May is an anniversary month for the town of Fountain and it’s in all their history books for the most explosive of reasons. It’s called “The Blast” and it flattened the little town south of Colorado Springs.

It’s just part of an interesting history. Fountain’s roots go back to the Ute Indians who wintered at Jimmy Camp Creek and Fountain Creek. Trappers had trading posts along the Fountaine Qui Bouille, or “bubbling springs.”

Fountain had been homesteaded and founded in 1859 along Fountain Creek and by the 1880s had two railroad lines, the Denver & Rio Grande and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. It wasn’t incorporated as a town until 1903.

It was before then, on May 14, 1888, while the people in the area were sound asleep at 2:50 a.m., that a huge crash occurred. Everyone rushed from their homes; many reported being thrown from their beds by the explosion.

Five freight-train cars had detached, or had been detached, from a train 13 miles away in Colorado Springs and started rolling toward the Fountain depot where a passenger train from Pueblo was stopped. One of the oncoming runaway cars carried flammable naphtha oil, which exploded when it hit the engine of the passenger train. It had been backing away from the approaching train cars.

Townsfolk became a volunteer bucket brigade in an attempt to save the depot until there was a scream from the train’s conductor warning everyone to run for their lives.

A second car on the freight train had caught fire and this one contained 18 tons of giant powder, a type of dynamite. People fled.

The book “Wellsprings, A History of the Pikes Peak Region” describes the scene:

“A few minutes after 3 a.m., the powder car exploded with a tremendous flash, a roar like the Earth being rent asunder, and a concussion that threw people to the ground and damaged every building in Fountain. The blast gouged a crater 10 feet deep and 30 feet wide. It shattered windows in Colorado Springs, rattled doors in Pueblo and was clearly heard 90 miles away in La Junta.” Even residents of Monument, 33 miles north, said it woke up almost everyone in town.

According to history reports, everyone on the passenger train, 34 people, had quickly escaped after the first crash but three people in town were killed. C.F. Smith died when he was hit by debris as he fought the fire from the depot roof. H.W. Hutchins was thrown onto the tracks from the exploding engine and died later. Mrs. D.P. Widrig was two blocks away watching the fire with neighbors when she was hit by flying iron debris and died several days later. Many other people in Fountain were injured by the debris and falling buildings.

An unidentified body was found later inside one of the cargo train cars.

The events leading up to “The Blast” will always be a mystery. Railroad employees had alleged the guilty parties were three hobos who had been fighting aboard the freight train, when two killed one and cut the train cars loose to cover the murder. That could have been the unidentified fellow.

There was also finger pointing that possibly railroad employees neglected setting the brakes before it rolled away, but they were cleared later by a coroner’s jury.

Historian and retired Colorado Springs Fire Department physician Dr. Lester Williams wrote in “Disaster in Fountain — 1888” in “The Western Brand Book” by Johnson Publishing that the reports had been two strangers were fighting in the caboose when the train was in Colorado Springs. The dead person in the rubble found later had died from a blow to the head. So again, those brakes-release thoughts turned into a murder mystery.

With the town leveled, Fountain’s rebuilding began. Most was rubble and there was nothing where the depot had stood. A local church was destroyed but its steeple was saved and today is on a church across Main Street, Fountain Independent Baptist Church.

The town has the oldest post office and the oldest church in El Paso County. It is one of the oldest incorporated towns in the Pikes Peak region.

Major changes came during WWII with the founding of Camp Carson next door in 1942. It became Fort Carson in 1954 and brought hundreds of soldiers and families. Fountain Valley Historical Society says that between 1942 and 1956, resident saw trains of up to 300 mules as a regular sight carrying equipment, weapons and supplies over mountainous terrain. For 13 years, the mule Hambone carried supplies for Fort Carson and was buried with full military honors.

Today The Mountain Post, named for frontiersman Brig. Gen. Christopher “Kit” Carson, has 373,000 acres and more than 75,000 personnel and family members.

Fountain, the little city, was hometown oriented with 15,000 residents in 2002 when it became just one of 10 cities named All America Cities by National Civic League.  The award recognizes communities for citizen involvement and civic excellence.

Fountain’s All America City achievements had included:

• Developing a community center, Lorraine Education and Community Center, in an abandoned school where more than 16 nonprofit organizations offer community services.

• Future city planning: two green-infrastructure parks, Hibbard and John Lindamood, a new municipal complex and plaza, streetscape.

• Improving School District 8 performance.

The 2020 census showed Fountain as a home rule city with a population of almost 30,000.

In 2023, Fountain started the Fountain Valley Historical Society, which offers a museum and walking tours of the town. And yes, there is memorabilia of the time the town of Fountain was wiped off the maps.