Pikes Peak Regional History Symposium

Nice, Naughty, & Notable: Colorado Springs at 150

In a year marking the 150-year anniversary of the founding of Colorado Springs by William Jackson Palmer, Pikes Peak Library District is pleased to offer our 2021 Pikes Peak Regional History Symposium virtually! This year's program has been divided into four separate virtual events (May 22, June 26, July 24, and August 28). We are excited to celebrate our city's sesquicentennial with you!

May 22 Program

Kathy Sturdevant: “Instant Civilization”: The Engineer of “Progress” and the Magic Early Years of Colorado Springs

For Colorado Springs’ sesquicentennial, it is appropriate that we view how an eastern railroad promoter came, saw, and conquered our region’s resources to make a successful utopian community investment. His supporting cast of fellow business investors and cultural leaders shared the enthusiasm and excitement of post-war frontier discovery and town building with little sense of negative social issues at the time or in the future. It seemed a time and place of possibilities.

Steve Plutt: The Lake George Ice & Power Company

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the age of refrigeration, there was a high demand for ice in Colorado Springs. This was met by George Frost, a large labor force, and George’s man-made lake which was located 40 miles west of Colorado Springs. This presentation will tell the story of George Frost, his background, and his enterprise that provided ice to the entire Pikes Peak region and of how the ice got from the lake to the dinner table at the Broadmoor Hotel and to the homes of Colorado Springs residents.

Doreen E. Martinez: Historicizing Indigenous Presence: Footprints, Artifacts, Ways of Being and Knowing

Since time immemorial, Pikes Peak has been the Sun Mountain. A recognition of presence and of new days and of relationships between being(s) and knowing(s). Yet, Pikes Peak is the name on highway and street signs, maps and GPS, awards and conferences, and in meaning and erasure. This work explores in metaphor and in action how embedded value systems have sought particular footprints and artifacts that can, at best, locate an object or a past notion of life. A just framing of a living history presents a layered dimensionality of those footprints and artifacts. Ruins become dwellings, ancient becomes present, and peoples of the past become communities and cultures, seasons, and generations.

(The program will conclude with a Q&A session)