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Manitou Springs is linked with the springs around which it was founded. Dr. Edwin James, team botanist of the Long Expedition of 1820,  discovered the health-giving mineral waters, Thereafter, explorers made it a point to investigate the now famous “boiling” springs, so named for the rumbling sound of escaping gas rather than their temperature.

George Frederick Ruxton, an English military officer, wrote extensively about the benefits of the springs in his 1846 book, Life in the Far West; an international best seller.  Ruxton’s book would influence General William J. Palmer and Dr. William A. Bell to visit the area in 1868, while on a railroad survey for the Kansas Pacific. Palmer planned to build a railroad from Denver to Mexico and Bell, an English physician, saw the potential of the medicinal springs as the centerpiece for a European-style health resort that would draw passengers to this new venture. The future town of La Font was laid out in 1871, but investor William Blackmore suggested the alternative name of Manitou mentioned in the Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow.

In the meantime, Manitou Springs were being developed, and under the charge of Mr. Blair, a Scotch landscape gardener, the natural and picturesque features of the place were brought out, without an appearance of artificiality. Indian trails became "Lover's Lanes;" rustic bridges spanned the streams, rustic pagodas rose over the mineral basins, gnarled tree trunks became rural seats; and the clematis vines, whose unstinted wealth is one of Manitou's beauties, were trained to embower every nook.

In the winter of 1871-72 the Manitou House was completed. Before this, however, Manitou had entertained its first party of distinguished guests. In the autumn of 1871 the " press of the Territory"' was tendered an excursion to "La Font." The party arrived in time for a midday dinner at Captain Dick Sopris' eating house, celebrated under his management, and also under that of Mrs. McDowell, and were afterward driven through the Garden of the Gods to La Font, where they were accommodated for the night in "the temporary hotel."

From the reports of the colony company we cull the following notices, which make up (officially) the early history of Manitou:

1877. — Manitou has a population of 350. It can scarcely receive any additional aid from man, since nature has done so much for it. It can, and doubtless will become the watering place to which all who visit Colorado will gravitate, as a matter of course.

1878.— Manitou had 5,651 hotel arrivals between May 1st and September 1st. Colorado Springs and Manitou are today provided with an abundance of excellent water. The water is taken from Ruxton's Creek above Manitou. The Manitou Hotel has been repainted, repaired and leased for four years. The bathhouse has recently been leased for a term of five years, for a net rental of $400 the first year, and $500 for each succeeding year.

1879. — During the year the company has sold two lots at Manitou for $625. The three hotels have been well filled with guests during the summer months. One of these hotels has remained open throughout the winter. Plans are now being made by the owner for adding about one hundred rooms to one of the hotels, and it is hoped that arrangements may be perfected during the coming year to build the five miles of railroad needed to allow the cars of the Rio Grande Company to run directly into Manitou.

1880. — In July last, the Denver & Rio Grande Company completed a short line of railroad connecting Manitou with Colorado Springs, and five passenger trains are now run each way daily. The Colorado Springs company sold the Manitou hotel in June last for $30,000. Since this sale the purchaser has built a large addition thereto, nearly doubling the capacity of the house. The other hotels at Manitou have been enlarged and improved, and several stores, cottages and residences have been built. The total cost of new buildings erected and improvements on hotels at Manitou during 1880. is estimated at $100,000.

1881. — The hotels at Manitou have enjoyed a very profitable season. They are now four in number. A handsome stone station house has been erected by the railway company. It is estimated that the cost of new buildings erected at Manitou in 18S1, was $70,000. The Cave of the Winds has been supplied with ladders, and made accessible. The town plat of Manitou has been thoroughly resurveyed.

1882. — Several new stores have been opened, a town hall built, and a weekly newspaper started. A company has been organized to utilize and improve the mineral springs, and to bottle and ship the soda water. Their plans include a new and larger bathhouse and a park, with pavilion and walks, surrounding the springs, which will be enlarged and developed. Capitalists from the East have purchased a large tract of land adjoining Manitou, and will enter largely into bottling the Iron Spring water fur shipment to the East. On July 2d, 1882, a very destructive cloud burst occurred at Manitou, sweeping light buildings from their foundations, destroying vegetation, and killing the little son of C. L. Gillingham, who was swept away by the torrent in William Canyon.

