Five Wonders Of Southern Colorado: Garden Of The Gods

COLORADO SPRINGS -This week, NEWSCHANNEL 13 is traveling the region, exploring the five wonders of southern Colorado. Our fourth stop is at Colorado Springs’ own towering red rock formations.

With more than 1,300 acres to explore, you can visit Garden of the Gods again and again, and still learn something new or find something unexpected. “It’s ooo’s and ahhh’s and pictures and they just can’t believe it’s a city park,” says Bonnie Frum, director at the Garden of the Gods Visitor Center,” most city parks have a swing set and a slide and we have this!”

It’s is a collection of red, sandstone rock; formations that tower up to 300 feet into the air. Formed millions of years ago, Garden of the Gods Park is now the most visited place in Colorado Springs. But it was named by surveyors back in the 1800s. “One of the men says, ‘this is so gorgeous, it should be a beer garden,'” says Frum of how the name came about, “the other man said, ‘no it shouldn’t be a beer garden, this garden is fit for the gods,’ I think it lives up to its name.”

With 15 miles of trails, there’s a lot of ground to cover. “It’s peaceful, a lot of serenity and not too many people around here early in the morning,” says cyclist Todd Gatlin, “just a gorgeous place to ride.” One of the best ways to get a look of the garden is on a horseback tour. “It’s hard to explain, just being on horseback brings you back to the 1800s,” says Walter Hampel, a wrangler with Academy Riding Stables that guides horseback tours through the Garden of the Gods.

It is a different view seeing the famous formations from the back of a horse. You get a good look at the Sleeping Giant. Two- and-a-half-million-years sleeping,” says Hampel, “the Ute Indians believed if anything went wrong, he’d wake up and take care of it; he’s still asleep.”

“You have Kissing Camels and they’ve been kissing for 300 million years,” says Frum of one of the garden’s most popular formations. Further into the garden you can see Balanced Rock. “It’s amazing how it’s eroded,” describes Frum. Garden of the Gods holds so many amazing things to see, and still so much to uncover. “There are so many mysteries in that park that you can’t even imagine,” Frum says.

“Every time I come through here I see some thing I haven’t seen before,” Hampel says, “it gets more beautiful every time.” Garden of the Gods is a city park. It gets more visitors a year, than every other city park in the state combined. Information at the visitor center is now available in eight different languages, to accommodate tourists from all over the world.

Another little known piece of information about the park: every summer, bats return to Garden of the Gods. Next month, nighttime bat tours begin at the garden every Tuesday evening. It gives visitors a chance to learn something more about the wildlife living at Garden of the Gods.

There’s also prehistoric significance at the park. The Garden of the Gods just released information about a dinosaur fossil found in the park in the 1800s. It’s named after the park: Theio, meaning god, Phytalia, means garden and Kerri for the man who discovered it. So far, the Theio Phytalia Kerri fossil is the only one of its kind in the world.