Gateway to the Garden of the Gods
Near Manitou Springs, Colorado
Manitou Springs has long been the gateway to one of Colorado's natural wonders, the Garden of the Gods, whose towering red sandstone fins rise just to the east. Those dramatic formations, with names like Kissing Camels and Balanced Rock, were laid down as flat beds of red, pink, and white sandstone hundreds of millions of years ago. Then the immense forces that built the Rocky Mountains and lifted Pikes Peak tilted those horizontal layers up on end, leaving them standing nearly vertical along an ancient fault.
Wind and water did the rest, carving the tilted slabs into spires and fins. The Ute knew this place well. Their oral traditions tell of their creation here, and petroglyphs typical of early Utes have been found among the rocks.
The Old Ute Trail ran past the garden and down through Manitou Springs on its way to Ute Pass. In eighteen seventy-nine, Charles Elliott Perkins, a friend of town founder William Palmer, bought hundreds of acres including part of the garden. When Perkins died, his family gave the land to the City of Colorado Springs in nineteen hundred nine, on the condition that it forever remain a free public park.
It has been free to enter ever since, a gift described as being of inestimable value.
