Colorado City

The bronze calls it the first capital, and on paper it was, for about nine months. The first territorial legislature, sitting in Denver, named Colorado City the capital by an act of November 5, 1861. The second session convened here on July 7, 1862, found too few rooms and too little of everything else, and on July 11 voted to reconvene in Denver; within weeks the capital went to Golden. The town was laid out in 1859 as the supply gate to the South Park diggings, and lost most of that trade to Denver roads by 1860.

What the plaque says

This tablet is the property of the State of Colorado Colorado City Founded here in August, 1859. Then in El Paso County, Kansas. So named because at the gateway to mines thought to be on the Colorado River. Incorporated with Colorado Springs on June 11, 1917. The First Capital of Colorado. So designated by the first territorial legislature, 1861. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the El Paso County Pioneers' Association and the City of Colorado Springs 1940

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Garden of the Gods — 2.2 mi
  Named in 1859 by a surveyor who wanted no beer garden there, and given to the city in 1909 on the condition it stay free, dry and unbuilt.
• Manitou Cliff Dwellings — 3.0 mi
  A pueblo from McElmo Canyon, dismantled, shipped across the Rockies by rail and set in cement into a dynamited overhang as cliff dwellings it never was.
• Pikes Peak Cog Railway — 3.8 mi
  A mattress maker's answer to a two-day mule ride, running since 1891, shut in 2017 and rebuilt from the rails up with Swiss trains in 2021.
• Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument — 23 mi
  Redwood stumps buried by a volcanic mudflow 34 million years ago, sold off by the piece for a century, and saved in 1969 by scientists ready to lie down in front of bulldozers.

More markers nearby

• Log House — steps away
• Old Fort and Stockade — 0.4 mi
• Ute Pass — 3.8 mi
• Old Stone Fort — 17 mi