Colorado Springs - 1907

Post (C) Doris McCraw

aka Angela Raines

Pikes Peak
Image (C) Doris McCraw

By 1907, Colorado Springs had grown from its founding in 1871 into a thriving 36-year-old community. In just over three decades, the city had undergone a significant transformation, shaping its identity through rapid growth, cultural development, and historic events.

1. It had been 101 years since Zebulon Pike had attempted his climb of Pikes Peak.

2. It had been 87 years since Dr. Edwin James had accomplished that feat as the first white man to reach the top of that mountain.

3. It had been 16 years since the Cog Railway, partially financed by Zalmon Simmons of the Simmons mattress company, had begun taking people to the top of Pikes Peak.

4. It had been 14 years since Katharine Lee Bates had taken a carriage and a mule ride to the top of Pikes Peak, which inspired her to write the phrase: "Oh beautiful for halcyon skies, for amber waves of grain."

5. It had been 33 years since the Colorado Deaf and Blind School was founded by the grandfather of the actor Lon Chaney.

In the Garden of the Gods
Image (C) Doris McCraw 

6. It had been 33 years since Colorado College was founded.

7. It had been 20 years since the trolley system began.

8. It had been 6 years since they buried the century chest to be opened in 2001.

9. It was the junction for six railways between 1870 and 1900: The Denver & Rio Grande, The Denver & New Orleans Manitou Branch, The Colorado Midland, Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, The Rock Island, and The Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek.

10. It had been 34 years since Helen (Hunt) Jackson, the author of "Ramona" and "Century of Dishonor," had made Colorado Springs her home. (She died in 1885 and is buried here.)

11. It had been 4 years since the El Paso County Courthouse had been built.

12. It had been 41years since the creation of the Goodnight-Loving Trail that ran just east of Colorado Springs.

13. It had been 34 years since Isabella Bird, the Englishwoman who wrote "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, spent time in Colorado Springs

14. It had been 48 years since Garden of the Gods received its name.

A lot happened in the town William Jackson Palmer and his associates founded back in 1871 as a tourist and resort area for his European investors. So much history to draw from as I write, and I do use it a lot. It plays a large role in my soon-to-be-released "Isabella: Rocky Mountain Bride" in the National Park Brides series. You can pre-order it here:

Amazon

Until Next Time: Stay safe, Stay happy, and Stay healthy. 

Doris

Angela Raines - Amazon

Doris A. McCraw - Amazon

If they could do it, then...

Post by Doris McCraw

aka Angela Raines

Photo (C) Doris McCraw

Julia Archibald Holmes is considered the first white woman to climb Pikes Peak in 1859.

Isabella Bird traveled through the Rocky Mountains alone in 1873.

Helen Chain painted 'The Mount of the Holy Cross' in 1879, and it is said she also climbed that same mountain.

So many women accomplished feats that most of us wouldn't tackle today. They accomplished these feats while wearing 'bloomers' in the cast of Julia Holmes, or 'travel' clothing that was popular in the later part of the 1900s. 

If you want to know more about these women, here are some links to provide that information.

https://westernartandarchitecture.com/articles/perspective-helen-henderson-chain-18491892

https://www.cogreatwomen.org/project/isabella-bird/

https://www.nps.gov/people/julia-archibald-holmes.htm

The exploits and legacy these women left inspire me to look at what we can do today to leave a legacy for future generations. Now, to find it.

Until Next Time

Doris McCraw

LYRICAL DESCRIPTION #WomenAuthors #SweetAmericanaSweethearts

For many writers description can be painful or enjoyable. For me, it's a bit of both. When I read a beautiful passage I think, will I ever paint a picture as beautiful as that?

As I continue to research women from the 1800s I find myself transported by the writing of those early women. Is is verbose? Sometimes it is, yet there is a beauty to those words I admire. This post is composed of examples that have stuck a chord in me. All were written in the early 1870s as these women traversed the area between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. I hope you  enjoy them as well.

