Description
By the Palmer Lake Historical Society & the Lucretia Vaile Museum
Native American tribes once traversed the east-west anomaly of the Rocky Mountains known as the Palmer Divide as a passage between the high ranges and the Great Plains. Lying between Denver and Colorado Springs, and named for William Jackson Palmer, found of Colorado Springs, the offshoot range divides the great Platte and Arkansas River Systems. Settlers homesteaded, farmed and ranched the area. Railroad construction in the 1870s led to towns supporting commerce and tourism, particularly in the western section of the Palmer Divide, in what eventually became known as the Tri-Lakes Area. The area drew tourists who enjoyed hiking, wildflowers, and the outdoors, and facilitated such local industries as ice harvesting, lumber milling, ranching and potato farming. A vast area north of Colorado Springs, the Palmer Divide retains a picturesque rural nature and cohesive small-town feeling —creating such social events as the Rocky Mountain Chautauqua and the Yule Log Festival, as well as the enduring landmark, the Palmer Lake Star on Sundance Mountain.
The Palmer Lake Historical Society, founded in 1956, selected these vintage images from their archives and private collections to provide a rare look into the Palmer Divide’s past through the 1930s. The book authored by the volunteers at the PLHS captures the basic histories of Monument, Palmer Lake and the surrounding area with 127 pages of fully captioned photographs. This soft cover book is published with the Arcadia Press.