Fort Carson

Angela Thaden Hahn, Joseph E. Berg

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781467103213
• eBook ISBN: 9781439671511
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Army scout Kit Carson rode the Southwest in many capacities. He served and retired in Colorado, and so Fort Carson is appropriately named. On land once traversed by Lt. Zebulon Pike, Camp Carson was constructed almost overnight under the watchful eye of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt and with the approval of the neighbors in Colorado Springs. Since its creation, the post has been the home and training grounds for thousands of soldiers who have fought in all wars from World War II to the current war on terror. Fort Carson continues to be a valuable asset to the community economically and in its generosity with resources when a local need arises.

One

ANCIENT LIKE TURKEY CREEK

After the Civil War, soldier Christopher “Kit” Carson rose in rank to brigadier general and received command of Fort Garland, near Alamosa, in the San Luis Valley. He retired shortly thereafter and settled into a peaceful life of farming and ranching at Boggsville. His retirement home rested on the Purgatoire River, a few miles from where old Bent’s Fort once flourished. Elbridge Ayer Burbank sketched this pencil drawing in 1863.

Discovered on the military reservation now known as Fort Carson, this eight-inch-long fossilized jawbone has become one of the thousands of artifacts in the large collection of Carson’s Cultural Resources department. The many teeth along the lower edge suggest it belonged to a prehistoric eel. In the days before the Cultural Resources department came into existence, many interesting finds, such as this one, were collected without proper cataloging. (Angela Thaden Hahn.)

Cultural Resources keeps this illustration in its collection to show what a prehistoric eel may have looked like. A study of Colorado geology reveals that the high plains were covered multiple times by inland seas and lakes. Fossils of aquatic life found in layers of mudstone and limestone across vast areas, including the Fort Carson reservation, confirm this theory. (Courtesy of Cultural Resources.)

Hidden in the Dakota sandstone, a scientist discovered three-toed tracks tucked in the southern section of the reservation in 2009. This is one of 12 footprints that belong to a much larger trackway crossing the state between its northern and southern boundaries. Each footprint spans approximately seven inches in length, and scholars agree they belonged to a juvenile ornithopod dinosaur. These creatures dominated the North American landscape during the Cretaceous period. (Courtesy of James Kulbeth.)

The rugged rock formations also reveal evidence of prehistoric people who lived on the land before it became a military training ground. Rock art hidden mostly along the Turkey Creek canyon walls depicts geometric shapes, swirling designs, deer, and turkey. To paint the pictographs on rock faces, artists used a brownish-red color extracted from berries, and an earthy, yellow pigment obtained from ocher in the local sedimentary rock formations.

Other artists pecked their designs into the dark walls using two rocks together like a hammer and punch. To form just one symbol required hundreds of blows against the rock. This technique revealed the light-colored, newly exposed sandstone underneath, highlighting the rough designs classified as petroglyphs. The prehistoric pictures in the Turkey Creek Rock Art District date back 700 to 1,000 years.

Later, the plains Indians lived a nomadic life as their game determined their next campground. A teepee provided a portable home that could be put up and taken down with ease and carried to the next campsite. This image closely resembles what the eastern side of present-day Fort Carson looked like when Indians camped among the rolling grasslands. (Courtesy of William J. Carpenter.)

In a dry wash near a spring in the grassy terrain, a member of Carson’s Cultural Resources discovered this amber and brown stone knife, in pristine condition, on the southeastern edge of the reservation. The jasper from which it was crafted comes from outside the Pikes Peak region. Hunters found the spring to be an ideal site as it attracted big game from the dry high plains. (Courtesy of James Kulbeth.)

This metate and mano, also found on the reservation, further confirms that Native Indian peoples once inhabited the land. For centuries, women used these stones as a tool to prepare flour. While holding the small mano, they pounded dry corn and other dried edibles against the heavy metate. Over repeated use, a depression formed in the middle of the base stone. (Angela Thaden Hahn.)

While native tribes traversed the area, Lt. Zebulon Pike attempted to summit the mountain that now bears his name. This illustration comes from a book of Pike’s writings describing his adventurous 1806 expedition through the southwestern United States. Pike journaled his descent from the mountains back to his base camp as he and his men followed Turkey Creek and sheltered in the piñon-juniper woodlands among old Comanche campsites. (Courtesy of Mary Gay Humphreys.)

Half a century later, Henry Harkens homesteaded a parcel on present-day reservation land near the old Canon City and Turkey Creek Road. While he was constructing a sawmill, the infamous Espinoza brothers savagely murdered him. This 1863 gravestone, broken and repaired over time, marks Harkens’s isolated burial place on a knoll overlooking a gulch now known as Dead Man’s Canyon. (Courtesy of Charles Hatch.)

Within the next few decades, families trickled into the area and lived a hardscrabble existence among the dry, rocky, sandstone foothills on the west side of the present-day Army post. Settlers collected logs—the building material most readily available in their area—and crafted them into small homes like this Colorado cabin. Most of the time, these crude structures served as temporary shelters until stouter quarters could be built. (Courtesy of C.W. Talbot.)

The nearby Canon City and Turkey Creek wagon road became a stagecoach route in 1873 and carried passengers and light freight all the way to Denver. Today, Highway 115 follows much of this original course as it borders the west side of Fort Carson. Glendale, just outside the post’s southwest corner, was the site of a stage stop along this route. (Courtesy of John C.H. Grabill.)

On the east side of what later becam...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Ancient like Turkey Creek
• 2. Tenacious like Missouri Mules
• 3. Valuable like Red Diamonds
• 4. Charming like Home, Sweet Home
• 5. Constant like Granite Mountains
• About the 4th Infantry Division Museum