1883. — Manitou has enjoyed a season of unprecedented prosperity. One-third more people were accommodated at the hotels and boarding houses than ever before. Real estate has increased twenty-five to fifty per cent, in value. The Colorado Springs Company has leased to the Manitou Mineral Bath, Water and Park Company, all the mineral springs at Manitou and the park around them, for a rental of $500 per year, and a royalty of one cent for every quart of mineral water sold. This bath company has erected during the year a large bathhouse. It contains twenty bathrooms for mineral baths, and a large swimming bath. It was erected at a cost of $21,000. Arrangements have been made to bottle and ship the mineral water.

During the past year surveys were completed for a railroad from Manitou to the summit of Pike's Peak, etc.

The town authorities have completed a substantial irrigating ditch for the purpose of furnishing water to trees which will be planted along the streets and other public places.

In 1883 the National Land & Improvement Co., ceased to exist as a Pennsylvania corporation, in order to reorganize in Colorado. It had previously been subject to the laws of Pennsylvania. It had lived long enough to see Manitou in the heyday of its prosperity; the new enterprises well under way; even to that of bottling the water, concerning which, the first Fountain Colony circular had prophesied twelve years before as to the establishment of a "bottling business."

Manitou lies as in a cradled nest, in a cup-shaped glen which is properly the opening of Ute Pass, at an elevation of 6,123 feet above sea level. The town is shut away from winds by a mountain wall, whose precipitous sides rise almost from her streets. Pike's Peak trending westward, and just visible above the crowded summits, gleams like a silver hem to the blue mantle of the sky. To this tract of land Colonel Chivington of Sand Creek notoriety laid claim, which was not sustained. Before the railway came, the town followed the course of the Fontaine in a straggling, irregular street.

The Manitou House, Manitou Mansions (or Beebee House) the Cliff, and the old Iron Springs Hotel (long since burned) were the principal hotels. A lumbering stage coach plied between the town and Colorado Springs, and a horse from Manitou was* thrown into convulsions of terror if he heard the shriek of his iron brother at the Colorado Springs depot. Deer and big horn were occasionally shot from the hotel piazzas, and bears wandered down into the canyons. A resident wears upon his watch chain a sharp and significant claw, a token of a victorious tussle with a bear found in his garden patch, bright and early one autumn morning.

In summer the life was that of a mimic and primitive Saratoga ; in the winter, — when a single hotel, or later, two, would decide to remain open for the the winter visitors donned mountain suits, and with the aid of stout alpen stocks, explored glens and hills, or lingered through sunny days on the rocks near the Springs. The amusements were horseback and burro riding, and the small gayeties which cluster about a hotel center.

Manitou's groups of soda springs lie along the banks of the Fontaine. It is well that a more picturesque nomenclature has replaced the old. The Indians called the Navajo by a name signifying the "Beast," but it was Prof. Hayden, who had at his command a vocabulary more than aboriginal, who named a spring the "Galen," or the "Doctor." The Indian tradition of these springs, dating back to "long, long ago," when the cottonwoods on the Big River were no higher than an arrow, is given at the close of Volume I. The visitor may determine by the aid of his own palate, which spring is sweet, and which is embittered by that primal crime. These springs belong to the general group of carbonated soda waters, their temperature varies from 43° to 56°.

The famous Iron Ute lies about a mile from the heart of Manitou in Englemann's Canyon; a short distance further in the pine grove, is the round basin of the Little Chief. We give in general terms the cases benefited by Manitou mineral water, as stated in a pamphlet written by Dr. S. E, Solly. The springs may be divided into three groups as follows:

I.   Carbonate Soda proper — Navajo, Manitou, Minnehaha.

II.  Purging Carbonated Soda — Little Chief, Shoshone.

III. Ferruginous Carbonated Soda — Iron Ute, Little Chief.

The Navajo is beneficial in cases of enlargement of the liver, spleen, corpulence and similar conditions, chronic bronchial catarrh, gout, chronic dyspepsia, incipient phthisis and chronic Bright's disease. Bathing in it is good for skin diseases and muscular rheumatism.

A safe remedy is found in the Shoshone for most cases of functional derangement of the liver. The Little Chief is best adapted for treatment of those cases in which the administration of iron is indicated, and at the same time some disturbance of the functions of the liver is a pressing symptom. Chlorosis and anaemia are benefited by use of the Iron Ute. The popular Apollinaris water closely resembles the Navajo soda, and the Ems and Neuenhaur are almost identically the same in composition. The Shoshone is a good substitute for Hunyadi Janos, and as chalybeate waters do their work more effectually at a high elevation, the value of the Iron Ute, at an altitude greater than any European mineral spring, is enhanced.

