(smooth music) - [Matt] It's this rugged place at the foot of the
Rocky Mountains with an English-style castle (chuckles) right
in the heart of it. It's a little shocking the first time you
come to the grounds. - [Leah] It's so
beautifully constructed. It almost is perfection and it looks like it's been
here for hundreds of years. - [Susan] Palmer had a vision for building Glen Eyrie
into what we have today. [Leah] Was he gutsy? Was he a little outrageous? Was he living on the edge? Absolutely. Everything was a gamble. (steam engine)
(smooth music) - [Susan] An archeology
dig of this nature is actually very rare. - [Matt] We discovered
Palmer's trash site. The trash doesn't lie. We don't have
Rockefeller's trash. We don't have Washington's
trash, we have Palmer's. - To find more about Palmer
over 100 years after he's gone-- - It's once in a lifetime.
(dramatic music) - [Male Narrator] This
program was made possible by the History Colorado
State Historical Fund. - [Female Narrator]
Supporting projects throughout the state
to preserve, protect, and interpret
Colorado's architectural and archeological treasures. History Colorado
State Historical Fund. Create the future,
honor the past. - [Male Narrator] With
additional funding provided in memory of Deanna E. La
Camera and members like you. With special thanks to
the Denver Public Library, History Colorado, the Colorado
Office of Film, Television, and Media, and to
these organizations. (smooth music) (music intensifies) (smooth music) - [Leah] I think the way that
you come in to Glen Eyrie on this winding
road, up a canyon, and there at the back
this castle is situated looking like it's
always been here. - The thing that makes
Glen Eyrie Canyon so powerful is, you know, it's part of the same geology
as Garden of the Gods. - The Garden of the
Gods landscape consists of course the large famous
red rock formations. - There are different
colors of sandstones and conglomerates and granite
that were actually uplifted during the mountain building
process of Pikes Peak. So as the mountain
built, sandstones got
tilted vertically. - [Matt] You don't really see these sandstone spires
until you get here. The canyon opens up
to you as you arrive at the castle and continues on. - It's a beautiful
place and it draws many, many people
and always has. (smooth music) Historian Elliott West
wrote that eastern settlers coming from the East to the West thought they were leaving
the old country for the new, but they had it
exactly backwards. Human history in the
Pikes Peak region goes back tens of
thousands of years, and for the Ute this is
their ancestral homeland. Culturally, historically,
this is their place of being. In addition, there are up to
50 other tribes and nations who have cultural ties
here, trade ties, et cetera. - The front range of
the Rocky Mountains was a cultural crossroads. Many different cultures,
indigenous, European, later American, came
through this area. - Of course the
Pikes Peak Gold Rush coming in the 1850s and 1860s really kind of started pushing
European-Americans this way. - And then almost a crush
or invasion of people result in the forced
removal of the Ute people, and then also the forced removal of Cheyenne, Arapaho,
and other tribes. So as a result of
western settlement the indigenous people
of the Pikes Peak region were removed from a
place they had been for hundreds and
thousands of years. - [Woman Narrator] Once settlers
determined westward routes to be safe they were
ready to take advantage of these newly
available territories. - The race for a
transcontinental railroad was on to link our nation
from coast to coast, to move people,
ideas, information, and of course products
back and forth. - It was about making the
settlement of the West possible, which would not have happened
without the railroads. It takes a visionary who sees not only the value of railroads but the way of
rethinking railroads and how railroads
connect both to industry and to city building. William Jackson Palmer was
raised in the Philadelphia area. Fascinating character
born in 1836. He came up in a time
of social cataclysm for the United States,
a time where we were debating what would
happen with slavery. - [Leah] Despite the
fact that Quakers historically are pacifists, he actually
volunteered for service in the Civil War and
encouraged others to do so, eventually forming the
Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, because slavery was a
greater evil than war. - And returned after the
war to his first love, which was railroads. - [Leah] Like so many
thousands of other young men of his generation he
turns his eyes west. - Palmer is interesting
to me because he, I think, was a very quiet
person, I think, in his natural way of being. At the same time
he was able to have all of these grand adventures. He was a math and
a science nerd, so he loved engineering,
he loved new discoveries. I think that led him out west. Palmer first saw
this region in 1869 on a surveying trip for the
Kansas Pacific Railroad. He fell in love with this place
almost as soon as he saw it. - He's looking for resources and he sees them,
coal, water, land. He's assessing the
geology and the geography. - [Susan] He first saw the
valley that became Glen Eyrie, and he was instantly enchanted. He wrote a letter to
his fiance, Queen. - And he penned the words: "Someday there will
be a great resort here "and the mineral
springs will be useful, "and people will come as soon
as the railroad arrives." And his vision is
to open up the West to link Denver to the
rest of the world, a railroad that instead
of going transcontinental from east to west will take
a north to southern route, will eventually link up
the trade-rich cities of Santa Fe and all
the way to Mexico City. So he forms his own railroad,
the Denver and Rio Grande, a railroad that
leaves Denver in 1870 and starts heading south.
