Glen Eyrie Castle and Conference Center
History of Glen Eyrie
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William Jackson Palmer, who built Glen Eyrie as his family's private estate, also founded several railroads and the city of Colorado Springs, surveying the site of the future city from Pike's Peak. |
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The Palmer Family: 1836-1903
Glen Eyrie began as the estate of William Jackson Palmer, founder of several railroads and the city of Colorado Springs. He was born in Delaware, then raised in Pennsylvania in a Quaker home. As a young boy, his fascination with steam locomotives spurred him on to learn all he could about rail travel.
At age 17, Palmer went to work for the engineering corps of the Hempfield Railroad. At 19, endorsed by a letter from J. Edgar Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and other influential friends, he traveled to England and France to study railroading and coal mining. In July 1856, upon his return, he became Thomson's private secretary. With the onset of the Civil War, his railroad career was interrupted.
Because of his Quaker upbringing, Palmer abhorred violence, but his passion to see the slaves free compelled him to enter the war. In 1862, Palmer raised up an elite troop of cavalry, called the Anderson Troop, to join the Union forces. Because of his leadership, his troop was expanded to the size of a regiment, the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Leading reconnaissance early in the war, Palmer was captured and imprisoned as a suspected spy, then later released in a prisoner exchange.
Upon returning to his troop, he led one successful campaign after another, eventually being given the responsibility of a cavalry brigade. At age 29 he became the second youngest brigadier general commissioned in the Civil War, second only to General Custer. Although highly decorated, at the end of the war Palmer chose military discharge to pursue his first love, the railroad.
General Palmer began his journey west in 1867 with a survey party of the Union Pacific Railroad, Eastern Division. Their mission was to find the best route to California from Kansas City. Although Union Pacific did not complete this plan, General Palmer would remember the idea. Two years later the Eastern Division of the Union Pacific became the Kansas Pacific Railroad.
General Palmer was elected as one of its directors in charge of railroad construction to extend the line to Denver. As he scouted the eastern face of the Rockies for the best route, he was most in awe of the magnificent vistas around Pike's Peak. On one of his survey journeys in this area, he discovered a beautiful valley approximately four miles north of Colorado City and just north of Garden of the Gods. It was here General Palmer would build his estate and begin his family with the woman who had become queen of his heart, the beautiful Mary Lincoln Mellen.
Palmer's bride was the daughter of William Proctor Mellen, one of General Palmer's business associates. She had been given the nickname "Queen" by her maternal grandmother, an endearment that Palmer continued to use throughout their life together. She and General Palmer married in 1870 and went to England on a four-month honeymoon. The General told her of the beauty of Colorado and promised his bride the grandest of homes.
First, he purchased 10,000 acres at $1.25 per acre to establish the Fountain Colony, the town that later became known as Colorado Springs. An additional 2,225 acres were purchased in the beautiful valley he had found near Garden of the Gods, where he began the construction of their estate.
After building a large carriage house, where the family lived for a time, Palmer and Queen built a 22-room frame house. This house was remodeled in 1881 to include a tower and additional rooms. They later planned to turn the home into a castle. The estate was often referred to as "Little Garden of the Gods" by local residents for its amazing outcroppings of red sandstone similar to its neighbor.
To improve the grounds, General Palmer secured the services of a noted Scottish landscape architect, John Blair, from Chicago. As they were surveying the grounds, Blair looked up to see an eagle's nest high in the cleft of a rock and in his best Scottish brogue said, "Ah, Glen Eyrie. Valley of the eagle's nest." The General and Queen liked the name and officially named the estate Glen Eyrie.
In 1871, the same year he began the Fountain Colony, General Palmer and William Bell founded the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad to run along the Front Range of the Rockies as a north-south route. In the 1880s Palmer added the Rio Grande Western Railroad, using a narrow gauge track to wind through the mountains in an east-west route.
Things flourished for the Palmers for a time, in business and at home. The Fountain Colony grew to 1500 residents in two years, the railroad prospered, and the General and Mrs. Palmer had three daughters, Elsie, Dorothy, and Marjory. The first ripples of challenge began in the later 1870s in a rail war with the Santa Fe Railroad over the mountain routes.
Also in 1880, Mrs. Palmer suffered a mild heart attack and was advised to move to a lower altitude. She and the girls moved to the East Coast and then to England where General Palmer visited them as often as he could. Queen died on December 28, 1894, at the age of 44. In sorrow, General Palmer went to England to return Mrs. Palmer's remains and the girls to Colorado Springs.
