..

LAUNCH OF VIRTUAL HISTORY

2016-05-25T16:11:50-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2009

LAUNCH OF VIRTUAL HISTORY

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

STORY ID: 598776

Old Colorado City Historical Society is just a few weeks from formally launching to a higher orbit as a Virtual Historical Society as an extension of our Physical History Society and Center/Museum. Now it's not as if we did not have a richly-endowed Web site for the last 12 years. In fact it was one of the ﬁrst powerful Web sites for a nonproﬁt organization in Colorado Springs and the only one (still) that has been wirelessly connected at broadband speed to the Internet from its beginning in 1997. Its original link was funded by no less than the National Science Foundation as a technological experiment in “history by wireless!” But now, after months of work by both my technically advanced son, David, and a six-person volunteer “Tech Committee” under my guidance and substantial personal funding, the Society will launch, on May 8 the NEW http://history. oldcolo.com. The old site is still on line at http://occhs.oldcolo.com. It will stay up until we have moved over and properly installed all 500 historical photographs and their captions, hundreds of pre-photography 18803 sketches, maps, hundreds of thousands of words in stories, descriptions and biographies. What is the difference between the old and the new site? It will still have all the encyclopedic his- tory contained in the original site about Colorado City, early El Paso County, and the west side of Colo~ rado Springs. Its content was ac- ——,.——. m...— CONTACT US E-mail yourhub®coloradosprings com. Fax 636-0202. Mail items to 30 S. Prospect St, Colorado Springs, 80903. YourHub editor Tim Bergsten 719-636-0125 or tim. bergsien@coloradosprings.com. Duncan 719-636-0190 or travis. duncan@coloradospringscom. Dave Hughes: Is a West Point gradu- ate, west-side resi- dent and Internet pioneer. cessed, not only by thousands of the general public over the years, and scanned by search engines, but it was discovered by an amaz- ing number of direct descendants of original Colorado City pioneers who, in their genealogical search for their family roots, found our site‘ While they learned from us things they did not know, in most cases they contributed to us and our archives large amounts of his- tory about their ancestors that nei- ther we nor any local historian or institution, such as the Pioneer’s Museum or Penrose Library, ever knew. An interactive Web site is as good for collecting history, as dis- tributing it! No less than 11 direct descendant families of the very earliest pio- neers have found us because our responsive Web site exists. They include the great great grand- children of Dr Garvin who built the 1859 cabin in Bancroft Park; Melanchthon Beach who drove the ﬁrst stake for Colorado City in what is today Pleasant Valley on August 12, 1859; Irving Howbert, who fought at Sand Creek in the 8rd Colorado Cavalry; and Jacob Schmidt, whose Colorado City Beer Hall was famous in 1896. Further, many of these distant relatives have become dues-paying Society members, even though they YourHub communityjomnalist Travis ADVERTISE do not live in Colorado! But they are connected to us, online. And continue to offer facts and stories and learn from our site what life was like. The Net permits a Virtual Historical Society to exist! That history-collecting heritage will continue, but now our pow- erful new site has much more. It supports multimedia history. We are putting the 100 hours of re- corded interviews with old timers, now dead, we taped 30 years ago, online for browsing and listening. We have more recent videotaped interviews of descendant family members, such as 87-year-old Lou- ise Solberg, the granddaughter of Sylvester Buzzard who pioneered out in Eastern El Paso County in 1862. And we videotape outstanding illustrated lectures at our Center, or our history tours to places like Glorieta Battleground and can put them online. The new site has a powerful in- ternal search engine, which the old site did not have. You can do your own research. As a treat for dues-paying (a big fat $20 a year) members, the site contains the searchable full text and image replicas of every one of the 128 history-packed West Word newsletters the Society has pub lished since its beginning in 1985. But there is more. Our entire Book and Gift Store is online for browsing and remote purchase via secure Paypal or credit card. You can sign up as a new member, or renew your dues online. And you can'p'ﬁfehase discount tickets in advance to our various events — such as the Cemetery Crawl, or the Central | Northwest | Cheyenne Mountain | 636-0246 Powers l Falcon l Eastern Plains l 636-0336 Tri-Lakes i Black Forest I Briargate I 636-0314 West Side I Manitou I Woodland Park I Teller County I 636-0314 Write about the the people, events and issues important to you. Start a blog or post photos. Your stories, your words, your opinions are important to us and other readers. Christmas Bed and Breakfast Tours. You can make donations to the tax exempt society online also, which is being done right now as we raise money for the Sesquicentennial Monument, which will be erected in Bancroft Park in August. You can see and capture or read presentations of our history, like this outstanding Colorado City Journal Sesquicentennial History of the last 150 years. There is more. The site will be interactive, not just one way. You can join, a discussion or debate by (blag-like) computer conferenc- ing, moderated by one of our vol- unteers. Wanna debate with Curt Neeley whether Sand Creek was a Battle or Massacre? Log in and sound off. And get authoritative answers. If that is not enough, you are invited to upload to the site the results of your OWN local or state research. Which, offerings by you, may become a permanent posted addition to the Web Site! You can ' add to our history. Our Artifact archives, are being progressively (SD-photographed so you can visit our Virtual Museum and look over items with your mouse as completely, if not more so, than if you were standing in front of our glass display cases at our History Center. Now all of this is being construct- ed out of powerful “open source" Ubuntu software with Joomla con- tent management tools that are inﬁnitely (it seems) extensible by talented volunteer programmers. Yet the metadata is being entered consistent with national university and museum standards. And so we REGISTERED USERS I 6,845 I v0.2 i No.46 l COPYRIGHT 2008 YOURHUB NEED SOME HELP? Having trouble posting items? Call us to set up a time to help. Visit us at The Gazette offices, or we'll go to you, ;, ,,,... seen.» IAGE PROVIDED av DAVE HUGHES It's a long way from the first Cpl- orado City Online in Roger's Bar. have links to them. This is the culmination of a vision I had way back in 1979, when with my Model I Radio Shack Computer with the earliest spreadsheet and database and BBS software and a slow modem, I realized it would be possible to virtually present the entire history of the original 0010- rado City, including every person who ever lived in it, every block, every lot, every event that hap- pened from 1859 to yesterday! So browse the pre-launch system now, and then on Friday, be our guest at the History Center, right across from Bancroft Parkat 11 am, while I demonstrate on a big screen all the powerful features of Virtual Old Colorado City —- the most advanced historical online service in Colorado!

