Perhaps as you’ve walked downtown or stopped at a red light while you were driving you’ve had that moment to wonder exactly who was that person memorialized with a statue in a median, outside a building, in a park or sculpted just gazing west toward Pikes Peak. What did they do?

The people in the know are at Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum ,where the Cultural Services Department maintains the statues and the hundreds of other public art and also has an interactive “Story of Us.” Also, Peak Radar has an online archive of all the public art, including those statues.

For more about those from local history who are paid tribute to with statues:

PIKES PEAK RANGE RIDERS

Two riders are heading west from their forever spot on a rise at the intersection of Cascade and Pikes Peak avenues. They represent this area’s longtime tradition of rodeo going back to 1937 and to the formation of the Pikes Peak Range Riders.

The Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo was founded by Spencer Penrose and for years top rodeo talent and entertainers were here in “The House That Spec Built,” a 10,000-seat stadium across from Penrose’s Broadmoor hotel.

Since 1946 and continuing today, proceeds of the rodeo have gone to help support Pikes Peak region military and families.

Community support has always been a strong tradition and in 1949 the Pikes Peak Range Riders was created by the two men in bronze, Kenneth D. Brookhart, atop the mule sculpture, and Everett R. Conover on horseback. Every summer, the large group of horsemen and ranchers and a group of urban cowboys, too, head out on a five-day trail ride as a promotion for that year’s rodeo. They now start their ride on horseback, leaving from a downtown street breakfast for thousands.

On July 23, 1988, the bronze work by artist Rusty Phelps was dedicated as a gift from the Pikes Peak Range Riders to the community for its support of the rodeo “and in celebration of our western heritage.”

As a eulogy for the two founders, the plaque on the memorial statue reads: “These Range Riders no longer on this earth do ride. They now follow new trails beyond the Great Divide, Where the water’s sweeter and the grass grows higher, And the way is so easy that man or mount never tire.”

NICK VENETUCCI, “THE PUMPKIN MAN“
Dominico “Nick” T. Venetucci planned for a career in baseball but left the sport and the New York Yankees minor leagues in 1933 when he was needed to run his growing family farm in Security, south of Colorado Springs. In the 1950s, come Halloween time, he wanted to share his pumpkin patch bounties with youngsters from the area. Filling up his old pickup truck, he headed to town and passed out pumpkins to every youngster he saw.

That led Nick and wife Bambi to begin inviting all the schoolchildren in the area to the pumpkin patch to pick their favorite pumpkins to take home. It’s a cherished memory for many thousands of area kids, when little folks raced through the fields, the tiniest youngsters often choosing the largest pumpkins of all to carry back to the field-trip buses or cars. One million pumpkins for 1 million kiddos is just an estimate of the Venetuccis’ gift over the years, sometimes 30,000 to 50,000 children each year.

When they were senior citizens, the Venetuccis leased their farm to Pikes Peak Community Foundation to be run in their farming and pumpkin tradition for 99 years with a special conservation easement.

The dearly loved “Pumpkin Man” died in 2004 at age 93 and area schoolchildren and alums raised $34,000 of “Pennies for Pumpkins” for a bronze sculpture by Fred Darpino for the grounds of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum. In the setting, Nick is shown with kids and pumpkins, another boy honoring his early sports dreams dressed in baseball memorabilia.

HANK THE COWBOY

Western characters named Hank were popular in 1950s comics, as a puppet character and on the radio as Hank the Cowdog.

But Colorado Springs already had its own Hank the Cowboy, created in 1939 to honor the local Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo. Entrepreneur and founder of The Broadmoor Spencer Penrose had requested that Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph artist Stanley Reed create a Cowboy Hank character.

The Hank sculpture by Rusty Phelps was commissioned by the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Association and donated to the city in 1997. Support also came from El Pomar Foundation, the Anna Keesling Ackerman Trust and the Gazette.

He’s in the median at what was originally known as downtown’s “Busy Corner,” Pikes Peak Avenue and Tejon Street. He honors rodeo as he reads his daily Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph and looks west toward Cascade Avenue and Pikes Peak.

Properly attired, he is dressed full cowboy with jeans, chaps, a button-down shirt, denim jacket, cowboy hat and boots, with a can of chewing tobacco in his back pocket.

Gen. William Jackson Palmer

Probably the most familiar statue in Colorado Springs sits right in the middle of the busy intersection of Nevada and Platte avenues. William Jackson Palmer is the city’s founder, a Civil War officer who brought the railroad to this part of the West. He died in 1909 of injuries and paralysis after his horse stumbled during a ride near his Glen Eyrie home at Garden of the Gods. In 1929, years after his death, the statue of the general looking toward Pikes Peak was installed by the General William Jackson Palmer Memorial Association. There has always been disagreement about whether or not the horse he’s riding was meant to be his beloved Diablo or is instead a representative horse. Artist Nathan Dumont Potter.

