What's in a Name

During the great Pikes Peak Gold Rush of 1859, two young townbuilders from eastern Kansas inadvertantly wandered into the primeval rock paradise known ever after as the Garden of the Gods. The pair stood for a moment in speechless wonder, gaping at the gigantic sandstone rocks that strethed so majesticlly upwards towards the summer sky. Finally, Melancthon Beach broke the silence:

"This will make a capital place for a beer garden, when the country grows up."

"Beer Garden!" exclaimed his more poetic partner, Rufus Cable. "Why it is a fit place for the gods to assemble, and we will call it the Garden of the Gods."

Beach and Cable were soon too busy establishing the nearby town of Colorado City to worry about whether or not they had overlooked any earlier names when first they christened their garden of rock.

Just the summer before, in fact, the Lawrence Party of gold seekers had named the great monoliths "the Red Rocks," and the little creek flowing nearby "Camp Creek." The Camp Creek designation remained in permanent use, although the term Red Rocks was soon transferred to the sandstone rocks west of Denver.

Other names came and went. On 22 September 1859 a correspondent for the Rocky Mountain News filed a report in which he wrote of hearing the sandstone rocks called "the Garden of Eden" in honor of two rock figures found there resembling Adam and Eve. The rock figures may have been that formation known today as the Siamese Twins. In any event, this new name was soon forgotten.

The first use of the name "Garden of the Gods" in official documents seems to have been contained in the sixth claim registered in the El Paso Claim Club record book. This was the claim of Wm. Henry Garvin, registered on 15 December 1859. In filing for 160 acres of land surrounding the Gateway Rocks, Garvin descibed the location as "the place known and designated as the 'Garden of the Gods.'"

When Colonel James Meline rode through the Pikes Peak region seven years later, he asked the oldest resident he could find - a Pikes Peaker from the Rush of '59 - how the Garden of the Gods had gotten its name. Replied the oldtimer: "They called it so when I came." Four decades later, when the Charles Perkins' children gave the Garden to the people of Colorado Springs, one of the conditions they attached to the gift was that the park be forever known as the Garden of the Gods. And so has it always remained, from that day until today.

Although all other appelations were quickly forgotten in favor of the more inspiring "Garden of the Gods," just as quickly forgotten were the originators of the winning name. Both Melancthon Beach and Rufus Cable soon gave up the farming claims they had taken along Camp Creek. Cable returnded to his law practice in Kansas City. Beach took on local duties as clerk and recorder of the El Paso Claim Club. After a few years, area residents could no longer remember who had first named the Garden of the Gods. Some said it could only have been the members of the Hayden Survey Party. Others gave the honor to novelist Helen Hunt.

Finally, the aging Melancthon Beach felt compelled to set the record straight. A few years before his death in 1917 he wrote his memoirs, setting down for all time the true story behind the naming of the Garden of the Gods. A copy of his story was placed in the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, so that "no one should endeavor to take that honor from Rufus Cable."

E-mail me at GehlingR@aol.com


Source: "El Paso County, the First Settlement," by Melancthon S. Beach. Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum.