Ute Pass Historical Society and Pikes Peak Museum - Woodland Park

Pikes Peak is seen here from Woodland Park around 1900. The mountain is named for Lt. Zebulon M. Pike, who led an 1806 U.S. Army expedition to explore the southern boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase. He provided the U.S. government with the first accurate description of the area. Pike never climbed the peak that bears his name. Anna May Wellington (Armentrout) took this photograph; she was taught the techniques of photography as a teenager by her cousin Bert Smith in the late 1800s. She learned to evenly spread a wet, light-sensitive suspension on glass plates and then let the plates dry, keeping them in a light-tight enclosure. She used a timed exposure of the plate with a large view camera. Her family donated over 300 glass plate negatives of various sizes, from four-by-five inches to eight-by-ten inches, to the Ute Pass Historical Society. Anna May took photographs up and down Ute Pass, in Teller County as well as on trips to western Colorado, Colorado Springs, and Denver. (UPHS, Wellington.)

This 1935 view of Pikes Peak is from Colorado Highway 67 North between Woodland Park and Manitou Lake. In 1859, as fortune-seekers used Pikes Peak to guide them to gold discoveries near Denver and gold and silver in Leadville, they found that the Ute Pass Indian Trail, even with improvements, was inadequate. In 1871, Colorado Springs built a new road that followed Fountain Creek, at a cost of about $4000. (UPHS, Dorothy Hartman.)

Pikes Peak is seen here from Woodland Park in a Colorado Midland Railway Postcard postmarked in 1913. Pikes Peak provides a beautiful backdrop for Woodland Park. Visitors and residents enjoy the constantly changing face of the peak in storms and sunshine, from sunrise to sunset. For the local Utes, migrations around this mountain, and its changing seasons, dictated the pattern of their lives. (UPHS, Conrad Wilson.)

Buckskin Charlie was the leader of the Southern Utes at the trail ride reenactment on August 29, 1912, along the Ute Pass Indian Trail. The Ute Trail Ride started at the upper end of the trail. The trail goes east, leaving French Creek, and follows a shallow gulch to the top where it levels out. The trail continues east and starts down Rattlesnake Gulch past a present-day Colorado Springs water facility and down into Manitou Springs above Ruxton Avenue to approximately the spot where the Manitou Incline was located. The dedication was organized by the El Paso County Pioneers Association at the urging of D. N. Heizer, mayor of Colorado Springs. Heizer was also the principal owner of the Cascade Town and Improvement Company. Indian Agent Charles Adams, Buckskin Charlie, Utes from the Southern Ute Reservation near Ignacio, and other dignitaries made up the procession. Thomas Cusack of Marigreen Pines provided horses. Anne Cusack Johnson took this photograph when she was a teenager. (UPHS, Cusack.)