WRITER'S UNHAPPY POST-ELECTION OPINIONS

2016-05-25T15:53:35-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2009

WRITER'S UNHAPPY POST-ELECTION

OPINIONS

City is in dire need of young blood and fresh ideas

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

This “citizen journalism" article is more a Hub opinion piece than a warm and fuzzy Old Colorado City story. My unhappy opinion was underscored by the city election results of last Tuesday. I am going to make everybody in town mad by my opinions, because in my opinion, everyone in town shares the blame for this city becoming, and remaining by choice Mediocre Town, USA. So my ﬁrst complaint is against the Colorado Springs voters. The 65% who did NOT vote, just don’t give a damn. Let somebody else solve the difﬁcult community problems — not them. The business-paid lobbying efforts for issue 1A (extending a tax for 15 years to put the money into “economic development," i.e. try to attract companies with cash incentives to relocate here) failed by a 2 to 1 margin. Ok, residents don’t like taxes, even more so in this recession, I am not really surprised. Even if its rationale was, and always has been for new “jobs.” A minority vote against needed new jobs, even traditional ones.

The morning after the election, the Editorial Page main editor of The Gazette took an entire column mildly applauding the defeat of 1A. But also writing the same old tiresome mantra The Gazette has chanted since it was ﬁrst published in 1872: Taxes are always bad, government is almost always the problem, and the private sector is always the solution to all problems. Then that editor weakly and totally unconvincingly, gave his unhappy solution for creating jobs in Colorado Springs. He says that we should eliminate the city and state business property tax. He suggests more of the same, tax cuts, will magically “create” new jobs. In a city that already has some of the lowest taxes in the country and the Tabor tax limitation, how will it pay its bills to support physical growth? He ends with “With the defeat of 1A, we should become the national model of a community that knows how to entice economic development without crude and unfair incentives.” But in ALL that full page of Gazette ranting there was not ONE fresh idea about what new kind of “economic development” we should and can “entice.” It’s all vague political, not even economic, platitudes. Well, I proposed one speciﬁc economic strategy on the Hub many months ago — September 6, 2008 to be exact. It is the economic nurturing of an “Intelligent City" by capitalizing on several measurable local factors. First is the reality that every household in Colorado Springs is, or can be, connected to the Internet and thus to the world wide web — even more cheaply per month than they can drive to and from large employer “work " across town. Jamming the roads, driving up “infrastructure” costs and wasting driving time. Secondly, that with the general educational level existing in Colorado Springs, there is a huge reservoir of potential “knowledge workers,” all of whom could not only work individually from home or from close by technologically advanced and connected neighborhood “work centers” built by business, non profit organizations, or local governments themselves. Write about the the people. events and issues important to you. Start a bloq or post photos. Your stories, your words, your opinions are important to us and other readers. I Dave Hughes am a West Point graduate, west-side resident and an Internet pioneer. private, nonproﬁt, or government employers. Some could work for remote others far from the city as programers, graphic designers, educators, data entry specialists, medical transcribers, clerks. Others could practice their profession: legal, health services, or higher or education remotely. Yet others could entrepreneurially create, market, and deliver (as individuals or in small entrepreneurial groups) creative products: art, design, music, dra ma, computer code, writings from creative to original studies. Or create services like many of those which only came into existence be- cause of the net (i.e. Google, eBay). Don't believe me? Just jump into this week’s Time Magazine online, search for “Get Rich Slow" and see what I have predicted coming true for many. All communicating work in return for pay via the Internet, and seldom by physical means of communications: car, truck, plane, paper mail or shoe leatheren. Everything in this election was either traditional physical growth versus no growth (Dave Gardner versus Jerry Heimlicher) or out- side company-incentive-tax money versus no-more-taxes