Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street

by Julian Street

When, a year after, General William J. Palmer and his associates started to build the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad from Denver to Colorado Springs, a land company was formed, subsidiary to the railway project, and desert property was purchased on the present site of the Springs. The town was then laid out and the land retailed to individuals of "good moral character and strict, temperate habits."

In each deed given by the land company there was incorporated an anti-liquor clause, whereby, in the event of intoxicating liquors being "manufactured, sold or otherwise disposed of in any place of public resort on the premises," the deed should become void and the property revert to the company. Shortly after the formation of the colony the validity of this clause was tested. The suit was finally carried to the United States Supreme Court, where the rights of the company, under the prohibition clause, were upheld.

General Palmer, later, in discussing the history of Colorado Springs, explained that the prohibitory clause was not inserted in the deeds for moral reasons, but that "the aim was intensely practical—to create a habitable and successful town."

The General and his associates had had ample experience of new western railroad towns, and wished to eliminate the disagreeable features of such towns from Colorado Springs. Even then, though the prohibition movement had not been fairly launched in this country these practical men recognize the fact that Meeker had recognized; namely that with saloons, dance halls and gambling places, gunfighting and lynchings went hand in hand.

It is recorded that the restriction seemed to work against the town at first, but, on the other hand, such growth as came was substantial, and Colorado Springs attracted a better class of settlers than the wide open towns near-by. The wisdom of this arrangement is amply proven, to-day, by a comparison of Colorado Springs with the neighboring town of Colorado City, which has not had prohibition.

Even before Colorado Springs existed, General Palmer had fallen in love with the place and determined that he would some day have a home at the foot of the mountains in that neighborhood. In the early seventies he purchased a superb cañon a few miles west of the city, and the Tudor Castle which he built there, and which he named Glen Eyrie, because of the eagles' nests on the walls of his cañon, remains to-day one of the most remarkable houses on this continent.

Every detail of the house as it stands, and every item in the history of its construction expresses the force and originality which were such strong attributes of its late proprietor.

The General was an engineer. In the Civil War he was colonel of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry, and was breveted a general. After the war he went into the West and became a railroad builder. Evidently he was one of those men, typical of his time, who seem to have had a craving to condense into one lifetime the experiences and achievements of several. He was, so to speak, his own ancestor and his own descendant; there were, in effect, three generations of him: soldier, railroad builder, and landed baron. In his castle at Glen Eyrie one senses very strongly this baronial quality. Clearly the General could not be content with a mere modern house. He wanted a castle, and above all, an old castle. And, as Colorado is peculiarly free of old castles, he had to build one for himself. That is what he did, and the superb initiative of the man is again reflected in the means he used. The house must be of old lichen-covered stone, but, being already past middle age, the General could not wait on Nature. Therefore he caused the whole region to be scoured for flat, weathered stones which could be cut for his purpose. These he transported to his glen, where they were carefully cut and set in place, so that the moment the new wall was up it was an old wall. Finding the flat stones was easy, however, compared with finding those presenting a natural right angle, for the corners of the house. Nevertheless, all were ultimately discovered and laid, and the desired result was attained. After the house was done the General thought the roof lacked just the proper note of color, so he caused it to be torn off, and replaced with tiles from an old church in England.

Perhaps the most splendid thing about the place is an enormous hall, paneled in oak, with a gallery and a beamed barrel ceiling, but there are other features which make the house unusual. On the roof is a great Krupp bell, which can be heard for miles, and which was used to call the General's guests home for meals. There is a power plant, a swimming pool, a complicated device for recording meteorological conditions in the mountains. And of course there are fireplaces in which great logs were burned; yet there are no chimneys on the house. The General did not want chimneys issuing smoke into his cañon, so he simply did not have them. Instead, he constructed a tunnel which runs up the mountainside behind the house and takes care of the smoke, emitting it at an unseen point, far above.

Meanwhile the General played Santa Claus to Colorado Springs, giving her parks and boulevards. One day, while riding on his place, he was thrown from his horse and a vertebra was fractured, with the result that he was permanently prostrated. After that he lay for some time like a wounded eagle in his eyrie, his mind as active as ever. He was still living in 1907, when the time for the annual reunion of his old regiment came around. Unable to go East, he invited the remaining veterans to come to him by special train, as his guests. So they came—the remnants of that old cavalry regiment, and passed in review, for the last time, before their Colonel, lying helpless with a broken neck.