COLORADO SPRINGS, a city of Colorado, U.S.A., 75m. S. of Denver, on a mesa 6,036ft. above the sea, open to the great plains on the south-east and backed by mountains, includ ing Pike's Peak 04,m9ft.) ; the county seat of El Paso county. It lies at the point where Monument creek joins Fountain creek; is on Federal highways 4oS and 85; and is served by the Santa Fe, the Rock Island, the Denver and Rio Grande Western, the Colorado and Southern, and the Midland Terminal railways. The population was 3o,io5 in 192o, and was 33,237 in 193o by the Fed eral census. Colorado Springs is the most popular tourist centre of the Rocky mountains, a noted health resort, an im portant railway point, the headquarters of the Cripple Creek mining companies, and a delightful residence city. It has ore reduction plants, iron foundries and railroad shops. The assessed valuation of property in 1926 was $41,o24,89o.
Colorado college, the oldest college in the State, was estab lished here in 1874. It has an enrolment of about i,000, and an endowment of over $2,000,000. For a field laboratory in forestry it uses a tract of 6,000ac. (Manitou forest) 25m. N.W. of the city. Other institutions are the International union printers' home, the national home of the Modern Woodmen of America, the State institution for the deaf and blind and several sanatoria for the treatment of tuberculosis. In Manitou, 6m. W. (popu lation 192o, 1,357) a summer resort and the starting-point of the Cogwheel road to the top of Pike's Peak, are the 16 varied min eral springs which gave Colorado Springs its name. The Garden of the Gods, between the two cities (5ooac. strewn with gro tesque formations of bright-coloured sandstone) has been since 1909 a part of the park system of the city. Among other points of interest are the two Cheyenne canyons, the Cave of the Winds, the Grand Caverns and (at Florissant) a petrified forest. Many descriptions of this country may be found in the stories of Helen Hunt Jackson ("H.H."). Colorado Springs was laid out as a model city in 1871 by Gen. W. J. Palmer, president of the Denver and Rio Grande railway, which reached the valley that year. It was incorporated in 1872, chartered as a city in 1878, and in 1921 adopted a city manager form of government. The his toric town of Colorado City, which sprang up during the gold rush of 1859 and was for four days in 1862 the seat of the terri torial legislature, was consolidated with Colorado Springs in 1916.