A newly discovered, or rediscovered group of mineral springs has recently been opened in Englemann's Canon, by Mr. Norman Jones. These springs are alleged to be twelve in number and of different chemical combinations. The group (in 1890) was claimed by the Iron Springs Company, and is now in litigation.

The town of Manitou, in 1890, had from twelve to fifteen hundred permanent residents, — a population increased in the past year by 100,000 visitors, brought to her gates by the Denver & Rio Grande, and the Colorado Midland. The streets have spread up the canyon highways, and are lighted by electricity (the electric light company was formed in 1887 by Dr. William A. Bell. The plant is of Houston Thomson make, and cost $15,000. Both the arc and incandescent lights are supplied.) During the same year Manitou put in an independent system of waterworks, having till then used the Ruxton system in connection with Colorado Springs. The water is taken from French Creek, one of the Fontaine's tributaries. A settler was built thirteen hundred feet above the town and four miles distant. A six inch main was laid to a reservoir on Capitol Hill. This natural pressure system cost $47,000. Since, $25,000 worth of bonds have been voted to lay an additional twelve inch main to the reservoir. There are sixteen public hydrants. The city is supplied with a fine brick schoolhouse, built in 1888, at a cost of $25,000. It offers a graded course of study, ending in the high school, which gives a preparatory collegiate course of. three years. The school attendance averages one hundred and sixty pupils. The second story of the school building is occupied by a public hall, seating three hundred.

The first church at Manitou was Congregational, organized in 1879. The pastor. Rev. W. D. Westervelt, worked with members of his flock in helping to quarry the stone for this edifice, in Williams' Canyon. St. Andrew's Episcopal church was established in 1880, by Rev. D. C. Pattee as a mission. It has been self supporting since 1888, and now owns $30,000 worth of property. Roman Catholic and Methodist Episcopal churches were organized in 1889.

Besides the pioneer hotels, the principal hotels are the "Barker," "Sunnyside," "Ruxton" and "Devere." The new Iron Spring hotel erected by capitalists from Alton, Illinois, was bought in 1890 by Major John Hulbert, Dr. William A. Bell, Donald Fletcher and H. B. Chamberlin, incorporated as "The Iron Springs Company," together with three hundred and twenty acres of ground, the Iron Springs pavilions, complete water system and electric light plant.

A fire company was organized at Manitou in 1S79. The first of the ensuing year it took the name of the W. A. Bell Hose, Hook & Ladder Co. The Masons and Odd Fellows have lodges in Manitou, and there is a post of the G. A. R. The Y. M. C. A. have a free reading room established here. Jerome B. Wheeler of New York is at the head of a company which established a bank in Manitou in May, 1889. A board of trade was organized in September, 1889. The present officers are J. B. Wheeler, president; Major John Hulbert, first vice-president; Mr. W. D. Sawin, second vice-president; Mr. M. A. Leddy, third vice-president; Honorable K. H. Grafton, secretary; Mr. J B Glasser, treasurer; Messrs. D. L. Stirling, E. E. Nichols, and Charles A. Grant, board of directors. The present membership numbers sixty-nine.

Manitou post office, which was a fourth class office in 1S85, is now raised to a Presidential office.

The Manitou Mineral Water Co., of which mention has been made in the colony reports, purchased the park where the soda springs are situated, in October, 1889. The company in 1890 constructed a fine building for bottling works, at a cost of $32,000, with machinery which will bottle twenty thousand quarts per day. Besides bottling the mineral water, the company also manufactures from it, the widely known "Manitou Ginger Champagne." During 18S9, nine hundred thousand bottles of soda and iron water, and ginger champagne were sold, and the first half of 1890 has shown an increase of 125 per cent, over this business. Forty hands are employed, and the pay roll during the past year amounted to $22,000. General Charles Adams, originator of this enterprise, is vice-president of the company, whose stock is $200,000. Jerome B. Wheeler is president; J. B. Glasser, secretary and treasurer; and D. L. Stirling (formerly of Waukesha) manager; Louis R. Ehrich and J A. Hayes, Jr., also are prominent stockholders.