(steam engine) A critical piece of the railroad building strategy
was to create towns so that the lands could be sold and those profits
could be reinvested in the railroad to build
mile by mile by mile. He built the town
of South Pueblo outside of the preexisting
town of Pueblo. He built the town of Lebron
outside of Cañon City. He built Colorado Springs
outside of Colorado City. - Denver was the business
center of the state. Pueblo was the steel
town and industrial town. Colorado Springs
was more driven by let's build a beautiful
place in a beautiful location where people would
choose to live. - [Leah] And so
he created a town that would attract
people just like himself who wanted to come here for the
healthfulness of the climate and the respite of the
incredible scenic beauty. - [Female Narrator] Palmer
even met his fiance on a train. Her name was Queen,
a childhood nickname. They married in 1870
and the newlyweds, fascinated by castles and
the rich history of Europe, honeymooned in England. Inspired by their journey they
returned to Colorado Springs to begin construction
on their dream home. It was the beginning
of their life together, the beginning of Palmer's
Denver and Rio Grande railroad, and the beginning of
settling a wild place that would soon come to
be known as Glen Eyrie. - John Blair, the
landscape architect, saw an eagle's nest or an eyrie on the side of a
beautiful rock here and gave the name Glen
Eyrie to this space. (smooth music) - [Susan] The carriage
house at Glen Eyrie was built in 1871, and it was the first building
built on the property, and William and his
new wife, Queen, lived in the upper stories
while they were waiting for their main
house to be built. The original Glen Eyrie
was a Gothic style house and it was built in the
form of a Latin cross, and it had about 27 rooms. It was built on the
banks of Camp Creek that flows from the mountains
down the Glen Eyrie valley. The first major addition
happened in the 1880s. - [Michael] The initial
house didn't have the tower. In the 1880s they added it. - It does have a tower, a room that we're actually
sitting in right now that was reserved for Queen
for her artistic pursuits, to entertain friends. - [Susan] We think that Queen
was very game to be out here. - [Leah] They were
a team together. Unfortunately over time her
health began to decline. She suffered a
debilitating heart attack and was given the medical advice that she needed to
seek a lower altitude. - So she moved back
east for a little bit and then she eventually
settled in England. She brought her three
daughters out there, so Elsie, Dorothy, and Marjorie
were raised in England. - [Leah] Palmer would
travel to England two or three times a year. She would come back occasionally
as she was able to visit. - [Susan] She ends up
passing away, it's 1894. (smooth music) At that point Elsie
is in her early 20s and Dorothy and Marjorie
are in their teens, so the young ladies
come back to Glen Eyrie. - [Leah] Once Palmer
retires for good in 1901 he travels abroad
with his daughters and they purchase
things for this home that they're building together. - [Susan] For most
of his business life Palmer is juggling money. All of the money
that he's getting he's pouring back
into his business, so he was not personally
wealthy until after the sale of the Denver and Rio
Grande Western Railroad. I think at that point
he might have been like, "You know what, I've
been working hard "for other people my whole life. "Maybe it's time to
renovate the house." - [Leah] The castle
that we know today was really built
between 1904 and 1905. - [Susan] And we have the
main part of the house, which sits on the
footprint of the old house, and then there's
also a long hallway and then we have
what General Palmer called his library wing. Nowadays we call
that the great hall. (smooth music) - [Leah] He remodels Glen Eyrie into essentially a Tudor castle. It's a very consciously
constructed building. - [Matt] All of this
is about developing and creating the place that
he had in his mind's eye. - [Leah] And he hires
really talented artisans. He hires John Blair, a noted and accomplished
landscape designer. - [Michael] John Blair
designed a number of different rose gardens and other landscape
features along the estate, including the main
drive to be able to see different views of the
different rock formations as you approach the main house. - He also has Blair build
a set of rusticated bridges and seats that are placed
in a perfect position to take in the view
