COLORADO SPRINGS 



1495 



COLOSSEUM 



019 feet above sea level. It is in the central- 

 eastern part of Colorado, about seventy-five 

 miles south of Denver, and on the Denver & 

 Rio Grande; the Atchison, Topeka & Santa 

 Fe; the Colorado & Southern; the Colorado 

 Midland; the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, 

 and the Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek 

 railroads. The summit of Pike's Peak is 

 reached by a cog road and by an automobile 

 highway, the highest in the world. Colorado 

 Springs is the crossing point of the Pike's Peak 

 Ocean-to-Ocean and Colorado-to-Gulf auto- 

 mobile highways. The city covers an area of 

 more than nine square miles. The population, 

 which in 1910 was 29,078, was 32,971 in 1916. 



The plains sweep up to the very foothills of 

 the Rocky Mountains, and at their base is the 

 city of Colorado Springs; to the west and north- 

 west are two other incorporated towns continu- 

 ous with it Colorado City and Manitou. The 

 first of these contains the world's largest cya- 

 nide reduction mills, and Manitou is a famous 

 health resort, built up about medicinal springs. 



Parks and Boulevards. Colorado Springs has 

 a municipal park system containing nearly 

 2,700 acres and valued at $1,883,765. The 

 largest parks are Monument Valley Park, ex- 

 tending for two miles along railroad tracks 

 entering the city from the north; the famous 

 Garden of the Gods (which see), a natural 

 park of 480 acres about two miles northwest 

 of the city; and Palmer Park, containing over 

 700 acres, to the northeast. Stratton Park at 

 the entrance of North and South Cheyenne 

 canyons, six miles southwest, is owned by the 

 Stratton estate, but is open free to the public. 

 These and many other places of interest are 

 connected by excellent hard-surfaced roads and 

 boulevards. 



Buildings and Institutions. Among many 

 noteworthy public buildings are the Federal 

 building, erected in 1909 at a cost of $225,000, 

 El Paso County courthouse, Burn's Theater, a 

 Y. W. C. A., and a Carnegie Library. Glock- 

 ner Sanatorium, Saint Francis and Bethel hos- 

 pitals, Cragmore and Sunnyrest sanatoriums, 

 the Star-Ranch-in-the-Pines and a number of 

 other places receive sick persons who come 

 to Colorado Springs from every part of the 

 United States. The Union Printers' Home, 

 a national institution and the only one of 

 its kind, is located just east of the city. Ten 

 miles north is the National Sanatorium of 

 the Modern Woodmen of America. South of 

 the city along the boulevard to Canon City 

 and the Royal Gorge is the Myron Stratton 



Home, an institution for dependent children 

 and aged men and women. 



Colorado College, a non-sectarian, coeduca- 

 tional institution, was founded at Colorado 

 Springs in 1874 by General William J. Palmer. 

 The city is also the seat of the Colorado 

 School for Deaf and Blind and of four private 

 schools for boys and girls. 



History. Colorado Springs was founded by 

 General Palmer in 1871 and incorporated as a 

 town in 1872. A city charter was granted in 

 1878. The prosperity of the city is due to the 

 many natural advantages of location combined 

 with the great wealth of the Cripple Creek 

 mining district, about fifty miles distant. The 

 three-million-dollar water system, which brings 

 water from streams and reservoirs on Pike's 

 Peak, is owned by the municipality. In 1909 

 the city adopted the commission form of gov- 

 ernment. A.W.H. 



COLOR BLINDNESS. When a man applies 

 for employment on a railroad, he is required 

 to take an examination in colors, in addition 

 to his other examinations. A heap of woolen 

 skeins is given him, and he is asked to sort 

 them, placing similar colors together. If he 

 fails in his recognition of any of them he 

 cannot be employed, for the safety of the pub- 

 lic depends on the trainman's being able to 

 recognize with certainty the red danger signal, 

 or the green safety signal. 



To people with normal vision it seems 

 strange that anyone should not be able to dis- 

 tinguish colors, but there are persons who are 

 color blind, that is, unable to recognize certain 

 colors. The defect may be inborn, or it may 

 be the result of a long, strained attention to 

 colors; in either case it is incurable; no sort 

 of glasses ever has been invented to remedy 

 it. A few people are so unfortunate as to 

 recognize no colors except black and white, but 

 the large majority of color-blind persons are 

 blind to only one or two colors. Green blind- 

 ness and red blindness are the commonest of 

 all forms, one or both of these brilliant colors 

 appearing as some shade of yellow. 



COLOR PRINTING. See PRINTING, subhead 

 Color Printing. 



COLOSSEUM, kolose^um, or COLISEUM, 

 a name applied to many modern places of 

 amusement, but originally meaning the ancient 

 Flavian Amphitheater in Rome, now one of the 

 most famous ruins in the world. The name 

 was derived from the colossal statue of Nero, 

 which stood near the amphitheater. That 

 mammoth, unroofed building, a place of marble, 