or corporate welfare. ’tweedle-Dum, 'tweedle-Dee. At the very time this political campaign was being waged, more than one “study” declared Colorado Springs was stuck in the mud economically. One ﬁnding by Angelou Economics: While the aging of the regional population mirrors national trends, the Colorado Springs MSA has experienced an exceptional percentage decline in young professionals when compared to peer cities. During 2000, the Springs had the second highest percentage of young professionals among seven selected MSAs at 32.4 percent, trailing only Austin’s 35.19 percent. Seven years later, having dropped more than 15 percent, the Springs had the second lowest percentage, 27.7. This is aging dullsville, USA. Yet it is precisely the younger segment of the population which are the prime users, innovators, and visionaries of computers and the Internet. And two of its prime recommendations were being ignored by every spokesperson during the political campaign. “Give attention and money to innovative economic opportunities “beyond the scope of the traditional economy.” “Focus on recruiting and training a young, talented work force." But where, I ask you, has any civic leader or candidate stepped forth to champion ANY real “innovative economic opportunities." Bah, Humbug. Neither local government ofﬁcials, elected or appointed, nor Economic Development business types or so»called academic local experts like oft- quoted UCCS Associate Professor Fred Crowley get it. While right under his nose at his same UCCS is one of the few organizations that do get it: the UCCS Small Business and Technology Incubator. I have picked the brains of a Veterinarian who is creating a vet-service business based on the Internet. He credits the incubator for much help. But who has ever heard of it? ‘ That, with a new Information Age vision and just a little bit of leadership, local economic growth can happen without corresponding and ever more costly physical growth. But at 81 years old, having practiced what I preached for Years and in one recent stretch brought $2 million into Colorado Springs, I am not prepared to go downtown any more and tilt at the city wind- mills. : Instead, after having dropped $30,000 of my own money — earned from my online endeavors — I am into developing the advanced and innovative new Web site for the small (less than 300 members and no paid staff) non- proﬁt Old Colorado City Historical Society in order not just to permit it to do a better job than “traditional” museums distributing and teaching the unique local history of the original Colorado City around the world, but to ensure the Society remains ﬁnancially solvent, even grow, economically. All because I am practicing what I preach — use the Internet, World Wide Web, personal computers, wireless networks — to develop our ability to export history and our know-how, while bringing in dollars from those grateful for the books and digital products we sell and ship (online) the stories, the voices, the video images, and the genealogical research we can do for distant people. Many of them who only knew we existed because we were online have come to see us from afar, spending money, as Well as joining us as virtual members!

WHEN LAUGHLIN SHOT DEVLIN

2016-05-25T15:47:07-06:00

THE GAZETTE

YourHub

THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2009

El PASO CLAIM CLUB DISTRIBUTED FRONTIER JUSTICE

(WHEN JIM MCLAUGHLIN SHOT PAT DEVLIN)

BY DAVE HUGHES

YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR

When Jim McLaughlin shot Pat Devlin the summer of 1860 from between two buildings half a block north of Colorado Avenue along what is today 28th Street, a crowd started to gather.

Devlin was on the ground apparently mortally wounded, and Laughlin just stood there with the shotgun that did the deed. Someone (it was probably James Garvin) came up and told two men to hold Laughlin while justice was done. For there was no government in Colorado City. It was still part of Indian Territory and no ofﬁcials of either a US. territory or state or a county were around, much less a town government. No police or sheriffs much less judges or courts. Or even a jail.

So Garvin, at that time the President of the El Paso Claim Club, held court. He quickly appointed one man prosecutor, another bystander, the defense, he acted as the judge, and pointed to the crowd and said “You are the jury.” While standing over the body of Pat Devlin, the Claim Club, the earliest businessman’s association in all of the Territory, conducted a complete murder trial, giving the accused the beneﬁt of the doubt while the prosecutor pressed his charges.