of the northern edge of the Garden of the Gods. (smooth music) He hired Edmond van Diest, a man who helped
engineer the parks that Palmer donated
to Colorado Springs, and Edmond van Diest
also engineered water systems here, electricity, and then Palmer hires
Frederick Sterner, an architect who designed
the Antlers Hotel, and used him to build
this beautiful castle. - Sterner worked a lot in
these Victorian revival styles. Thomas MacLaren was another
architect that Palmer hired in about 1906 to do some
renovations and design a number of the buildings
outside of the main estate. - [Susan] Palmer had a
vision for incorporating a lot of natural and local
materials into his home. We know that he got
some of the materials from the glen itself. Nowadays we refer to this
as Glen Eyrie Castle. Of course it's not a castle it's a Tudor
revival manor house. - The Tudor revival architecture is defined by cross-timber
or half-timbering. The upper half of the
wall is timber-framed and then stucco interior, and then the bottom half is
usually a stone or a brick, and it looks like those kinds
of ideas of an English estate. So these are very
defining elements of Victorian revival
architecture. What makes Glen Eyrie so unique is that it has both
the Gothic revival evident in the castle's tower and the other kind of
castle-like features,
the stonework, and this Tudor revival,
this half-timbering. - [Leah] Glen Eyrie
represented a true home, a home that he built, a home that he shared with
his family and his friends. - They had people in
from all over the world come and stay with them, and this is the era when
if you travel somewhere it takes enough effort and
time that you're gonna stay in that place for
a very long time, and so we think that
that's probably why a lot of the amenities that
the glen has were built. Palmer had a billiards
table, he had a pool hall, he had some swimming pools.
(water splashing) He was out here all by
himself in this valley, and so if he wanted power he
needed to build a power plant. If he wanted water piped inside he needed to install
a water system. - [Michael] And that
actually kind of speaks towards Palmer's idea
of self-sustainability. - He wasn't being
self-sufficient in the way that we
think of that today. Back in the day the
grid didn't exist, so they're supporting
themselves out here because they don't
really have a choice. Palmer loved technology
and innovation, and as soon as he
was able to afford some of the latest
innovations of the day he brought them out
here to his home. He had one of the first
telephones in the area, and since there was really
nobody else for him to call he would call back and forth to the president of
Colorado College, and apparently they would
exchange weather information. Palmer was a weather nerd, and so he had a
weather vane installed, and this would tell him which
direction the wind was blowing and what was going on outside. (smooth music) - [Leah] He has an electric
gate system installed. He has a lightning
suppression system installed. He has a fire suppression
system installed. - [Susan] Palmer
also had a central vacuum system
installed in his house, and there were
nozzles on the wall where his servants
could've hooked up to to do the vacuuming. - It's very modern. - In the building there
was a call system. Palmer and his family could
press a button on the wall and a little flipper
would go down, and that's how the
servants would know which room they needed to go to. Palmer also had a
tunnel installed that led from the
basement of his home to the carriage house. We think that this was
probably to help the servants travel back and forth from the
carriage house to the castle. (smooth music) Palmer didn't want smoke
filling the valley, so he and his
engineers found a way to have a chimney
built on the hillside that would release the smoke from the fireplaces
in the house. - He is intent on clean,
cutting edge, healthful. - [Susan] His youngest daughter
Marjorie had tuberculosis. We're not sure where
she contracted this, and one of the leading
theorems of the day was that tuberculosis
was spread through milk. - [Michael] He ended up
building another outbuilding, a pasteurization plant to be
able to pasteurize his milk. - He was really forward-thinking and he loved science and he
loved to apply new technology, and you can see it
throughout the castle and throughout the grounds. - [Susan] After years
of being an active man, of being a cavalry
leader in the Civil War, of riding on horseback,
of exploring the West, Palmer has a pretty tragic fate. Palmer was paralyzed in a
riding accident in 1906. - [Matt] He went on to live