The broken, diversified ground in the neighborhood of Manitou is admirably adapted to picturesque buildings, and such are perched everywhere on the heights, from the Swiss chalet to the mansion of red sandstone. A cottage once belonging to Grace Greenwood is situated on the principal street. Agate Hill is the residence of Major John Hulbert, Jerome B. Wheeler has a cottage on the high ground near the Cliff House; Briarhurst, the home of Dr. W. A. Bell, was burned several years ago, and has since been rebuilt and enlarged. It is a typical English home, built of rosy stone, with rambling porches and picturesque gables. Dr. Bell is the owner of Moran's picture, the "Mount of the Holy Cross." At the time of the conflagration, the gardener had the presence of mind to cut the canvas from the frame, and thus the painting was saved. Between Manitou and Colorado City, in a beautiful glen, is situated the home of General Charles Adams, the saviour of the Meeker women. The house is a museum of curious and artistic objects collected by General and Mrs. Adams among the Indians and in South America.

The Manitou Social Club was formed in 1S90, and fitted up billiard, reading and writing rooms and parlors in the Soda Bath Building. It has enrolled forty-five members among the most influential men of the city. The president is Mr. D. L. Stirling; Rev. J. C. S. Weills is treasurer, and Mr. C. H. Grant secretary.

Pikes Peak. — Dr. E. James, serving in Long's expedition in the threefold capacity of doctor, botanist and historian, made himself famous as the first man known to have ascended Pike's Peak. Tradition for years has had it that Grace Greenwood, riding her white donkey, Daisy, was the first woman to stand upon the summit, but the following account taken from the "Kansas Magazine" seems to prove the contrary. A member of a party which had camped on the site of Colorado City, writes as follows: ".A party of four left camp early in the morning, and reached the highest point at sunset. Time about twelve hours. I have seen several later ascensions recorded in Colorado papers as the first, and one of the ladies was named as the first woman who ever stood upon the summit of Pike's Peak. I am sorry to deprive said lady of her laurels, but the plain fact is, that one of our before mentioned ladies ascended the mountain in question during the last week in July, 1858. She remained up there two days and nights, slept upon the eternal snow, and wrote letters to the Eastern press dated at the summit. She did not claim to be a heroine, but if a record is to be made at all, it should be accurate, and I therefore register our woman's name, Mrs. Julia Archibald Holmes, then a resident of Kansas, but latterly of Washington, D. C, and secretary of some national organization of women."

On the Fourth of July, 1872, Pike's Peak became patriotic. It was arranged to have a grand bonfire, followed by fireworks, and signal communication with Colorado Springs. People from Denver and all the country round flocked to the mountain's foot, only to find a wet blanket of cloud, which hung there persistently all the evening. The United States established a signal service bureau on the summit in 1873-74, and constructed a trail thereto, through the beautiful Bear Creek Canon. A stone house was built (24x30 feet) of the red rocks scattered on the summit, — the highest human habitation. This was afterward abandoned for a larger house (30x55 feet). Three signal service officers alternated in staying there during the year, and experienced a storm every day, out of the three hundred and sixty-five. Observations were made five times a day by means of a barometer, hygrometer, self-registering thermometers (which took the maximum and minimum temperature), anemometer and anemoscope. A heliograph and flag signals were employed to communicate with the base station. Three daily reports were made, also monthly, quarterly and annual reports, which were sent to Washington from the haunt of "Old Probs." In the winter of 1883-84 there were very heavy snows on the trail, which rendered the ascent impracticable. One officer, Mr. Ramsay, was there alone, and it was rumored that signals of distress were seen flying on the Peak, probably provisions were exhausted, and the officer was starving. The story flew like wild fire as weeks went by; Eastern paragraphers wrote their most pathetic periods about "the young life perishing amid the eternal snows." Sums of money were proffered to organize a relief party. On April 30th, Sergeant Hall with two companions, set out upon the heroic work of rescue, equipped with snow shoes, and carrying a supply of provisions. After suffering incredible hardships, spending fifteen hours in crossing a slope, usually passed in one and a half, the men reached the summit, snow-blind, frostbitten, and staggered into the station, expecting to be ushered into the very presence of King Death. There sat the object of their hopes and fears, gaily performing upon his banjo: the unconscious recipient of the sympathy of a world. "A little fresh meat would be relishing, but he had canned goods enough to last for two months."

On the summit of Pike's Peak is a pile of rocks left by Hayden as a landmark. This is embellished with a wooden slab inscribed:

Erected by Sergeant John and Norah O'Keef, to the Memory of their infant daughter Erin O'Keef, who was destroyed by mountain rats. May 25th, A. D., 1876."

