A Taste of Colorado Along I-25
Trinidad (Exits 13 through 15) is the first town of any size inside Colorado from New Mexico. It has a very helpful tourist center with clean bathrooms and fresh’ish coffee.
Trinidad was originally founded as a crossroads for the Santa Fe Trail, which ran from St. Louis to California from 1822 to 1879. The town served as the center of an important coal-mining region from the 1860’s to about World War I. It earned a lot of people a lot of money; there are still many beautiful homes and businesses from this time, many in very good condition. An earlier mining interest came from the Spanish belief that Montezuma moved his golden treasures from Mexico to the mountains around Trinidad when the first Spanish explorers showed such interest in them. During its coal-mining heydays, many of the famous western gunfighters passed through here; many made it a regular stopping-off point. Trinidad also occupies a rare place geographically, where the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains. This makes for some very pretty scenery.
The Trolley Tour was one of the highlights of our weekend in Trinidad. It’s free and lasts about an hour; the driver leaves a cowboy hat out for tips, which he more than earns. I’ve never seen so many five’s and ten’s in a tip jar.
The tour starts outside the Colorado Welcome Center, right under I-25 (exit 14A). The Welcome Center has free maps and brochures for the entire state, and the workers are glad to tell you what’s worth seeing and what isn’t. Trolley tours start from the Welcome Center at the top of the hour, from ten to four during the summer. The Welcome Center is only 30 seconds off I-25, so if you stop for a tour and the Trolley’s not running, you can still pick up some helpful information. If the center is closed for the day, you can take a nice walk along the riverwalk (to your left, if your back is to the Welcome Center) or along the main street of Trinidad (to the right).
Our guide and driver loved Trinidad. This came through in everything he said. We spent a lot more time in the town and visited a lot more places than we’d planned to because of his positive and interesting comments.
If you don’t do anything else while you’re in Trinidad, take the Trolley Tour. How else will you find out why there are three tunnels from the train station to the opera house, all deep underground, or how 30 workers were got killed working on this building? Or what the only building in the United States is that had all its carved stone carved after the stones had been set in place and the building was occupied? Or who the mystery woman is whose face was secretly carved on the second floor of the building beside it?
Take the tour! You won’t regret it.
We mentioned several places to eat and stay in Trinidad in our article on the town. The Tarabino Inn is a nice bed & breakfast; you can get a decent meal or place to stay as well on your own as you could with our help.
Colorado Springs was founded as a tourist destination for wealthy easterners and Europeans. The city’s founder, William Jackson Palmer, had travelled through most of the midWest and West on horseback looking for train routes. Of all the places he’d visited, Colorado Springs was the place he chose to live, raise and family and die. As we mention in our longer article on this town, visitors can easily spend a week in this town and still not see all the places of note.
You can take a tour of the castle Palmer built and lived in at Glen Eyrie. I highly recommend this. Exit I-25 at Exit 146 and head west toward the mountains. This is Garden of the Gods road. Stay on it for about three miles until it dead ends at 30th Street. The last major intersection before this is Centennial. At the intersection of 30th and Garden of the Gods, you’ll take a left. If you miss this turn, you’ll wind up in the MCI world headquarters parking lot.
All the land on your right was part of the property owned by Palmer. Today it belongs to The Navigators. The turn-off for the tour will be on your right about half a mile down 30th Street. Details on these tours change with the weather, so check out home.navigators.org/us/gleneyrie/index.cfm?Entity11&Department273&DeptOrder4&ThisTopicOrder3&ThisSubtopicOrder1 for the most up-to-date info. Take the Castle Tour.
Right next to Glen Eyrie, just past it, is the most popular attraction in town, Garden of the Gods. There are miles of hiking trails here and a lot of beautiful scenery. There are no gardens here. The last I heard this park offered 13,000 acres to drive, hike or ride horses through. It’s always open. There are two visitor centers. I recommend the one inside the park simply because it’s less crass in its efforts to separate visitors from their money. To reach this park, continue on 30th Street past Glen Eyrie about a mile. The entrance is on the right. The visitor center across from this entrance isn’t bad, I just always feel like it’s run by money grubbers.
The second most popular tourist attraction in town is Focus on the Family. You can reach this from the Briargate exit (151); head east across 83 past the new Shops at Briargate. You’ll see it on your right. This is a great place to let your kids let off some steam. There’s a very fun children’s area that my daughter loves to go to. You can take an adult-oriented tour of the facilities if you’re a fan of Focus or simply enjoy the children’s area. They’re both free. There’s a nice childrens-oriented restaurant with some of the best prices at any eatery in town. Focus on the Family is an evangelical Christian ministry; you won’t be proselytized!
The Broadmoor is the other place we recommend as being very easy to find from the highway, not too far from it and outstandingly beautiful. Take the Circle exit, 138, and head west about four miles. There’s valet parking up close to the hotel and plenty of parking along the streets. This is the old-money part of town, so if you get lost, enjoy the scenery!
Spencer Penrose made the Broadmoor what it is today. He was the polar opposite of William Jackson Palmer and delighted in tweaking that Quaker’s nose. He wanted a place where he could drink, gamble and surround himself with beautiful women. He used his fortune from the gold mines in nearby Victor and Cripple Creek to build one of the United States’ only five-star resorts.
This will probably be the most outstanding hotel you ever set foot in. One of the terms of Spencer’s will was that it remain open to the public forever. Visitors are welcome even if they don’t plan to spend the night. My wife and I enjoy walking around the lake behind the main hotel. We also enjoy stopping for coffee and a small treat at the coffeeshop. There are some upscale stores beside this shop that are also fun to go through; the kitchenware store has several cooking demonstrations every day from hotel chefs. There are several very good restaurants to eat at here; each is expensive but worth it if you’re looking for a special meal.
Two points of interest in Colorado Springs that you can see without leaving I-25 are Pike’s Peak and Cheyenne Mountain. If you’re approaching Colorado Springs from the north, you’ll catch your first glimpse of Pike’s Peak somewhere around Castle Rock. It’s the tallest mountain you can see and is covered with snow from early September to early June. People are often surprised at how bald the Peak looks when it’s not covered with snow. Beautiful plants grow right up to the top, but nothing taller than a few inches can grow in the 4,000 feet above treeline. If you’re approaching Colorado Springs from the south, you’ll start to catch glimpses of I-25 just north of Pueblo. There are many beautiful views of the Peak from 25. If you’d like to drive up it, take a cog railway train to the summit or hike it, exit the freeway at 24 West/Cimarron (Exit 141). For more information on these, please see the full Colorado Springs essay. I recommend each one.
You’ll also see the antennas on top of Cheyenne Mountain just south of Pike’s Peak. This mountain was hollowed out in the 1950s to serve as the military’s tracking center for nuclear weapons. When plans for it were drawn up, such a mountain fortress was thought to be impenetrable, but by the time it was completed, military planners realized that the newest atomic weapons could blow it to smithereens. The Air Force still uses it as a tracking station. Tom Clancy mentions it in a lot of his books, and it was mentioned many times in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. It’s closed the public.
http://www.allaroundcolorado.info/I-25.html