The Pioneer Museum of Colorado Springs, Colorado

The Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum sits on the corner of Tejon and Vermillo. The address is 215 S. Tejon. The Museum's hours are: Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., closed on Sunday. Admission is free and inside you will find a group of very polite people to help you find your way around the museum

Parking for the Pioneer Museum is mostly metered. Anytime a trip is planned for the downtown Colorado Springs area it's best to have a pocket full of quarters.

Colorado Springs was founded in 1871 by Civil war hero, General William Palmer. Simplistically, Palmer could be said to have been a railroad man. He was an engineer for the Kansas Railroad Line. Later, Palmer founded the D&RGR. (Denver& Rio Grande Railroad) But Palmer was much more that. He made many donations to the city of Colorado Springs. One of his donations was a tuberculosis sanitarium that was to become Colorado College of Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs history is the story of stubborn and visionary men like General Palmer.

The Pioneer museum isn't just a history of Colorado Springs. It's the history of a time when men and women had a fever that put a choke hold on them. Some cases of the fever were never fully cured. Gold fever had struck the tiny town of Colorado Springs and other towns such as Denver and what is now known as Englewood.

The California gold rush of 1849 was almost over and miners were going back home, broke and disillusioned. On their way back home to the East, word began to filter over the Rocky Mountains about gold fields. The kind of gold fields where a man didn't have to dig for days on end for a few specks of dust. This was gold that could be picked up off the ground or placer mined at the side of a stream. The gold rush of 1859 was underway and the Colorado Territory began to fill up the men and women who would eventually settle the territory and usher it into Statehood.

In 1873 the big gold boom had settled down and the territory along with it. Another boom was about to get under way but this was a real sickness, tuberculosis. Colorado Springs was marketed to the people back East as a cure for tuberculosis. The altitude and thin air did work wonders for many patients. One of them was Helen Hunt.

Helen Hunt moved to Colorado Springs in 1873 in a search of a cure for her tuberculosis. Hunt, an educated woman is best known in Colorado Springs as an Indian activist. She was upset with the handling of Indian affairs and tried to get the Congress and Senate to deal with the Indians in a humane way. She finally wrote books in such a way that it would cause other Americans to examine the plight of Native Americans. Her most successful book was, Ramona, a story about a part Indian orphan girl and her Indian husband, Alessandro.

These are just a few of the stories that can be found at the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum. Plan for approximately two hours to explore the museum and artifacts inside.

Sources
http://www.coloradovacation.com/history/colorado-springs-william-palmer.html
http://jes.tvusd.k12.ca.us/biography_jackson.htm