Cave of the Winds, Then and Now
Photography by Norman Thompson, Text by Richard Rhinehart (Westcliffe)
Cave of the Winds is our own Carlsbad Caverns, a collection of weird formations inside a cavern set in a picturesque mountain canyon near Colorado Springs.
The cave, open since 1881, attracts some 150,000 visitors a year to view its cavernous rooms, as well as stalactites that make up a horseshoe tunnel and calcite deposits shaped like a skeleton and a bat. The attractions have such names as the Temple of Silence, the Valley of Dreams and the Adventure Room.
Photographers along with tourists were intrigued by the cave in the early years, and there are a multitude of historic snapshots and stereopticon views of the attractions, many of them spooky, the light casting ominous shadows on the cave walls.
Norman Thompson replicates those old pictures of the cave and the countryside around it with a series of then-and-now shots. The Cave of the Winds hasn’t changed much in 130 years, but the people have. Early visitors wore suits, ties and high collars with watch chains draped across their vests, a contrast to today’s tourists in jeans and sweat shirts.
The First Frontier
by Scott Weidensaul (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
We may believe that we in the West have the corner on settlers and Indians. But the fact is, some 300 years before the first Conestogas breached the Rockies, pilgrims and American Indians were duking it out on the East Coast. And the protracted battles, the viciousness and cruelty, the cheating and scandals were enough to fill Westerners with envy.
In a heavily detailed book subtitled “The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, & Endurance in Early America,” Scott Weidensaul writes about hundreds of years of conflict between Indians and settlers determined to take the red man’s land. (Take that term “red man.” It has nothing to do with skin color but the fact the Beothuk Indians painted their faces red, earning the sobriquet “Red Indians.”)
While Americans know about the Indians who helped the pilgrims, about the Mohawks because of their hairdo and the Mohicans because of James Fennimore Cooper’s Uncas (who wasn’t a Mohican at all,) most believe pre-Columbus America was a wilderness. In fact, there were as many as 112 million Indians living here when Columbus showed up. That figure dropped as Indians succumbed to white men’s diseases and treachery. Many Indians were taken as slaves. Some 200 years after Columbus, as many as a third of the Indians in the Southeast were enslaved. Weidensaul calls King Philip’s War, a generation-long conflict between red and white, the bloodiest war ever fought on American soil.
Both sides were vicious. Indians skinned their enemies or inserted slivers of wood under their skin and set them on fire. One tribe branded a woman as “punishment” for having been raped. A white man murdered his wife, then salted and ate her.
America may be the land of freedom, but “The First Frontier” makes clear that such freedom came at the cost of duplicity and brutality, and that Indians weren’t the only savages.
South Park, Colorado: Nature’s Paradise
by Bernie and Linda Nagy (High Country Artworks)
Most Denverites know South Park as that lonely stretch of road along U.S. 285 from Kenosha Pass to Buena Vista. But off the macadam, South Park is a scene of surprising beauty, and a couple of years ago, this high grassland basin was designated a national heritage area.
In this colorful picture book, Bernie and Linda Nagy show a field of wild iris, which might be the prettiest sight in Colorado, and yellow aspen trees against a brilliant blue sky, which runs a close second.
Many of the shots are de rigueur for a Colorado photo book—wind-stunted conifers, aspen fields, close-ups of flowers, snowy sunrises. But there are also photographs unique to South Park, including one of South Park City in the glow of a winter sunset and another of Buckskin Gulch at the bottom of barren mountains. These dramatic, year-around photographs make “South Park, Colorado” a book for all seasons.
A Victorian Mansion in the Colorado Rockies: The Estemere Estate at Palmer Lake
by Daniel W. Edwards and Roger W. Ward (Published by the authors)
Estemere is a country estate at Palmer Lake, a collection of buildings, with a late-19th century manor house, built in a hodgepodge of architectural styles. The home was not a mansion like those in Denver and Colorado Springs but a more informal dwelling built in the era of golden oak.
Its owners and visitors represent a who’s who of turn-of-the-century Denver society — Eban Smith, Charles B. Kountze, Dean Martyn Hart of St. John’s Cathedral, Tyson Dines and many more — who lazed around Palmer Lake in the summer.
Built by a dentist as a private home, Estemere spent much of its existence as a hotel, a retreat and a school, but in recent years, it was restored as a home again.
Authors Daniel W. Edwards and Roger W. Ward have assembled virtually every fact you’d ever want to know (and some you don’t) into a comprehensive biography of one of Colorado’s most eclectic old homes.
