The Cheyenne Mountain Highway, also called Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Road, is a road in

Colorado Springs Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

that begins at the intersection of Penrose Boulevard, Old Stage Road, and West Cheyenne Mountain Boulevard. It is a paved road to the

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is a zoological park located southwest of downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Cheyenne Mountain in the United States. At an elevation of 6,714 feet (2,046 m) above sea level, it is the highest zoo in America. The z ...

and the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun. Thereafter, it is an unpaved private road to one of the peaks of the mountain, known as The Horns.

Geography

Cheyenne Mountain has three peaks. The southern peak is Cheyenne Mountain's summit at in elevation, the antenna farm sits on the middle peak, and the northern peak is called The Horns. Cheyenne Mountain Highway ends at The Horns.

Description

The road is paved to the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun, thereafter it is a unpaved road to The Horns, where The Broadmoor's Cloud Camp is located. This was formerly the site of the Cheyenne Mountain Lodge. There are gates that control the access to the road: two after the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and a third after the Will Rogers Shrine. The Broadmoor has maintained the road for the transport of guests to Cloud Camp. A portion of the road is named Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Road. The Cheyenne Mountain Highway was originally built for transportation to properties built by

Spencer Penrose Spencer Penrose (November 2, 1865 - December 7, 1939) was an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. He made his fortune from mining, ore processing, and real estate speculation in Colorado and other parts of the West. He founded the Utah Copper ...

, which came to include the zoo, the shrine, and the top of the mountain.

History

Road to Broadmoor properties

After building

The Broadmoor The Broadmoor (stylized as THE BRODMOOR) is a hotel and resort in the Broadmoor neighborhood of Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Broadmoor is a member of Historic Hotels of America of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Its visitors hav ...

, Spencer Penrose began to develop Cheyenne Mountain property that he purchased on the northern peak in 1915. He built the Cheyenne Mountain Highway in 1925. Initially called the Broadmoor-Cheyenne Mountain Highway, it began south of The Broadmoor at the Old Stage Road and ascended to the summit with 32 switchback turns up the mountain, gaining almost in altitude with a maximum 10% grade. It afforded views of Colorado Springs and

Pikes Peak Pikes Peak is the List of mountain ranges of Colorado#Mountain ranges, highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in North America. The Ultra-prominent peak, ultra-prominent fourteener is located in Pike National Forest ...

. Penrose hired

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...

(CCC) workers to build the unpaved decomposed gravel toll road. In the depressed economy, this provided work for individuals in need of jobs and helped him to manage construction costs. The cost of the construction was $350,000 (). In 1926, the Cheyenne Mountain Lodge opened at the top of Cheyenne Mountain. Visitors could make the trip up the highway to the lodge on the backs of elephants, such as an elephant given to Penrose by an Indian rajah. The toll gate was situated on the highway just before the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (1926), and the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun (1937) was built on the northern

promontory A promontory is a raised mass of land that projects into a lowland or a body of water (in which case it is a peninsula). Most promontories either are formed from a hard ridge of rock that has resisted the erosive forces that have removed the so ...

of the mountain. The Broadmoor also operated a ski area from 1959-1991 on Cheyenne Mountain, near the Broadmoor Shooting Range. The highway was rebuilt and widened, received several scenic turnouts, and paved with asphaltic concrete following a flood that washed out the road in July 1965. It reopened in April 1966.

Cog railroad

Penrose opened the original Broadmoor-Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Cog Railroad in June 1938, and

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was a passenger on its first run. The train was a replica of the steam trains operated by the

Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway The Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway (also known as the Pikes Peak Cog Railway) is a cog railway that climbs one of the most iconic mountains in the United States, Pikes Peak in Colorado. The base station is in Manitou Springs, near ...

In 1950, a "new streamlined" cog train called the ''Broadmoor Mountaineer'' was dedicated by Charles L. Tutt, Jr., The Broadmoor's president, and J. F. Gordon, the president of

Cadillac Motor Company The Cadillac Motor Car Division () is a division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM) that designs and builds luxury vehicles. Its major markets are the United States, Canada, and China. Cadillac models are distributed i ...

, who operated the train on its inaugural ride. Cheyenne Mountain Cog Railroad offered service on a narrow gauge road from The Broadmoor to the

from 1961 until 1974. The railway engine called The Mountaineer was a small edition of the narrow gauge cog trains used to climb Pikes Peak. Two

Plexiglas Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite, ...

-topped cars, each carrying up to 20 people, took passengers for a ride through four tunnels. The ride began at a boarding station by the lake at The Broadmoor and stopped at the zoo's entrance, the Thundergod House.

Notes

References

External links

{{External images , float=left , width=600px , image
Early view of Cheyenne Mountain Highway
Pikes Peak Library District , image
Cheyenne Mountain Highway toll house (estimate by 1930)
Denver Public Library , image
View of Colorado Springs from Cheyenne Mountain Highway (estimate by 1928)
Denver Public Library , image
Aerial views of Cheyenne Mountain and Cheyenne Mountain Highway
Transportation in Colorado Springs, Colorado Historic trails and roads in Colorado

Highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-access ...