Old Fort and Stockade

The fort was a hotel. During the scare of 1864 Colorado City's settlers raised a loopholed palisade of upright logs, about twelve feet high, around the Anway family's two-story log hotel, and crowded into it again in August 1868, when some seventy-five Cheyenne and Arapaho men, the plaque's Indians, came through the valley. In quieter winters an early resident remembered Christmas shooting matches ending in a dance at the Anway fort. Thieves took the 1936 state bronze for its metal around 2011; the Old Colorado City Historical Society set this replacement in 2012.

What the plaque says

This marks the site of the Old Fort and Stockade built by pioneers of Colorado City used in defense against the Indians in 1864 and 1868 constructed of logs set on end Erected by Old Colorado City Historical Society 2012 Original plaque erected in 1936 by the State Historical Society of Colorado and the El Paso County Pioneers Association

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Garden of the Gods — 1.9 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 — 2.6 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 — 3.5 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 — 0.4 mi
• Colorado City — 0.4 mi
• Ute Pass — 3.4 mi
• Old Stone Fort — 17 mi