Public Life and Philanthropy
The city’s broad downtown avenues shaded by well-established non-native tree species and the cool, grassy depot arts district with its John Gaw Meem designed Fine Arts Center are, at least in part, testaments to Palmer’s early planning of Colorado Springs as a gracious and elegant city. The city and county have stayed true to his vision by continuing to make generous allowances for park land as the community expands. The city and county now care for a combined total of 156 parks, comprising 12,000 acres. There are also seven public eighteen hole golf courses and five public nine hole courses, as well as two private and three military courses. Within a thirty mile radius of the city, there are a total of twenty-four public courses.
General Palmer also granted land for the founding or expansion of several local institutions, including Colorado College, The (International Typographical Union’s) Union Printer Home, the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, and the Cragmor Sanitarium which, when it closed, provided the site for today’s University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS).
The Palmers’ family home, Glen Eyrie, is now home to The Navigators, one of the many Evangelical Christian organizations that have, over the course of the past two decades, brought their headquarters to Colorado Springs. Others include Focus on the Family, Compassion International, Youth with a Mission, Young Life and the International Bible Society.
Some major non-profit organizations headquartered in Colorado Springs are Junior Achievement, the United States Olympic Training Complex, the American Numismatic Association, the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame and Museum, the Western Museum of Mining and Industry, The Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, and El Pomar, a grant making foundation and training ground for new generations of professionals in the field of philanthropy.
Notable Residents
Colorado Springs was home to the inventor Nikola Tesla and the Van Briggle Art Pottery works, as well as the authoress Helen Hunt Jackson, for whom Helen Hunt Falls in North Cheyenne Canon is named. It is the birthplace of Lon Chaney (born April 1883), for whom the Lon Chaney Theatre in the downtown area is named, and of Bobby Unser (born February 1934). The view from Pikes Peak inspires Katherine Lee Bates to write “America the Beautiful”. Robert Heinlein, often spoken of as the Dean of Science Fiction Writers, and his wife Virginia built a house near the Broadmoor Hotel. The automated house was a design marvel for its day and was featured in an issue of Scientific American. Heinlein is believed to have written much of his masterwork Stranger in a Strange Land in the home. He also wrote several other books in Colorado Springs, including Farnham’s Freehold, which has as its setting the neighborhood around the house and Cheyenne Canyon.