La Foret is an unincorporated populated place in El Paso County. It is located near Shoup Road and

Colorado State Highway 83 State Highway 83 (SH 83) is a state highway that is located along the Front Range in the U.S. State of Colorado. Spanning about from the SH 21 (Powers Boulevard) interchange in northern Colorado Springs and SH 2 (Colorado Boulevard.) in ...

towards Interstate 25. Residents of La Foret generally work and shop in nearby

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 ...

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

. Activities in La Foret are primarily centered on the presence of the La Foret Conference and Retreat Center which is located there. The famous

Ponderosa Lodge Ponderosa Lodge at La Foret Conference and Retreat Center is a historic lodge in Black Forest, Colorado. It is a National Register of Historic Places listing Jacques Benedict Jules Jacques Benois Benedict (April 22, 1879 – January 16, 1948) was one of the most prominent architects in Colorado history, whose works include a number of well-known landmarks and buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Place ...

and appears on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and the

Colorado State Register of Historic Properties The Colorado State Register of Historic Properties, administered by the History Colorado Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, is a listing of significant historic resources. History Colorado maintains a list of the Colorado State Regis ...

is located in La Foret and is now part of the La Foret Conference and Retreat Center.

History

The History of La Foret is very similar to that of the nearby

and the larger region along the

Palmer Divide Named after Colorado Springs founder William Jackson Palmer, the Palmer Divide is a caprock escarpment style ridge in central Colorado that separates the Arkansas River basin from the South Platte basin. It extends from the Front Range of the R ...

area traditionally known as "The Pineries". La Foret was first settled in the 1850s and was predominantly a lumber mill community. As the amount of lumber milling began to decline in the La Foret area around the 1880s ranching became the predominant industry in La Foret, however lumbering continued sporadically up until the 1950s. Today, La Foret acts predominantly as a somewhat rural suburb for nearby

and the Denver Metropolitan Area.

References

{{coord, 39, 00, 34, N, 104, 42, 52, W, type:city_region:US-CO_source:GNIS-enwiki, display=title El Paso County, Colorado