William Seymour

In bronze, he waits outside the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, originally the 1903 El Paso County Courthouse, to be called for jury duty, thus becoming the first Black juror in the county.

William Seymour had been born into a slave family on a Kentucky plantation. Finally free following the Civil War, he and wife Elizabeth were part of a migration exodus moving to Kansas. The family records say they had changed their last name because the original was believed to be the name of their slave owner.

William was befriended by Palmer and the Seymours and their cattle went by wagon train to Colorado in 1889 where he, his wife and eventually their 12 children built a successful farm and dairy business near Black Forest. They supplied dairy and farm products to Sinton Dairy and Mowery Creamery in Colorado Springs.

After William and his wife retired, they moved into town where they were active in the community and he helped found St. John’s Baptist Church, the first Black Baptist church in the area. Then, in 1903, William got the call for jury duty for the first trial in the new El Paso County Courthouse, now the Pioneers Museum. He was the first member of the Black community to serve as a juror.

William Seymour died in 1920 and he and his family are buried in Evergreen Cemetery.

The Negro Historical Association of Colorado Springs chose William as representative of the city’s black settlers for the public art. In 2002, New York, now Santa Fe, N.M., artist Stephanie Huerta, was commissioned to create the sculpture as a tribute to the area’s Black pioneers who, in local history, had become known as “the invisible people” of the region.

Katharine Lee Bates

In bronze, she quietly sits atop mountain boulders, looking toward Pikes Peak to make poetic notes about spacious skies and purple mountain majesties that would one day become the anthem “America the Beautiful.” Katharine Lee Bates had seen those breathtaking sights that inspired her from the summit of Pikes Peak in 1893. Her bronze setting is a lower elevation, on the grounds of Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum on South Tejon Street.

Known for her literary works, for seven published volumes of poetry, for articles on social reform and as a respected teacher from Wellesley, Mass., she had gone to the top of America’s Mountain during the time she taught briefly at Colorado College. The notes she made were poetic.

She was paid for “America the Beautiful” just one time, when a small journal, The Congregationalist, published it on July 4, 1895. But the legacy lives forever.

Her statue’s artist was John Lajba of Nebraska.

ZEBULON MONTGOMERY PIKE

A celebrated explorer and Army brigadier general, Zebulon Pike led expeditions through the uncharted Louisiana Purchase territory in the 1800s. A first expedition was farther north but the second, in 1806-1807, went southwest to areas of the Rocky Mountains, New Mexico and Texas. Ill equipped for rugged winters, they were going through freezing weather and deep snow when he was the first to officially document seeing the Colorado mountain peak in the distance that would carry his name, Pikes Peak (no possessive apostrophe). And no, they didn’t climb the mountain.

Pike fought in the War of 1812 and was killed in 1813 during the Battle of York in Canada when a gunpowder magazine exploded. He was 34 years old.

Many things throughout the Rocky Mountain West, including the mountain peak, were given his name, even The Zeb, Colorado Springs’ free shuttle buses through the downtown area.

The Zebulon Pike public art statue beside the El Paso County Combined Courts was commissioned in 1985 by Colorado native Jasper Ackerman and the artist was Oklahoma sculptor Rich Muno.

Fannie Mae Duncan

Residents and groups from throughout the community teamed to make this statue of admired local legend Fannie Mae Duncan a reality in 2019. She was best known as the force behind the Cotton Club jazz nightclub downtown where, during the time of segregation she threw open the doors for “Everybody Welcome.” She wasn’t deterred when Police Chief I.B. “Dad” Bruce reportedly ordered her to stop mixing the races. Famous musicians, performers and comics were club headliners, drawing constant crowds. The club operated from the end of World War II to 1975.

The Cotton Club site, 25 W. Colorado Ave. and part of blocks of buildings no longer standing after the 1970s urban renewal, is near the location of her statue at the entrance to Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts. In 2012 the elegant woman was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame, which said “her courageous stand fostered the peaceful integration of Colorado Springs.”

Besides success as a club owner, Fannie Mae Duncan, who died in 2005 at age 87, was a longtime mentor and philanthropist, an entrepreneur and successful businesswoman and a community activist.

The artist for the bronze, life-size sculpture, was Lori Kiplinger Pandy.

Little Sister of Liberty

For the 40th anniversary of Boy Scouts of America in 1950, Boy Scout troops across the country gave more than 200 “Little Sister of Liberty” statues to cities. They are 8-foot replicas of Lady Liberty in New York’s Harbor and tributes to freedom. Local Scouts installed the Colorado Springs City Hall outdoor statue in 1951. Over the years the fabrication weathered and the copper finish turned dull. The city restored little Liberty in 2010, the restoration of the base funded by Platte Avenue Business Association.

