I collect old pictures. A friend of mine a while back asked me, “have you seen this picture of Divide?” I looked at it and thought, “make a great column” so here it is.

If we go way back to 1875 things were a bit different here in El Paso County. First of all, there was only one railroad, and it was where it is now. There was no Teller County either. On the map Divide is on the Rio Grande Railroad, now called Palmer Lake. Ten years later maps are different. Still no railroad up Ute Pass, and no Divides on the map. By, this time the name has been changed to Palmer Lake. Ten more years later, now we have Divide west of Colorado Springs.

The area around Palmer Lake has had a variety of names, almost all have been lost, but we all know where it is. The name comes naturally from the lake and the use by the railroad, first for water for trains. Later they used it for ice. This was shipped all up and down the line by both the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande. Curiously, the current Divide was also a source of Ice. The town’s location is called Hayden Divide. When the Midland built west it almost followed a wagon road to Leadville. It did not cross the Hayden Divide where US 24 is today, but it was a bit north.

When the Midland arrived they tried several names for their station, but in the end everyone called it Divide. It became more of a divide when the Midland Terminal was built. Plus, in 1918 when the Colorado Midland stopped running west, an Ice plant was moved from Lake George to Coulson Lake and produced Ice into the 1930’s.

Oh, that picture? It was the one up at Palmer Lake, looking into a large vacant area west of the lake. It only had railroad buildings then.