The 1900’s
Before, during and immediately after World War I, life in Colorado Springs rolled along at a relatively placid pace, though it held its share of both exciting and dark moments.
Nikola Tesla, world-famous scientist and inventor, experimented here at the turn of the century.
Police officer John Rowan was killed in a shootout with a gang of robbers led by "Kansas City Blackie" in July of 1918.
Even more tourist trade entered the region with the full advent of the automobile, which had first chugged into the Pikes Peak region in 1899.
The airplane first showed itself off in the Springs in 1911, but then, in 1926, one crashed and killed a man near the intersection of Kiowa Street and Nevada Avenue.
The town experienced its worst snowstorm in December of 1913 when over 40 inches of snow fell.
The town reached one of its more darker moments in the 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan attempted to infiltrate the local school board in 1925, after dramatically showing its initial presence with a cross burning at the top of Pikes Peak in 1923. Citizens, however, defeated them at the polls here, though they controlled the state government from 1924-1926.
Compared to other cities, Colorado Springs' troubles with Prohibition were relatively benign, if colorful.
Until World War II, the local economy largely revolved around the tourism trade. But during World War II, the Springs embarked on a fateful relationship with the United States military, when the U.S. Army established Camp Carson south of the city. The story goes that the Army was partly swayed when a group of generals, staying at the Broadmoor in 1939, were treated to a secret cache of fine liquor Penrose had socked away during Prohibition. Whatever the reason, the military influence would become a permanent part of the city's makeup.
For the Army, the attractiveness of the area had to do with land, plentiful and cheap. As the country entered World War II, Camp Carson was a training facility that had, at its peak, more than 40,000 troops. But a year after the war's end, the complement had fallen to about 600, indicating the military presence locally was to have been a temporary one.
But the Camp stayed in operation, and its population grew. It became Fort Carson in 1954, and survived a threat of closure in the early 1960s and 1990s.
Colorado also became the site for the Air Force Academy, brought here by a feat of politicking by Colorado's elected officials. Nearly 600 locations had been submitted to the commission that decided where the academy was to go. The first class actually entered a temporary facility at Lowry Air Force Base outside Denver; when the academy's permanent complex was completed, it showcased the architectural splendor of the academy chapel. Overall, the academy would lend support to tourism, and the military presence would further the city's growth, a matter that has been a focal point of the city's government almost since its inception.
As Colorado Springs entered the 1980s, its fame grew as a new home to high-tech companies and, into the 1990s, as a home for religious organizations, including Focus on the Family, which relocated here from California in 1991.
Attracted by the city's quality of life and scenery, Colorado Springs has been experiencing a tremendous amount of growth in population and construction. The city has a great deal to offer and much more history to make.