Glen Eyrie Castle: 1904-1952
The General remembered the promise he made to his wife concerning their home and began plans to remodel the house into the Castle we use today. Construction began in 1904 and was completed within two years. During the time of construction, General Palmer and his daughters traveled throughout Europe seeking fireplaces, artifacts and heirlooms to fill the completed castle.
The stones for the exterior, brought in from the Bear Creek area, had the appearance of being very old, as Palmer had insisted. The window casings and doorways were of Indiana limestone, shipped in by rail. The engraving on the lintel of the entrance door was the General's creed regarding visitors. It reads, "We should a guest love while he loves to stay, and when he likes not, give him loving way."
The estate was kept in superb condition by a host of servants including an Italian butler, a British valet, Swiss dairyman and dairymaids, a chef, a Chinese launderer, lawn keepers, and many others with special talents. DC current had supplied electricity to the estate since 1882. The castle had telephones, some of the first in the west. Guests arrived through electric gates. A gardener grew flowers and vegetables in two hothouses, as well as a spectacular rose garden. One of the first milk pasteurizing plants in the US was installed in the creamery. The estate enjoyed many other luxuries unknown to its time.
General Palmer was an excellent horseman and loved to ride over the many miles of trails at Glen Eyrie where he could go through electrically controlled gates operated by batteries. He often joined guests on these trails and in the Garden of the Gods.
In 1906, on a ride with his daughters and a friend in the Garden of the Gods, he rode an unfamiliar horse that stumbled and threw him to the ground. He suffered a broken neck and was paralyzed from the third rib down. Though immobile, the General continued to entertain children and give generously to the community until his death on March 13, 1909 at the age of 72. At that time the estate was valued at $3,000,000.
After Palmer's death, his two older daughters moved to England, Elsie to marry an Englishman and Dorothy to become a social worker. Marjory married Henry Watt, the resident doctor of Glen Eyrie, and moved from the Glen to Colorado Springs to open a tubercular clinic, as Marjory herself suffered from the disease.
The girls offered the estate to the city, but it was too expensive to maintain. The estate was sold in 1916 to a group of Oklahoma businessmen who called themselves the Glen Eyrie Companies. They paid $150,000 for the property, planning to use it as a private resort and country club, complete with an 18-hole golf course. The Carriage House became The Black Horse Tavern (the name probably taken from General Palmer's black horse Senor). The castle was to be used as the clubhouse and the Glen was in fact platted into 150 home sites. Architectural sketches exist for several of the luxury homes.
World War I, however, was at its height, and people were not interested in the cost of having a home at a private country club. Due to the lack of sales, these Oklahoma businessmen were delighted with an offer from Alexander Smith Cochran to purchase the estate for $450,000. Mr. Cochran, a multi-millionaire rug manufacturer from New York, also purchased the Douglas, Lansing, Austin, Newton, and Fairley Ranches north of Glen Eyrie.
In 1922, fearing the consequences of a divorce, Cochran transferred ownership of Glen Eyrie to his holding company, the Hillbright Corporation. In 1925, he built the Pink House and closed the Castle. In August 1927, the estate was put up for auction in two parcels. For Parcel One, Glen Eyrie and the ranchland to the south, the bid was $250,000. Parcel Two included the ranchland to the north with a bid of $50,000. The high bidder was Harold Lumberg, a New York attorney. He did not close within the sixty days allowed, however, and the estate remained with the Hillbright Corporation.
Mr. Cochran died in 1929 and Glen Eyrie remained on the market until 1938, when it was purchased by George W. Strake, an independent oil producer from Houston, Texas. He used Glen Eyrie as a summer home and cattle ranch. He added two wings to the Pink House where his family lived while at Glen Eyrie. In 1950 the estate again was placed on the market, this time for $500,000.
1953 – Today
In 1953, The Navigators, an international, non-denominational Christian organization, purchased the estate as a headquarters for its ministry and as a conference center. Today, in addition to being used by the Navigators for Christian conferences and its Eagle Lake Camp for kids in the summer, Glen Eyrie is also available for public rentals for weddings, retreats, and conferences of many kinds.
Historical information courtesy of Glen Eyrie Castle and Conference Center. Sources include Stephanie Carter, Betty Froisland, Len Froisland, Forrest Graham, Donald McGilchrist, and Betty Skinner.
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