by Zenia Brink - Staff Writer

The year is 1875, it's a sweltering summer evening and you've just spent the past 16 hours, driving your wagon west, family in tow, to the town you will now call home, Colorado Springs. As you finally pull your wagon into the dusty streets, your throat dry and parched, your eyes scan the few buildings for a saloon. The heat shimmers in the setting sun. As you wander up and down the street, a bad feeling comes over you, where is a saloon, any saloon? You stop a local passerby, “excuse me sir”, you exclaim, “might you tell me where I can wet my whistle?” The man gives you a strange look and then replies “ain't no one tell you, Colorado Springs is a dry city.” As the man walks on, you stand for a moment in utter shock, then you turn and shout down the street to your wife, “Milly, get back in the wagon, we're moving!”

It's true, one of the cities founding fathers William J. Palmer, held the vision that Colorado Springs would be a city filled with “moral, temperance-minded” colonists. The city, founded in 1871 when the first stake for the Denver Rio Grand railroad was driven into the ground. The town soon earned the nickname “little London” due to the many tourists from England. The Springs also attracted many of Palmer's east coast friends, who also happened to enjoy champagne. Since there was no alcohol allowed in the city, drinking resorts popped up outside the city limits in Colorado City and the Broadmoor Casino.

Prohibition began January 1, 1916, and thus Colorado Springs, and every other American city, was legally dry. But before the law came into effect, Spencer Penrose, another of the city's founding fathers, took steps to make sure, if one was looking, one could find a drink.Being opposed to Prohibition, he acquired a large supply of fine spirits, and hid them under the swimming pool at his Broadmoor Hotel. They were still finding cases into the 1990s. Guess they kept him satisfied until drinking became legal in Colorado Springs in 1935. Wonder if Milly and her husband had found a saloon by then.

Just an FYI, the Phantom Canyon Brewing Company has a beer named for Palmer's wife, the Queen's Blond Ale. Wonder what she would think about that.

Sources for this article include Thomas J. Noel's book Colorado: A Liquid History & Tavern Guide to the Highest State.