Gen. William J. Palmer was not an avid churchgoer, but he was a visionary.
When he founded Colorado Springs in 1871, he hoped to make the area desirable to families, schools and churches by creating a different kind of Western town. After working and living in railroad towns while bringing the Kansas and Pacific Railroad to Denver, he knew they tended to be lawless places, with gambling, saloons and prostitution. With the Springs, he and the Colorado Springs Company wanted to nourish a more wholesome vibe. It was, after all, where he had decided to put down roots and raise his family.
“Their vision for Colorado Springs was always as a community for families that would attract people to invest long term, and to do that you needed those stabilizing institutions, like schools and churches,” said Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum’s curator of history, Leah Davis Witherow,
One way to attract like-minded folks? Free land. To encourage the development of churches and schools. Palmer’s Colorado Springs Company distributed about a dozen free lots to congregations that wanted to construct a permanent building. Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal congregations all sprang up in the Springs’ earliest years.
“He’s trying to create an equitable or level playing field,” Witherow said. “So that congregations don’t have to have a lot of wealth before they become established. If everybody has a free lot, they’re on an equal playing field. No one congregation will be more powerful than another.”
Without buildings to meet in, early congregations floated around town, gathering at members’ homes or in such places as Foote’s Hall, a downtown building with a drugstore and mail counter on its first floor, and later on the second floor of The Colorado Springs Gazette on North Tejon Street.
Having free property was a great start for churches, but it takes a lot of money to put up a building. Attracting a permanent pastor also was a challenge. Turnover in congregations was huge in the early years.
And once churches did erect buildings, there was a propensity for them to shed their skins.
“In the 1890s, we see various churches outgrow their initial buildings, and their lots are being subsumed for business purposes or government, and they move further and further out of the initially very small downtown core,” Witherow said. “What it signals to us and symbolizes is the growth of the town.”
There’s no evidence Palmer, a Hicksite Quaker who was raised in Philadelphia, attended Quaker meetings in the Springs. The Pioneers Museum has letters to his childhood best friend in which he describes finding God in nature.
“He writes his friend if that fire and brimstone preacher would lead his congregation out into the forest outside of any church building, they would feel the presence of God more strongly than they ever can inside a church,” Witherow said.
Here’s a look at some of the city’s first churches.
FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
First United Methodist Church was the city’s first church. The Springs was founded July 31, 1871, and the congregation began to organize in the fall. FUMC was the first to have a frame building, at Huerfano and Weber streets. Huerfano later became Colorado Avenue. The church was built to be easily moved, which it was in 1881, when it relocated to Kiowa Street and Nevada Avenue, what later became the site of City Hall.
It moved again in 1900 to its current location, a few blocks north at 420 N. Nevada Ave., said First United Methodist archivist and historian Brenda Hawley. It was finished and dedicated in 1902.
Thomas Barber, a renowned architect and a member of the church, designed the 1902 church. He also worked on City Hall with famous architect Thomas MacLaren, St. Mary’s Catholic Church and the Hibbad & Co. building, among others.
“When we look at these buildings as what they mean to their congregations, they’re very significant to the spiritual life of the community,” Witherow said.
“But also look at what they have to offer us in terms of architectural gems or these containers of memories. It took First United’s congregation 30 years to grow in financial strength and membership strength to build such an important building and to hire Barber.”
In 1956, the congregation built a new church with a new sanctuary to the north of the 1902 church, and tore the old church down. Over the next few years, they added an education church and a chapel.
FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
Part of Palmer’s vision included attracting a college to town, as a liberal arts school can bring an intellectual and social richness that contributes to the city’s desirability.
In 1874, a few congregations were looking into whether they could support a school, including First Congregational Church. The organization didn’t want to back a college unless there was a local congregation to help support it, so Congregationalists in the Eastern U.S. sent a professor to scout out the possibility. It was a successful endeavor — Colorado College was founded only a few days ahead of establishing FCC.
The first CC professors were FCC members, though that started to change over time, but what FCC historian Chris Steenbergen finds interesting were the church’s 25 founding members.
“They were pretty ordinary people — middle class,” he said. “They range from a couple of professors, a local sheep farmer, a businessman who rented out horses and buggies, the wife of the first postmaster, the city engineer and his wife. It even included a teamster who had just come from Denver and his wife.”
The congregation’s first building, built in 1879, was south of what is now Acacia Park, in the spot where Meeker Music once stood. The church’s pastor, James B. Gregg, became so popular people would come from other churches to listen to his sermons, said Steenbergen, and the building was deemed too small almost immediately after it had been built.
Proposals were solicited for a new building, and the church committee selected architect H.R. Marshall, whose wife had moved from New York to the Springs a year earlier to help heal from tuberculosis. She brought their daughter with her. Marshall’s wife died in 1888, and he went back to New York with his daughter. A local company implemented his design at 20 E. St. Vrain St., where the church stands today. MacLaren redesigned the church in the early 1900s.
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Sheldon Jackson was a famous Presbyterian church planter who’s responsible for setting up more than 100 churches along the Rocky Mountain range. He’s responsible for planting First Presbyterian in 1871, and managed to persuade a preacher named Henry Gage, who was preaching in Colorado City, to come speak twice a month. In 1872, the church was incorporated with eight members and Gage as their pastor, said Tim McConnell, lead pastor at First Presbyterian.
That first small, traditional clapboard building was where the City Auditorium stands today. It was moved to Nevada Avenue and Bijou Street in 1888, and expanded toward Weber Street over time, said Alison Murray, executive director of the church. When the church moved into its new building, it stood at 260 members. Today, there are 3,200.
“That’s a bold congregation,” Witherow said, “because they purchased six blocks from Nevada to Weber along Bijou. They were dreaming big. They were expansionists from early on.”
SACRED HEART CHURCH
It was a slog to attend services at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Manitou Springs, the oldest Catholic church in the Diocese, founded in 1882. Parishioners had to hike up the pass, and with only a horse and buggy, it was too much. So they created a parish for those who lived in Colorado City, and deemed it St. Mary’s. It opened in 1891 at 26th Street and Robinson Avenue.
A problem sprang up in 1917, when Colorado Springs annexed Colorado City — now there were two St. Mary’s churches. A Catholic church of the same name existed downtown. The two churches co-existed for awhile, but when the Colorado City church outgrew its location and moved to its current spot in 1922, at 2030 W. Colorado Ave., the name was changed to Sacred Heart Church, said Grace Donnelly, communications volunteer and safe environment coordinator at Sacred Heart. MacLaren designed the new church in the Spanish Mission style.
In 1926, the bishop of Denver invited the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to take over pastoral responsibilities, which included taking over OLPH as a mission of Sacred Heart. And in 1931, Holy Rosary Chapel in Cascade was added as another mission, making Sacred Heart one parish with three churches.
Contact the writer: 636-0270
This content was originally published here.