Glenwood Springs – the history of
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. (KREX) — Glenwood Springs has been on the map and bustling with tourists for well over a century. But how did this quaint little tourist town turn into what it is now? Let’s turn back the clocks to the late 1800’s…
Executive Director Bill Kight for Frontier Museum tells Western Slope Now the name originally wasn’t Glenwood Springs, it was Defiance.
When Glenwood started to be settled, it was still a reservation for the Ute Indians.
Kight says in 1879, miners started to settle on the flat tops surrounding Glenwood. Inspired by when John C. Blake and others pushed out the Utes to stake their claim, they named their new home “Defiance”.
By 1883, Glenwood Springs became an official town with some cutting-edge technology, harnessing the power of nearby rivers early on to be able to light up downtown Glenwood in the late 1800’s.
Mayor Ingrid Wussow has heard firsthand stories of Glenwood’s history since her family moved to the area around 1915. They owned multiple lumber mills both on the flat tops outside of Glenwood and in Steamboat.
One of the key players in Glenwood’s development? Walter Deveraux.
In 1893, he set out to encompass and enclose the pool area the best he could so it would be a destination for travelers, but he had to have a hotel also, so he built a now-famous hotel.
General manager Larry MacDonald tells Western Slope Now as Walter Deveraux started to develop the town around the hot springs, he created something else in 1893 with just as big of a splash on the town as the pools…Hotel Colorado.
Nowadays, this hotel is famous for paranormal activity and Victorian-style architecture, with most of the building left completely original.
Its lavish halls were created to attract the most important people in the country, including the president at the time – Teddy Roosevelt, who stayed long enough at the hotel for it to pick up the nickname “The Western White House.”
Its next milestone would not be as pleasant…
Macdonald tells Western Slope Now the United States Department of Defense went around and condemned many hotels, many country clubs, even some hospitals that were in isolated areas. They did not want any of their patients to hear flyovers or have any trauma that would trigger them back to their state of being around war.
Manager Lindsay Jo Smith tells Western Slope Now the Navy Convalescent had occupied the Hotel Colorado, so there wasn’t a lot of housing left in Glenwood and families were living in the hotel, even though it wasn’t in great condition.
Her store Bullocks donates a space to the Historical Society, and they’ve added quite a few pieces, and a lot is also from a local collector.
She says the World War wasn’t the first major conflict resulting in a tie to the town. One of the famous gunmen in the O.K. Corral shootout had fled to Glenwood to live out the rest of his short-lived life battling cancer – Doc Holliday.
He died in the Hotel Glenwood, which stood where Lindsay’s store is, until it burned down in 1945. Rumor has it the boiler blew up, and six people died in the fire.
For about six months, he was in Glenwood Springs, and when he did die, he was buried up at Linwood Cemetery.
Even with mining, hydro-electric power, a battle with the Utes, Hotel Colorado, and Doc Holliday, the main staple of Glenwood throughout today and the catalyst for the creation of the town will always be the hot springs, according to Kight.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WesternSlopeNow.com.