The essential elements of all American jurisprudence were observed, even though nobody was a lawyer, or elected or appointed judge or carried a law book.

Laughlin argued that Devlin had pastured his cattle on Laughlin’s land, by agreement. They would split the proceeds after Devlin drove his cattle to Denver in the spring, and sold them there. But he drank up and gambled away what ever he was paid. He went back to Laughlin’s spread to get his belongings. Laughlin was mad, and they argued, Devlin said they would just have to shoot it out. Laughlin said he didn’t have a gun. So braggart Devlin from Kansas (who probably stole the cattle in the ﬁrst place) told him to go down into Colorado City and get one. So Laughlin did, coming down the Camp Creek road while Devlin followed him about an hour later yelling at the top of this lungs (to draw a crowd for he fancied himself a great gunslinger) “I'm coming to get you Jim Laughlin." But Laughlin, waiting between two buildings, true to the code of the West, didn’t shoot Devlin in the back as he passed by, but called out “Morning, Pat!" Pat turned toward him but before he got off a shot, Laughlin gave him a belly full of buckshot.

The “jury” acquitted Laughlin on the grounds Devlin was a bad man. The whole trial lasted only 20 minutes, for they were busy pioneers. No time to stand on protocol. They then picked up Devlin and it took two more days for him to die! They had managed to try Laughlin for murder before his victim was even dead! They were impatient men; they knew he would die. They went back to work. Frontier justice.

THAT was the El Paso Claim Club which, in the absence of any government around, formed their own. They hung horse thieves, reg- istered the ﬁrst deeds of Colorado City (because there was no place to file claims or deeds; the nearest government ofﬁce was 600 miles away) and ran the town. It was the oldest claim club in the ' Territory. Soon followed one north in early Arapahoe County, south in Canon City, and other places. They were also called “Mining Districts” in the mountains. At root they were just associated businessmen, who organized themselves to do what government couldn’t: record land and mining claims, resolve disputes, keep law and order. They created extra-legal government where there was none. Yet it didn’t take long before even the earliest legal courts, formed after Colorado Territory was formed in 1861, ruled that claims filed under the Claim Clubs were legal. The El Paso Claim Club became much more. Some argue it was just a vigilante organization. And indeed, in 1862 they broke into the Anway Fort Hotel, which stood at today’s 2818 West Pikes Peak. There is a granite marker there showing it was the fortiﬁed place the women. and children hid out while the Indians were on the warpath. One room was used as a jail. The Claim Club men broke in, dragged out a horse thief and hanged him forthwith. No trial this time.

The Claim Club traveled to Washington with Denver City, got Congress to create a new Territory — even persuading Congress to name it “Colorado” and not Corona or Idaho as they were inclined to do. And then outhustled Denver to make Colorado City the ﬁrst Capital of Colorado Territory! They conducted their business as well as many a Chamber of Commerce does today. They held elections, kept minutes of their meetings, kept books, and arbitrated land disputes - a vital task on the frontier.

They even published their minutes in the Rocky Mountain News as well as the Colorado City Journal. One technique of “marking” a claim inside the Fosdick Plat of Colorado City (the core group of which still exists as legal lots and blocks) besides submitting the written claim to the Claim Club, was to lay out four notched logs in a square on the ground at the claimed lot, indicating an intent to build a house suitable for human habitation. By the rules of the Claim Club that would preempt and hold for a full year a quarter “ section” of land. It was legally as respected, a traveler noted, “as if they were squares of Infantry.” The Claim Club was law and order. Only when Congress extinguished Indian claims to the land was 'the recording of deeds no longer needed.

But the Claim Club changed into the Colorado City Commercial Club, which became the town’s promoter keeping that historic term “Club” alive and active for 60 more years. And after the annexation by Colorado Springs, it became the “West Colorado Springs Commercial Club" that was periodically revived until, in the 1930's, its lobbying efforts saved the Old Carnegie Library from being torn down. And in 1976, when the city wanted to “remove slum and blight, increase the tax base, and increase jobs, it was the Commercial Club which stepped forward to represent all the business property owners and succeeded in getting “Old Colorado City” revived based on many small, not a few large businesses, as downtown Colorado Springs tried — and failed with. I actually was hired for one year to run that proud, historic organization.- Its now dormant again, as the Old Colorado City Associates, who only represent the retail merchants now of Old Colorado City, and promotes business. But be assured; the Claim Club will rise again if “Old Town” is threatened by big government or con artists. They hung horse thieves once, and they can do it again!