another almost three years. - [Susan] He employed
a team of doctors and nurses to enable him
to live here at home, and he employed some
technology to help him as well. He bought some of the very
first cars in Colorado Springs. He had an electric car
and he had a steamer car. In his last days he
had one of his servants drive him around the glen
so he could see things, and on a snowy evening in
March of 1909 he passed away. - [Leah] He was
mourned statewide. He was also mourned nationally,
he was a national figure. He was known for
having really developed the economic resources of
the entire state of Colorado. He's given a lot of credit
for helping build the state. - [Susan] After
General Palmer's death there is a big question about what was going to
happen to the estate. The girls were not
necessarily interested in it. They offered it to the
city of Colorado Springs, which was not interested in it. They searched for a buyer
for years and years. - [Matt] The property
struggled over the years to try to find a steward
who would care for it. - Eventually in 1916 a group of investors from
Oklahoma buy the property, and their vision
is to turn it into a resort and a country club, and also to have miniature
villas built out here. That plan fails and in 1918 a man named Alexander
Cochran buys the property. Alexander Cochran was apparently the wealthiest
bachelor in America. It's likely that he
never really lived here. We think he might've
visited here on occasion. It was during Cochran's
era that they built another outbuilding
called the Pink House. The Pink House is
a concrete building that has three bedrooms. It's kind of a miniature
version of the castle, so the dining hall
and the living room have vaulted wood ceilings that mimic the great
hall in the castle. (smooth music) Eventually in the 1930s
a very wealthy oil family from Texas, the Strake family, buys the place and they are
using it for a summer home. They had beautiful,
wonderful times out here, and those times came to an end. There was a devastating flash
flood at the glen in 1947. It ripped out most
of the bridges, some
of the power lines. It just damaged some of the
buildings on the property. After that the glen was only
valued at a salvage value. Concurrently a man
named Dawson Trotman, who had founded an organization called The Navigators
in California, was looking for a new home. The Navigators is
an international
Christian ministry. The Navigators purchased
the property in 1953. The building had been
vacant for a very long time, and there was a
lot of work to do. - [Woman Narrator]
However, the quality of the original
building materials and craftsmanship of the castle mean many of Palmer's
innovations are
still working today. The building remains intact
through regular maintenance, but the Glen Eyrie complex is under constant threat
from the elements. - [Susan] A number of
environmental issues have posed a risk to
the built environment and also to human life
out here on the property. A flash flood happened in 1947 that destroyed a lot of the
infrastructure out here. Another flood happened in 1999. - [Man] We're here
in Peggy's van, what the heck are
we looking at here? - The most recent
disaster that we've had was the Waldo
Canyon fire in 2012 that burned right up to the
edge of Glen Eyrie's property and it burnt down
into Queens Canyon, and with the damage
to the canyon we know that there's a
pretty high likelihood of a life-threatening
flash flood happening now. (smooth music) So part of the work that The
Navigators did after the fire included some extensive
flood mitigation efforts. - The biggest project recently
was flood mitigation work that they wanted to
do along Camp Creek that runs in front of
Garden of the Gods. Camp Creek runs out
of Queens Canyon, and I was in that area
where the construction crews had kind of made a path
with their vehicles going in and out from
their staging area. They'd worn away at the
vegetation, and I started to notice certain
artifacts in the ground, and a lot of these artifacts
I didn't recognize. Context is everything
in archeology, and I started thinking of,
you know, what am I close to, who was living in
this area at the time. - [Female Narrator]
It didn't take long for Anna to realize
she had stumbled upon Palmer's trash heap full
of building materials and fancy household items. - The biggest
thing was to really connect them solidly to Palmer. It was fairly easy to do. I had found certain
enameled bricks. I just put in Google Chicago
Tiffany Enameled Brick Company, General Palmer, and
