CO -- Colorado Springs -- Garden of the Gods Park:
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Garden of the Gods
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Garden of the Gods is a public park located in Colorado Springs. The outstanding geologic features of the park are the ancient sedimentary beds of red and white sandstones, conglomerates and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but have now been tilted vertically and faulted by the immense mountain building forces caused by the uplift of the Pikes Peak massif. Evidence of past ages; ancient seas, eroded remains of ancestral mountain ranges, alluvial fans, sandy beaches and great sand dune fields can read in the rocks. A spectacular shear fault can be observed where the Tower of Babel (Lyons Sandstone) contacts the Fountain formation. The name Colorado is said to come from the color of the sandstone. There are many fossils to be seen: marine forms, plant fossils, and some dinosaur fossils.
The hogbacks, so named because they resemble the backs and spines of a pig, are ridges of sandstone whose layers are tilted. Instead of lying horizontally, some layers are even vertically oriented. Each hogback can range up to several hundred feet long, and the tallest (called North Gateway Rock) rises to a height of 320 feet tall. A notable rock feature on this hogback, Kissing Camels, appears to be two very large camels sitting face to face with their lips touching. The hump on the northern-most camel broke off from erosion and heavy climbing.
Entrance to the park is free according to the wish of Charles Elliott Perkins, whose children donated the land to the city of Colorado Springs in 1909. It contains numerous trails for hiking, walking, mountain biking and horseback riding. One of the most popular trails, named Perkins, has been paved in an effort to combat the erosion of the park's central garden caused by its numerous visitors. Visitors receive frequent reminders to watch out for rattlesnakes in the hot days of summer.
Because of the unusual and steep rock formations in the park, it is an attractive goal for rock climbers. Rock climbing is permitted, with annual permit obtained at the Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center. The only requirements are reading the rules, having proper equipment, climbing with a "buddy", and staying on established climbing routes. Due to the sometimes unstable condition of the sandstone—particularly after a great deal of precipitation—several fatalities have occurred over the years. This is a very popular bicycle-riding area because of the scenic views, safe one-way recently-paved roads, and healthy clean air.
Nearby attractions:
Near the entrance to the park is Rock Ledge Ranch Historic Site, a recreation of rustic ranch of the late 1800s. The walking tour features a restored ranch house, demonstrations of smithing and facts about Native American activity in the area, including a small recreation of a Native American campsite. Unlike Garden of the Gods, Rock Ledge Ranch charges a small entrance fee.
Also nearby is the Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center, proceeds from which support the Garden of the Gods Park. The center provides useful information for the experienced hiker as well as the armchair tourist.
The name:
Many people assume the name comes from a Native American name for the area. In fact, the name of the park only dates back to August 1859 when two surveyors helping to set up nearby Colorado City were exploring the nearby areas. Upon discovering the site, one of the surveyors, M. S. Beach, suggested that it would be a "capital place for a beer garden." His companion, the young Rufus Cable, awestruck by the impressive rock formations, exclaimed, "Beer Garden! Why it is a fit place for the gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods." The beer garden never materialized, but the name stuck.
In 2006 a dinosaur species discovered there, was named after the park: Theiophytalia kerri.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (CO -- Colorado Springs -- Garden of the Gods Park) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2006_CO_Garden_Of_Gods: CO -- Colorado Springs -- Garden of the Gods Park (71 photos from 2006)
1993_CO_Garden_Of_Gods: CO -- Colorado Springs -- Garden of the Gods Park (19 photos from 1993)
1971 photos: From 1966 to 1975, our family lived in Franklin, Michigan while Dad worked for Kelly Services in Detroit.
Family trips this year: I rebelled against family trips -- my bedwetting was causing continual trauma for me -- and the family took my cousin Brian Bell with them to Colorado and Utah for the family trip.
From 1953 to 1976, the bulk of these pictures were taken by my Dad, Glenn Guthrie At the time, he was using a complicated, but normal for the day, manual Kodak with light meters and such. All of Dad's pictures from this time were slides. In 2020, I collected all of Dad's slides (some of which had been in Mom's possession after the divorce) and digitized them for the site.
From 1966 (when I started taking pictures) to 1979, I was using a Kodak Instamatic for most of my photos.
From 1966 to 1989, all of my pictures were slides which is what I had grown up on.
From 1966 to 1997, I was taking at most a couple of hundred photos a year.
Image quality for my pictures is variable because these are scans of slides and/or prints at varying quality/resolutions.The Great Pandemic Digitizing Project: When I was first setting up my website in August, 2000, I had decided to digitize some of my favorite pre-digital slides and prints. The scans were fairly low resolution but they were good enough. With COVID forcing me to stay indoors, I decided to rescan ALL of my pre-digital images from multiple sources (slides, prints, and negatives) at a much higher resolution and quality setting. (I digitized Dad's slides at the same time). Instead of replacing my original scans, I added the new scans to existing pages, figuring I'd select the best ones later. As a result, multiple versions of images appear on most of these early pages. At some point, I'll take the time to do a final review and get rid of the duplicates.
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