In Old Colorado City

As one of a very few living natives of Colorado City, Colorado, I was glad to see the place getting some attention in the July/August issue (“History Happened Here”). But Spencer Penrose did not make his fortune “in the gold refineries at Cripple Creek.” The mines were there, but most of the mills were in Colorado City, and they once constituted its chief raison d’être , “Incorporated into Colorado Springs in 1917,” the author remarks, “it has the feel of a real place that the downtown somehow lacks.” Well, the business section of “Old Colorado City” is now gussied up with phony frontier facades and is full of boutiques and other tourist traps. When I was a boy the City was, for tourists, only a stretch they had to get through on the way from the Springs to Manitou and Pikes Peak. It really had “the feel of a real place” in those days.