The 'Other' Springs

Drake said, "You couldn't pay me to drive this highway."

Colorado Springs is known locally as 'the Springs', but in actuality, the sobriquet should belong to Manitou Springs, a small town just at the base of Pike's Peak. Manitou is the home of the famed 'cog railway' which crawls one cog at a time up to the summit of the famous mountain.  The reason to pay for a rail ticket is to avoid driving the Pike's Peak Highway.  This road was originally built in 1915 and was 19 miles long.  Today, it's still there.  It's two lanes, just about straight up (most of it at a 7% grade), with hair raising, hair pin curves, one after another, and to make it even more fun, there are no guard rails.  Give us the Pike's Peak Cog Railway any time.

As you can easily see, there's still snow on Pike's Peak.  We took the trip on May 23rd.  It was 70 degrees at the base, and it was 25 degrees at the top, with the wind chill in the teens.  (If you want to see the pictures from the rail trip, see below.)

Today, though, we visited the town of Manitou Springs.  This town was founded in the 1870's as a 'scenic health resort' by two railroad magnets who founded the Denver/Rio Grande Railroad.  The health claims were based upon the natural mineral springs which the Ute Indians had been drinking for years.  We of the 21st century think we have invented 'healthy living', but this is an old concept ruthlessly exploited for profit in the last quarter of the 19th century.  Any place there was weird water, there were claims it promoted 'health', and it became a site of a sanitorium and sometimes a vacation destination.  

There are wells scattered throughout Manitou Springs each of which has a free fountain of carbonated mineral water.  While strolling past one today, we saw a local woman filling a gallon plastic jug explaining to her two children the water she was collecting was. "For Daddy to help him get well."  Even today, somehow mineral water is supposed to promote your general well being.  At another fountain, a city employee was measuring the 'flow rate' of one of the fountains.  As I was chatting with him, he told me they actually bleed off a great deal of the natural carbon dioxide since their teens started 'huffing' the carbon dioxide cutting off oxygen to their brains.  At one time, there was actually a pavilion in town, the center of which was a 'spring'.  It became a small geyser every seven minutes.  So much of the spring water is under natural pressure there are no pumps needed to keep it flowing to the fountains.  

The red sandstone building in the background is actually the well of this spring

Manitou Springs has been a tourist town for more than 140 years, and they know how to do it.  It's a town filled with Victorian and Edwardian architecture still housing 'guest houses', souvenir shops, restaurants, art galleries and various snack food emporiums as well as an arcade.  As always, the pictures tell the whole story.  There's one other town feature, 'the incline' which is now a killer hiking trail (2000' elevation gain in less than one mile), but it was originally a funicular up the side of the mountain to a view of the other town with 'Springs' in its name.

Here are both sets of pictures:  First one is the railway trip to the 14, 111' Pike's Peak summit, and yes, it was hard to breathe up there.  The second set is a pictorial of Manitou Springs.

https://goo.gl/photos/LwE6VB5yCQsd2wwS6  

https://goo.gl/photos/vSvDVeURbtYRAPD57