"Colorado Springs - Sunshine & Blue... " a Colorado Springs Travel Page by kimod74

In August 1871, Colorado Springs was founded by General William Palmer, a veteran of the American Civil War. Its present downtown location owes to the fact that Palmer disliked the saloons of Colorado City and ensured his city was alcohol free, keeping well clear of the alcohol loving denizens just west of his newly founded city. After Prohibition ended in 1933 Colorado Springs became open to alcohol sales and bars were established in its borders.

The former territorial capital of Colorado City just west of downtown Colorado Springs and east of Manitou Springs served as Colorado's territorial capital in 1862, meeting in a log cabin on Colorado Avenue on July 7, 1862. On August 14, 1862 the territorial legislature approved an act which named Golden as the territorial capital. Colorado City was never recognized by the Federal government as the territorial capital, and was some decades later annexed into the City of Colorado Springs. Colorado City was known in its early days as a center of gold ore processing which came from nearby Cripple Creek. Saloons served alcoholic beverages to the miners found there, while Colorado Springs, under the influence of Gen. Palmer, stayed dry in order to attract a genteel type of resident in its early days.

In August 1893, visiting English professor Katherine Lee Bates wrote America the Beautiful from her Antlers Hotel room after visiting the top of Pikes Peak.

Colorado Springs averages 250 days of sunshine per year, and receives 15.42 inches of annual precipitation. Average snowfall for the area (included in the previous annual precipitation calculation) is 5.5" in November, 5.7" in December, 5.0" in January, 5.1" in February, 9.4" in March, and 6.3" in April.

Colorado Springs has a variety of Industry that makes up our economy base - a few major companies and organizations are:

United States Air Force Academy - Air Force
Cheyenne Mountain Air Station - Air Force: a major military center, home of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), it is housed in Cheyenne Mountain, south of Pikes Peak.
Peterson Air Force Base - Air Force
Schriever Air Force Base - Air Force
Fort Carson - Army
MCI - Telecommunications - has a fairly large engineering presence
HP - Computing - large sales, support. and SAN storage engineering center. The location was built by Digital Equipment Corporation, renamed Compaq in the 1998 acquisition of Digital, and finally renamed HP after the 2002 merger.
SNIA - Computing - home of the SNIA Technology Center
Agilent - Tech manufacturing - HP operated a large facility in the area that was later renamed Agilent in the spinoff.
Intel - Chip fabrication - bought a fabrication plant from Rockwell International in 2000 and now run as Fab 23 making flash memory chips. Intel had plans for building a second location, but abandoned the idea due to the falling economy in 2001.
There is also a large base of various government contractors that employ a large sector of the population.
We also have quite a bit of retail and dining facilities throughout the region aka: We like to shop and eat!

Education - Colorado Springs has a large variety of universities to choose from, whether you are a young student or a working professional you are guaranteed to find a school and class schedule to fit your needs in order to get that degree!!

Some of our colleges include:

The Colorado College, founded in 1874
The United States Air Force Academy
The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS).
Pikes Peak Community College
Nazarene Bible College
Regis University
The University of Phoenix
Colorado Technical University
Colorado State Pueblo (also has a Colorado Springs location).