Garden of the Gods: Three Hundred Million Years in Red Rock

The red sandstone fins of the Garden of the Gods were not carved by wind or shaped by glaciers. They were made by a collision. About sixty-five million years ago, as the Rocky Mountains rose during the Laramide Orogeny, the pressure of that vast uplift tilted ancient sedimentary beds that had been lying flat for hundreds of millions of years and folded them vertically, snapping them upright into the orientation you see today: layers that were once ocean floor now standing nearly perpendicular to the sky.

Two surveyors exploring the region in August of eighteen fifty-nine walked into the canyon and had different reactions. One suggested it would make a fine spot for a beer garden. The other, Rufus Cable, looked at the towering red formations and said it was a fit place for the gods to assemble.

The name stuck. The Ute had their own name for this ground, and a far longer relationship with it. Archaeologists have found evidence of human presence in the garden stretching back to approximately thirteen hundred B.

C. The Ute trace their creation story to places like this, and petroglyphs they left in the park are among the oldest markings in the region. For the Ute, the red rock itself carried spiritual meaning.

In eighteen seventy-nine, a railroad executive named Charles Perkins purchased part of the land. When he died, his children remembered that he had once said the garden should be free to everyone forever. In nineteen oh nine, they gave it to the City of Colorado Springs with the condition that it would always remain a free public park.

It has been one ever since. The gates have never had a toll.