From Isabella Bird in her book "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains"

There was a most curious loneliness about the journey up to that time. Except for the huge barrier to the right, the boundless prairies were everywhere, and it was like being at sea without a compass. The wheels made neither sound nor indentation as we drove over the short, dry grass, and there was no cheerful clatter of horses hooves. The sky was cloudy and the air hot and still. In one place we passed the carcass of a mule, any number of vultures soared up from it, to descend again immediately. Skeletons and bones of animals were often seen. A range of low, grassy hills, called the Foot Hills, rose from the plain, featureless and monotonous, except for streams, fed by the snows of the higher regions, had cut their way through them. Confessedly bewildered, and more melancholy than ever, the driver turned up one of the wildest of these entrances, and in another hour the Foot Hills lay between us and the prairie sea, and a higher and broken range, with pitch pines of average size, was revealed behind them.

Grace Greenwood from her book "New Life in New Lands: Notes on Travel"

I suppose these lands of the Platte Valley can hardly be called "plains"; but though not arid and desolate, they are sufficiently lonely and somber. We learn that this was the very "Valley of the Shadow of Death" to thousands of poor immigrants in the early days of California emigration, and in the fearful cholera times. It may be that before the locomotive came to invade with irreverent noise and hurry this haunted ground, to mock at poor perturbed spirits, and whistle them down the wind, a seer might have beheld, any dreary, starlit night, ghostly trains, moving silently, slowly along by this low, dark river. Might have seen white, still faces looking out of ghostly wagons, drawn by ghostly horses and oxen, noiselessly treading over the old track — over the lonely graves.

Helen (Hunt) Jackson from her book "Bits of Travel at Home"

As I looked up the ford to the mouth of the canyon, I was reminded of some of the grand old altar-pieces of the early centuries, where, lest the pictures of saints and angels and divine beings should seem too remote, too solemn and overawning, the painters used to set at the base, rows of human children, gay and mirthful, leaping and laughing or playing viols. So lay this sunny belt of sparkling water, glistening sand, and joyous blue blossom, at the base of the picture made by the dark mouth of the canyon, where two great mountains had recoiled and fallen apart from each other, leaving a chasm, midway in which rows a smaller mountain of sharp rocks, like a giant sentry disputing the way. Forests of pines fill the rift on either side of this rock, and their dark line stretch high up, right and left, nearly to the top of each mountain. Higher and ruggeder peaks rise beyond, looking as if they must shut the canyon sharply, as a gate closes an alley; but they do not. Past them, among them, in spite of them, the creek took its right-of-way, the mountains and rocks yielded, and the canyon winds.

Each of these authors has a unique style, yet, you get the sense of being there with them. While most would find the excerpts too wordy, they each have a beauty of their own. For more about the amazing lives of these women, you can read about them here. Isabella Bird  Grace Greenwood  Helen (Hunt) Jackson

While perhaps not as lyrical, here is an excerpt from the novella "Angel of Salvation Valley", the story of a man who has made a deal to get out of prison, only to have second thoughts.


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Now here he was, looking at a piece of heaven. If he'd had something like this, he wouldn't have been riding around searching, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ended up in prison. He'd do anything to have a place like this. Maybe someday, when all this was over he thought.

Moving back from the entrance, he headed for higher ground to get a better view of the whole valley. If he didn't strain too much, Drew knew he's make it to the top. A slow five days since leaving prison as they traveled over the mountains, avoiding towns and people. Drew puzzled over that, but figured Luke knew what he was doing. Fortunately the additional time gave Drew the chance get most of the poison Old Harold had given him out of his system. The intervening hours between the ingestion of the poison and his leaving prison, were one remaining mystery. Drew was not sure he'd ever know the truth. The pieces of memory didn't make sense. Luke, telling Harold that he's might have wrecked everything by his actions. The bump of his head against the walls. Harold screaming he was sorry as he burst into flame. None of these made any sense and only made the pain in Drew's head worse. Drew finally gave up trying to remember, and putting a damper on those thoughts when they surfaced.

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Member of National League of American Pen Women,

Women Writing the West,

Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners and

Western Fictioneers

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here 

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