Colorado College today, as for the past 130 years, is strongly defined by location and events of the 1800s.  Pike’s Peak abruptly rises out of the high plains that extend from the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers towards the west.  This eastern-most sentinel of the Rocky Mountain chain of 14,000 ft. peaks first attracted early explorers and then was the focus of President Jefferson’s call for the southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase to be mapped by Zebulon Pike in 1806.  Gold seekers in 1858 spawned the start of the “Pike’s Peak or Bust Gold Rush” of prospectors and all manner of suppliers to the mining towns.  General William Jackson Palmer, while extending a rail line from Kansas City to Denver, in 1869 camped near what is now Colorado City and fell in love with the view of Pike’s Peak and red rock formations now called the Garden of the Gods.  An entrepreneur and adventurer, he selected that site to found Colorado Springs with the dream it would be a famous resort with a college to bring education and culture to the region.  Within 5 years both this new town and Colorado College came into being, preceding statehood for then Colorado Territory in 1876.

            Early pictures of present day Cutler Hall, the first permanent building on campus that was completed in 1882, speak volumes to the magnificent scenery of Pike’s Peak and the lonely plains.  Katherine Lee Bates added an indelible image of the region.  In 1893 she spent a summer teaching in Colorado Springs and on a trip up Pike’s Peak was inspired to write her “America the Beautiful” poem, spreading widely the magnificent vistas and grandeur of Pike’s Peak and the surrounding region and providing bragging rights for CC as “The America the Beautiful College.”

            The last quarter of the eighteenth century was challenging both for Colorado Springs and Colorado College.  Attempts to locate financial support in the east and ease the travails of a struggling college were grounded on the unique role of Colorado College in then President Tenney’s “New West” that encompassed the general Rocky Mountain region.  His promotion of this small college spoke of Colorado College being on the “very verge of the frontier” with a mission to bring education and culture to a rugged land.  Even then Tenney saw the college as an ideal place to study anthropology and archeology, to use the geology of the region as a natural laboratory, to serve the mining industry by teaching the science of mineralogy and metallurgy.  In the early 1900s a School of Engineering was established that offered degrees in electrical, mining and civil engineering and General Palmer gave the college 10,000 acres of forest land at the top of Ute Pass, upon which a Forestry School was built, the fifth forestry school created in the US and the only one with a private forest.

            Fame and recognition followed, with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter in 1904 and links to Harvard University in 1911 as the only four-year liberal arts college with which Harvard would annually exchange professors.  Subsequent decades brought expansion of the college, wider recognition as a liberal arts college of regional and national distinction, and creation of innovative courses, majors, programs, and the unique Block Plan of one-at-a-time courses that facilitates extended course field trips ranging across the Rockies and throughout the Southwest.

            Thus, location and history have heavily shaped the unique character and mission of Colorado College.  Grounded in the Rocky Mountains and drawing upon 13 decades of service to the region and beyond, the college now builds upon this past by developing an annual Rockies Report Card and Conference.  In doing so we seek to continue serving our Rockies “backyard” region through timely and insightful information and discussion of the challenges that exist in this spectacular but fragile western region.