Like many of the tens of thousands of new arrivals who swelled the Colorado Territory’s population in the early 1870s, Henry Austin, an El Paso County sheep rancher formerly of Chicago, had come west on the advice of doctors — “for the purpose of being cured of that terrible disease, the asthma,” a correspondent of the Rocky Mountain News reported.
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This story is part of Colorado at 150.
Austin settled just north of Colorado Springs and by July 1876 ran some six thousand Merino sheep on a sprawling ranch in the shadow of Pikes Peak. But he set aside a thousand acres as a new “place of resort,” composed of “the most picturesque scenery in the state, and fully equal to the far-famed Monument Park, ten miles north of this town,” the News reported.
“Mr. Austin has, at great expense and care, constructed roads and walks throughout these hills, where tourists may drive and view the sights without running any risk of being damaged by upsetting,” said the News…