Erin O'Keef is the phantasm of the sole joke which the imagination of man has been able to evoke from that dreary solitude. The late Judge Price of the "Mountaineer," the author, was the Jules Verne of El Paso. The officers of the bureau were never married men, and there was not the slightest foundation for the story, which was copied all over the United States as a matter of fact as follows:

"The vast number of rats inhabiting the rocky crevices and cavernous passages at the summit of Pike's Peak, Colorado, have recently become formidable and dangerous. These animals are known to feed upon a saccharine gum that percolates through the pores of the rocks, apparently upheaved by that volcanic action which at irregular intervals of a few days gives to the mountain crest that vibratory motion which has been detected by the instruments used in the office of the United States Signal Station. Since the establishment of the station, at an altitude of nearly 15,000 feet these animals have acquired a voracious appetite for raw meat, the scent of which seems to impart to them a ferocity rivaling the starved Siberian wolf. The most singular trait in the character of these animals is that they are never seen in the day time. When the moon pours down her queenly light upon the summit, they are visible in countless numbers, hopping among the rocky boulders that crown this barren waste, and during the summer months they may be seen swimming and sporting in the waters of the lake, a short distance between the crest of the Peak, and on a dark, cloudy night their trail in the water exhibits a glowing, sparkling light, giving to the waters of the lake a flickering, silvery appearance. A few days since, Mr. John O'Keef, one of the government operators at the signal station, returned to his post from Colorado Springs, taking with him a quarter of beef. It being late in the after noon, his colleague, Mr. Hobbs, immediately left with the pack animal for the Springs. Soon after dark, while Mr. O'Keef was engaged in the office, forwarding night dispatches to Washington, he was startled by a loud scream from Mrs. O'Keef, who had retired for the night in an adjoining bedroom, and who came rushing into the office screaming, 'The rats! the rats!' Mr. O'Keef with great presence of mind, immediately girdled his wife with a scroll of zinc plating, such as had been used in the roofing of the station, which prevented the animals from climbing upon her person, and although his own person was almost literally covered with them, he succeeded in encasing his legs each in a joint of stovepipe, when he commenced a fierce and desperate struggle for his life with a heavy war club preserved at the station among other Indian relics captured at the battle of Sand Creek. Notwithstanding hundreds were destroyed on every side they seemed to pour (with increasing numbers) from the bedroom, the door of which had been left open. The entire quarter of beef was eaten in less than five minutes, which seemed only to sharpen their appetite for an attack on Mrs. O'Keef, whose face, hands and neck were terribly lacerated. In the midst of the war fare, Mrs. O'Keef managed to reach a coil of electric wire hanging near the battery, and being a mountain girl, familiar with the throwing of a lariat, she hurled it through the air causing it to encircle her husband, and spring out from its loosened fastenings, making innumerable spiral traps, along which she poured the electric fluid from the heavily charged battery. In a moment the room was ablaze with electric light and whenever the rats came in contact with the wire they were hurled to an almost instant death. The appearance of daylight, made such by the corruscation of the heavily charged wire, caused them to take refuge among the crevices and caverns of the mountains, by way of the bedroom window, through which they had forced their way. But the saddest part of this night attack upon the Peak is the destroying of their infant child, which Mrs. O'Keef thought she had made secure by a heavy covering of bed clothing, but the rats had found their way to the infant (only two months old), and had left nothing of it but the peeled and mumbled skull."

In 1882-1883 the idea of a railway to the summit of the Peak was projected, and was afterward abandoned. About six miles of road were graded, making now a favorite trail for horseback excursions to Crystal Park, a sky-perched basin south of Cameron's Cone, with an altitude of 8,450 feet.

At the summit is one of the most magnificent views of the Rocky Mountain region. Rocky buttresses form long aisles below, and their projections are duplicated in shadows which sweep over the valleys. The depths of these unroofed cathedrals are unfathomed craters of desolation. From the summit the eye loses itself in seeing. Colorado Springs lies below like a chess board, with geometrical squares; beyond the faint smoke of the Pueblo smelters, the ocean of the plains upbears snowy cloud sails.  Northward beyond the crowding peaks lies Denver; westward the horizon closes in with mountains, seemingly turned by the share of some gigantic plow, driven by a mighty hand with a thunderous roll over the face of the patient earth — slope beyond slope, range beyond range, with the tints where blue and violet meet in the solar spectrum.

For the last decade, during the summers, throngs of tourists have visited the Peak, by the horseback trails through Englemann's and Bear Creek Canons; the toll-road over Cheyenne Mountain, via Seven Lakes; or by the new wagon road at Cascade Canon. The Signal Service was abandoned in January, 1889, as not justifying its expenses, and the buildings were turned over to the Pike's Peak Railroad Company.