Winfield Scott Stratton

Massively rich but massively lonely, Winfield Scott Stratton was a quiet carpenter who hit it golden before selling his Cripple Creek Independence Mine for $11 million in 1899.

The bachelor never forgot his blue-collar beginnings and gave away most of that money. No Millionaires Row mansion in Colorado Springs with the other mine owners. He lived modestly in a working-class area.

His philanthropy included building the trolley car network and the Mining Exchange Building, now a hotel. There was money for land for a City Hall and the Post Office and he made it possible for a new County Courthouse that is today’s Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum.

Histories point out how Stratton never failed to provide for those who worked for him. One treat was a park in Cheyenne Canon reached by his trolleys and providing a recreation area for workers and their families.

There was so much good done for the new city but it’s reported that he despaired that people everywhere always just wanted more and more of his largess. There were always young women — or their families — trying to unsuccessfully attract his attention. Stratton’s history in the Pioneers Museum tells of his loneliness, driving him into alcoholism before an early death in 1902.

The majority of his fortune had been designated for his most important project. In the name of his father he had set up what would be the Myron Stratton Home for indigent children and senior citizens in a pastoral area south of the city. It has grown and fulfills that charity work still today.

Chicago Beaux Arts sculptor Nellie Verne Walker, a visitor to Colorado Springs at the time of Stratton’s death, was commissioned to sculpt his death mask, a statue for Myron Stratton home and a Weeping Angels grave marker for Evergreen Cemetery. A 1907 replica statue is downtown near his Mining Exchange building, now a hotel.

Blota Hunka

This steel “Warrior of the Plains,” Blota Hunka, atop his steed, can be spotted by those driving into Colorado Springs Airport. His creator, artist Don Green, a longtime educator, is known throughout the area for large metal public art sculptures including bison, “Rearing Horse” for Centennial Hall, animal benches at the zoo and so many more he has lost count. Blota Hunka was commissioned by the former Pioneer Plaza Shopping Center in 1995 and later purchased and installed in 2000 at the airport.

SPENCER PENROSE

Flamboyant philanthropist and entrepreneur Spencer Penrose is remembered for a major list of contributions including The Broadmoor hotel, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Pikes Peak Highway, Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun and El Pomar Foundation. His wealth came from gold and silver mining and real estate.

Penrose was the focus of delightful stories including his response to Prohibition. In 1917, when alcohol was a no-no, he reportedly buried 3,400 cases of prime alcohol beneath the swimming pool at his Broadmoor hotel. There were also bottles in hidden rooms at Penrose House. Dusty bottles are memories in glass cases at the hotel. Penrose was also the subject of raucous stories and tall tales when he tried to coerce city founder Palmer to sell him the Antlers Hotel downtown.

From his grand statue by Avard Fairbanks he looks out over downtown at Tejon Street and Pikes Peak Avenue.

Charles Leaming Tutt Jr.

A businessman, president of companies and philanthropist, Charles Leaming Tutt Jr. was the son of the man who came to Colorado Springs from Philadelphia to be a partner of Palmer, his school friend.

Charles Leaming Tutt Jr. was president of The Broadmoor hotel after the death of Spencer Penrose in 1939 and became head of El Pomar Foundation. He was a trustee of Colorado College where the library carries his name. He died in 1961 at age 72 and had donated the family home to the college as the Alumni House.

Sports and rodeo legend Edward H. Honnen from 1921 Colorado Springs High School, who with his family donated the first ice rink to Colorado College, commissioned a statue of Tutt for the front of the library by sculptor Cloyd Barnes. The college observed tongue-in-cheek, “Over the years, the statue has been decorated in various ways, and they have done so with affection, imagination and a sense of humor.”

Dr. Jose Rizal

In 2025 the connection between Filipino and American culture was paid tribute with a bronze monument of Philippine national hero Dr. Jose Rizal in George Fellows Park on Tuckerman Drive. His 165th birthday and legacy will be celebrated in June, organized by the Dr. Jose Rizal Legacy International Foundation. A writer, doctor, nationalist and reform advocate who spoke nine languages, he was 35 years old when he was executed by firing squad in 1896. His writings had inspired the Philippine revolution.

Spirit of the American Doughboy

The World War I Doughboy from 1920-21 was the most popular of the wartime monuments by sculptor E.M. Viquesney that had started with the Civil War. Viquesney had served in the Spanish-American War. In one of the first documented mass productions he made the Doughboy memorial for 39 states with more than 145 of them for Texas alone. And there were Doughboy lamps as well. “Spirit of the American Doughboy” has one Army soldier in a triumphant pose with bayonet and grenade. It’s in a place of honor in Evergreen Cemetery.