Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Tejon Street. You have walked it a hundred times. Coffee in one hand, phone in the other, cutting between meetings and lunch spots and that one parking spot you always circle back for.
Here is the part people miss. That ordinary stretch of downtown is where the whole city started 150 years ago.
That is the pitch behind a new guided walking tour from the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, and honestly, the timing is perfect. It is called "America 250/Colorado 150: Seeing History in Place," and it runs on two Saturdays, Sept. 19 and Sept. 26. The whole thing is built around slowing down and actually seeing what you march past every single day.
Two big anniversaries are landing in 2026. It is 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and 150 years of Colorado statehood. So the museum built a downtown walk that ties both of those to the ground under your feet on Tejon.
The tour leaves at 10 a.m. from Blk Mgk Coffee, and a beverage is included in the ticket. I mean, a history walk that hands you coffee first? That is the correct order of operations. You sign up online at cspm.org/events.
And here is the detail that stuck with me. Meg Yevara, the program administrator, is a lifelong resident. Grew up here. Knows the place cold. And even she said that the first time she led one of these tours downtown, she was amazed by things she had overlooked. That is the whole point, right there. You can live somewhere your entire life and still walk past the good stuff without clocking it.
Before you even get to the tour, look at where the museum lives. It sits inside the old El Paso County Courthouse at 215 S. Tejon Street, right in Alamo Square Park.
This is a real building with a real resume. Built in 1903. Granite. Domed clock tower. Done up in Italianate and Second Renaissance Revival styles, which is a fancy way of saying somebody wanted it to look like it mattered. And it did the job for seventy years, serving as the working county courthouse from 1903 all the way to 1973.
Think about that for a second. Every deed, every dispute, every marriage license, every property fight in the county ran through that building for decades. If you care about how land and ownership shaped this region, and I do, that courthouse is basically ground zero.
It got added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Here is the kicker. It was the second property ever listed in El Paso County. The first was Pikes Peak. So the courthouse came in right behind the actual mountain. That is elite company.
The museum moved into the building in 1979, and it has been the anchor of that corner ever since.
The museum itself was founded as a collecting institution back in 1896, so it has been gathering this city's story for well over a century. Today it pulls in more than 100,000 visitors a year.
And admission is free. Donations appreciated, and you should throw a few bucks in, but you do not need a ticket to walk in the door.
Here is the thing people do not realize. Free does not mean small-time. The Pioneers Museum is fully accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, and only about 3 percent of museums in the country carry that accreditation. So this is a top-tier operation sitting on the main drag, charging you nothing.
It is also home to the Starsmore Center for Local History, which is a manuscript collection and research facility. If you have ever wanted to dig into the actual paper trail of this region, that is where it lives.
What I like about this is the framing. Not "come look at a museum." More like, the city you move through on autopilot is layered with a century and a half of stories, and here is a guide who will walk you down Tejon and point them out.
If you cannot make the Saturday tours, the museum also runs a free interactive online platform called "Story of Us: Explore Colorado Springs." It has maps and history tours of the Pikes Peak region, so you can poke around from your couch. Which is dangerous for me, because I lose whole evenings to stuff like that.
But look, do the real thing if you can. Sept. 19 or Sept. 26. Show up at 10 a.m. at Blk Mgk Coffee, grab the drink, and let somebody who knows this ground show you what you have been speed-walking past.
Yevara said it best when she talked about how much she overlooked, and she was born here. So whatever excuse you were about to make, she already outranks you on local credentials, and she still learned something.
Fifte decades of a city started on one ordinary street. Worth a Saturday morning to go see it for real.