Part 3 of 4: Aug. 12 will mark the 150th birthday of what is now called Old Colorado City. The community will host a Founders Day celebration on August 8 in Bancroft Park.In the meantime, local historian Dave Hughes will outline thehistory of Old Colorado City each week in FRESH•INK and its sister publication, YourHub, which is included in Thursday home-delivery copies of The Gazette on the west side.

Many locals have never been in the celebrated Garvin Cabin, which has gone through many lives since being built as the home of the first doctor in Colorado Territory.Although the first records of the itinerant Dr. James Garvin in Colorado City are sketchy at best, the El Paso Claim Club elected Garvin its president in August 1860. The club, a vigilante form of civil government, formed in August of 1859 for the purpose of recording real estate claims and settling and disputes. It survived until 1862, when state laws finally provided for government replacement.In 1862, Garvin returned to Colorado City from the mining camp of French Gulch, either to reside there permanently or to simply stay during the winter months. Either way, Garvin set up his practice in the log cabin at what is now 2612 W. Colorado Ave., which he built as a home three years earlier when he was 27.Garvin stayed in the territory through the Civil War, then took off for Illinois about 1866.After serving as a temporary morgue for three Colorado City boys killed by Indians in 1868, the cabin became the seat of the El Paso County government. It was there that General Palmer first walked in in 1869 to meet young El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Irving Howbert, who helped Palmer buy up the 10,000 acres that became Colorado Springs in 1871.Then it housed pioneers in the 1880s and ’90s, before becoming Sam Wah’s celebrated Chinese Laundry (and opium den). In the early 1900s, the cabin was opened as a tourist attraction, the “First Capitol of Colorado.”Thayer Tutt of the Broadmoor saved it from being lost in 1929 by buying it for $400 and moving it to the golf course, where it sat as a decorative reminder of the past until 1959, when it was moved to Denver and sat on the state capitol grounds for two years of centennial celebrations.Finally, in 1961, the cabin came back to Colorado Springs and was put in Bancroft Park where it has been ever since, periodically opened by the Old Colorado City Historical Society to let the public see what life was like in a log cabin over 100 years ago.On Aug. 8, during the sesquicentennial Founders Day celebration, not only will the cabin be open to the public, but it will be the site of the day’s highlight. At 12:30 p.m., the society will unveil the Sesquicentennial Monument on a especially prepared flagstone area and base next to the Garvin Cabin.The monument’s eight etched panels portray the entire 150-year history of Colorado City and the west side, and it is being presented as a gift to the City of Colorado Springs.

Dr. James Paul Garvin Photo by Old Colorado City Historical Society