Colorado Springs, and a Google docs popped up and it was called The
Brickbuilder Monthly from 1904, and it's a little catalog, and it happened to say in there our bricks are being used in
the following new buildings and you go down the list and it says General William
Jackson Palmer residence, Glen Eyrie, Colorado
Springs, Colorado. So those bricks were being used in the electrical house
here at Glen Eyrie and also in the bowling alley that's in the basement
of the mansion here. - That was the key artifact that tied into
knowing that, okay, these dumps were actually
related to Palmer. - [Anna] Just an
undeniable connection. - You can't tell a lot
about one particular family in a public dump
because lots of families are putting their
trash in those places. The really unique
thing about this site is that everything
that's out there we know came from this estate, which it was apparently a
really rare thing in archeology. - The number of artifacts that we actually recovered
were about 65,000. We have looked at every
one of those artifacts. We have recovered and
identified probably at least 50 different
types of ceramics, buttons, forks, knives,
cooking utensils, cups, stemware, liquor
bottles, pipes, flowerpots, lots of different animal
bones, wooden furniture pieces. We just identified a tree cleat,
which was really interesting, a cleat that you
attach to the toe so you could climb the trees. There's also industrial
items, so a fire hose. We also have bottles that went into early fire extinguishers. Photographic equipment, so
we have darkroom elements. There's a lot of
medicinal things, too, as well as medicine
bottles, medicine jars, vials for homeopathic
type of medicines. - And a lot of people ask
why we care about trash, why it matters, but
trash can tell you a whole lot about
households and people. It can speak sometimes
even to ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender. It can answer so many questions that will talk about the
daily lives of these people. - So what they ate, what
they wore, what they read. It's unedited, and that's
where its power lies because it's literally
the raw material of their lives out
here at Glen Eyrie. - For example, we
now know that Palmer really liked
Worcestershire sauce. - Apparently there are many,
many Worcestershire bottles. - We're seeing very few items in the scheme of thousands
that we've looked at that are domestically produced. Most everything that we're
finding is being imported. I think that's another
evidence of his wealth. - I've got some mineral
water from Budapest even though he had
some mineral water right next door in
Manitou Springs. (steam engine) - You know he owned
a train system so he can get things here, but I think that also
speaks to the amount of international trade that's
happening at this point. Americans are importing
goods from Europe, so for him to have
things out here was definitely a
status symbol for him. (smooth music) I think all of the
new discoveries make him less of
this iconic figure who lives on a horse in the
middle of an intersection, you know, this kind
of mythical being, to a human being who used dishes and who ate certain
cuts of meat. - As far as historic
archeology goes it's probably one of the
most significant finds that we've had definitely
in Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak region. Archeology's important in that
it connects us to the past. I think that helps
people to form connections with those places, and I think if you're
connected to those places you take care of
them more as well. - Today The Navigators
own and operate Glen Eyrie as a conference center
and a training ground, so we host public
teas and public tours. Adaptive reuse is really
important in
historic preservation because it helps
buildings stay alive. - [Michael] Preservation of
the glen is very important. It's a story of the
history of Colorado, and especially Colorado Springs, and knowing where
the state started. (smooth music) - [Leah] Glen Eyrie represents
the age of development, the age of railroads,
the age of settlement that is a direct link
to Colorado of today. - [Matt] I think you need to
come and visit this castle, and not just the castle
but the whole grounds, to get an understanding and appreciation of
Palmer and who he was. - [Leah] Having an
English Tudor castle in the Colorado
hillside helps remind us how people have continued
to reshape Colorado over time in their own vision. This place remains as a symbol of those dreams,
visions, and ideas of that founding generation
of Colorado settlement. (smooth music)