The Pike's Peak Railway. — Major John Hulbert became possessor in 1889 of the mental conviction that Manitou needed a railroad to the summit of Pike's Peak. It was not long after that this conviction took sole possession of the man. He was wont to look up to its snowclad summits, from his handsome home at the mountain's base, and the man was a casualty until the conviction became fact. First he whispered the project to Jerome B. Wheeler, who readily sympathized with it.

Henry Watson (the then principal owner of the Iron Springs property) was next interested in the novel project and with him it was arranged that the Iron Springs should be made a terminal station. To build the road a company must be organized — with half a million capital. In July Major Hulbert, Jerome B. Wheeler, and President D. H, Moffat of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, subscribed for $90,000 worth of this stock, and it was decided that Mr. Wheeler and Major Hulbert should go to New York City to place the balance — Mr. Wheeler to go on at once. In September as Major Hulbert placidly traveled Chicago-ward, he met and interested in the road, Mr. Z. G. Simmons, of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Instead of going on to New York, Major Hulbert went to Kenosha with his new acquaintance and from there telegraphed to Mr. Wheeler that he had sold the $410,000 of stock in the Pike's Peak Railroad to Mr. Simmons and his friends — Roswell P. Flower of New York, and R. R. Cable, H. H. Porter and David Dows of Chicago.

A company was formed in the fall, composed of Major Hulbert: R. R. Cable, president of the Rock Island Road; David H. Moffat, president of the Rio Grande Road, and First National Bank of Denver; Major Jerome B. Wheeler of New York (whose summer home is in Manitou), and J. B. Glasser of Manitou. The following are (1890) officers of the road: Major Hulbert, president; R. R. Cable, vice-president; J B. Glasser, secretary and treasurer; and Thomas F. Richards, engineer.

The terminals of the road are at Iron Springs, Manitou, and at the Old Government Signal Station — the very top of Pike's Peak. Nearly a thousand men have been employed since the company's organization when work immediately began, grading and excavating, and in August, 1890, trains were driven to the half way station. It is officially asserted that the road will be in running order, from end to end, before the expiration of 1890. The road is termed "a rack railroad" built on the Swiss "Abt system." Its exact length is (6,158 feet, very nearly eight and three-fourths miles. Its altitude at Manitou is 6,600 feet, at the summit 14,200 feet above sea level. Thus the average ascent is 846 feet in the mile, and it is expected the engines going up will average a speed of eight miles per hour. The track is of ordinary steel rails, standard gauge, and the rack rail in which the cogwheel of the engine drives is securely fastened to the ties in the center of the track, thus consolidating the rails. The passenger cars are not tilted or unlike ordinary day coaches, but are so constructed that passengers will have a level footing on the incline.

This railway is the highest in the world and affords one of the grandest views on the globe, while the scenes en route are nobly inspiring as one passes from canon to precipice, from mountain cascades to fields of snow, and from long vistas of foothills and plains, to the eagle's eyrie, and above timber line or clouds.

In the center of Manitou, near the Cliff House, is the entrance to Williams or more properly, Manitou Canyon, remarkable for its varied geological formations; its "Nar rows," and "Bridal Veil Falls." In June, 1880, John and George Pickett were in the canyon taking a lesson in practical geology under the guidance of Rev. R. T. Cross of Denver. Some objection was made to their entrance by the proprietor of an insignificant cavern on the mountain side. "Never mind, boys," said their teacher, "we will go and try to find a cave for ourselves," — and in fact they did, climbing up the canyon wall. Here was the entrance to the Cave of the Winds, through a formation resembling the Natural Bridge of Virginia. There are one hundred rooms, mainly on three general levels; in the lowest are fossilized skeletons of animals and fish. The principal rooms are named Cascade Hall, Canopy, Alabaster Hall, etc.

It is an enormous system of caverns which extends for an unknown distance under , ground. The formation is Upper Silurian, the same geologically as that of Luray, in Virginia.

The Manitou Grand Caverns, part of the same system, were discovered by George Snider, in the winter of 1883. His attention was attracted to a vapor issuing from crevices in the ground. These caverns are approached by Ute Pass road, beyond the Rainbow Falls of the Fontaine, and near the point where looms Tim Bunker's " Pulpit " of red rocks. This rock was so christened in 1871, by a party of Eastern editors in honor of the Rev. Mr. Clift, whose nom de plume was Tim Bunker. The most notable rooms in Manitou Grand Caverns are the Opera House (500 feet long by 60 feet high), and the Bridal Chamber. The Grand Organ has a compass of two octaves, and many tunes can be played by striking the stalactites which form it.