The Heller Center at Eagle Rock,
Colorado Springs, Colorado
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 ...
is a nature preserve bequeathed to the
University of Colorado Colorado Springs
The University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) is a public research university in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It is one of four campuses that make up the University of Colorado system. As of Fall 2017, UCCS had over 12,400 undergraduate an ...
to support local arts and humanities education.
History
From the 1930s Dottie and Lawrence Heller homesteaded a land parcel in the pinion-pine grasslands at Austin Bluffs, settling directly below the rocky outcrop of Eagle Rock. The Hellers named their homestead "Yawn Valley", and held parties for Lawrence Heller's artist colleagues from the
Broadmoor Art Academy. The area has seen increasing urban development since that time.
After 60 years at Yawn Valley, the Hellers bequeathed their ranchland with the architecture and art collection to the University of Colorado Colorado Springs for use as a nature preserve to support local arts and humanities education.
Geography
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...
field study classes are held at the Heller Ranch, where students practise birdsong-listening, wildflower identification, and dendro-chronological investigations.
Geomorphology
Eagle Rock participates in the Austin Bluffs area's soil type of the "Travessilla-Rock outcrop complex," as mapped at the scale of 1:24,000-ft., (ref. USDA, 1974.) The Eagle Rock cliff resulted from several long cycles of mountain-building (
orogenies
Orogeny is a mountain building process. An orogeny is an event that takes place at a convergent plate margin when plate motion compresses the margin. An ''orogenic belt'' or ''orogen'' develops as the compressed plate crumples and is uplifted t ...
) followed by erosion. Heat and pressure energies that had thrust up the mountains produced igneous rock, such as the
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 ...
pink granite, which eventually degraded. Natural forces dispersed and deposited particles of the rock debris. Over time, the sediment collected and consolidated into new sandstone at the Garden of the Gods, producing a geologic layer known as the
Dakota Formation
The Dakota is a sedimentary geologic unit name of formation and group rank in Midwestern North America. The Dakota units are generally composed of sandstones, mudstones, clays, and shales deposited in the Mid-Cretaceous opening of the Western Int ...
. The Dakota sedimented sandstone later came to be inundated by the waters of a shallow inland sea. From some 66 to 70 million years ago and episodically continuing for millions of years, uplift from the Laramide Orogeny exposed the old sandstone seabed, by tilting up to 90-degree angles the steep red megaliths now visible in the Garden of the Gods. Portions of the Dakota Formation again cycled into episodes of erosion, allowing a detritus of coarse-grained sedimentary sand to be displaced some three miles (5 km) eastwards, to land at the site which is now known as Austin Bluffs. The feldspar-rich sedimented particles of "arkose" sand consolidated into new sandstone, i.e. the Dawson Formation, which shows Eagle Rock's characteristic color, ranging from grey to reddish. At Eagle Rock, the sandstone cliff visible today has survived further erosion for a longer time, than the less-resistant background soils could have withstood. Eagle Rock lies exposed to view, as a weather-sculpted geological form.
[Huber, Thomas P. (1998) "Colorado: The Place of Nature, the Nature of Place" University Press of Colorado, Niwat, Colorado. pp. 6 and 55.]
Heller Center
The Heller Center consists of a ranch house, guest house, and art gallery, surrounded by lilacs. Wild prairie, with some invasive vegetation like the classically pyramidal juniper tree, extends past the Hellers' architectural landscape. Further southwards are sculpture gardens set onto the front lawns of an old art colony which appeared along Stanton Road when the Eagle Rock suburban neighborhood was first developed. Since the university was established in 1965 at the former
Cragmor Sanatorium
The town of Colorado Springs, Colorado played an important role in the history of tuberculosis in the era before antituberculosis drugs and vaccines. Tuberculosis management before this era was difficult and often of limited effect. In the 19th ce ...
on the
Bluffs’ southern slope, campus development continues to edge around toward Eagle Rock's precincts. Far to the south, the skyscrapers of downtown Colorado Springs are visible.
References
*U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, in cooperation with the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station, (surveyed 1974,) "Soil Survey of El Paso County Area, Colorado."
*U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, F. V. Hayden in Charge (1877) "Panoramic Views – the Pikes Peak Group from Bluff East of Monument Creek" at the scale of to one-inch, in "Atlas of Colorado and Portions of Adjacent Territory." Washington D.C. Electronic image from the collection of the Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado. Item. 1965:10003:A19. < https://web.archive.org/web/20071207200056/http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu/images/C004/C00419.htm> Accessed 2007 Oct. 4. Note copyright which allows use for private scholarship and by university presses engaging in non-commercial publication.
{{University of Colorado
University of Colorado Colorado Springs
Nature reserves in Colorado
Arts organizations based in Colorado
Humanities organizations
Education in Colorado Springs, Colorado