takes a little wherewithal.On the avenue
I never stepped inside
Base Camp closed October 4 and I never ate there. Not once. Tell me the place you'd go back to, because I'm asking myself the same thing.
Base Camp served its last plates on October 4. It was open a year and a half at 2611 West Colorado, it looked cool from the sidewalk, and I never stepped inside. Not once. The menu never grabbed me in the moment, and it's hard to pull me away from the dozen places over here I already adore, and those are the reasons I'd give you if you asked, and they are not very good reasons.
Matt Maher opened the place in March of 2025 and told the Gazette that costs and the economy did it. That's close to what Mountain Shadows said two blocks east before Christmas in 2024, before new owners bought it in January promising to keep it the way it was. Two restaurants in two years on the same six blocks. You can call that the economy. Or you can do the math on yourself. That's what I'm doing here, in public, so you don't have to go first.
Old Colorado City is a tourist town. It is fundamentally, unavoidably a tourist destination, for travelers and for locals, and we know this. It's why we give up the parking out front for Territory Days and the car show and the Saturday market without being asked: the shops need the crowds, and we need the shops. If I want OCC Brewing here 365 days a year, they have to make it 365 days a year, and that means me not griping about the traffic. It also means me showing up. Not everyone can afford to eat out or shop on the avenue, I understand that, and nobody's obligated to. But I'm fortunate enough to budget a meal out now and then, so I try to go midweek, when a place is quiet and could frankly use it... and I still never walked into Base Camp. (So much for midweek.)
So, no. I can't complain about Base Camp closing if I didn't eat there. I can't blame it on the parking, or the economy, or some other excuse that lets me off the hook. All that leaves is the next thing: pick a place over here I've been meaning to try, and go. This week. I'll tell you where next Thursday, and whether I'd go back, and I'd like you to do the same. Tell me the place you'd go back to. I'm asking myself the same question, and I don't love my answer yet.
What we know: Base Camp, 2611 W Colorado Ave, opened March 2025 and closed October 4; the owner cited costs and the economy. Mountain Shadows, 2223 W Colorado, closed December 2024 and sold in January.
What came before us
I want it all
Mel McFarland died in September. I found 604 of his columns and indexed every one. Eight digs, from the capital that got away to the forgotten cemetery.
Mel McFarland died on September 21. He was 81. He grew up over here, taught art and drafting for twenty years, spent summers as a conductor on the cog railway, and kept a real working caboose in his backyard for forty years as a writing room. Half the town knew him as the Caboose Guy. For fifteen of those years he wrote a column in the Pioneer called Cobweb Corners about whatever was under the sidewalk: the glass works that bottled Manitou water with two hundred men until the furnace fell in at midnight in 1892, the territorial capital we held for one session and lost to Denver (by one account for being too rowdy, which, fair), the cemetery on the mesa where the stones came out in the 1940s and the graves didn't. I found 604 of those columns and indexed every one. The one-line summaries there are software drafts until a person checks them. I'm checking five a week, so yes, that's going to take a while. Who writes the Westside's past now that Mel's gone is a real question, and the honest answer is us, badly at first and then better, and by us I mean you too.
So here's what I want, and I want all of it: how people first lived here and how it went from nothing to twenty-seven saloons and back, the funny stuff and the shootouts, the jail time for crimes that make us laugh and the ones that make us cry, the mysteries and the murders (there's at least one shooting on the record already, so, yes). What we used to do and stopped. What was here and isn't. What was going to be here and never was. The digs I can't do alone are the ones in your family, your church, your block, the shoebox under the bed with the photos nobody labeled, so send them, and send the photo too. Especially the photo.
What we found first:
- The capital that got away. Colorado City was founded in August 1859 to outfit gold seekers, was the county seat by 1861, and held the territorial capital just long enough to lose it to Denver. One account says the town was deemed too rowdy.
- Zero to four thousand. Mel has the town past 2,000 by 1890; the 1892 fire-insurance map (the Sanborn) writes 2,000 on its own cover, and the 1902 sheet writes 4,000. The town voted itself dry in 1913, lost the saloon money, and voted to be annexed by Colorado Springs in April 1917.
Six more digs, with the columns
Where that came from (17 links)
What they're saying about us
Heard around, this week
What the papers, the TV stations and the feeds said about us this week, retold for the people who aren't on there.
A music venue on 19th. The Gazette says ten musicians are opening a listening room called The Iowa at 734 N 19th, in the old Laura Belle's bar, by early January. Artist-owned, no bar, touring bands paired with locals. They threw a free benefit in Manitou on Saturday. (Yes, that Laura Bell, from the history section, with an extra e on the bar.)
The DDA, on TV. KKTV ran the Council vote to dissolve the Old Colorado City downtown development authority, 5 to 4, and reported on October 2 that the DDA is weighing legal action. Our row on it is above, with the four no votes and the ordinance number.
What the city is telling families. KRDO ran the city's fall lineup on September 29. Pumpkins in the Park is October 24 on the avenue, noon to six. It's in the two weeks above, checked.
Reddit, Nextdoor, Facebook. This is the part a machine can't pull, and we don't want it to. If something is lighting up your feed about the Westside this week (the bear, the pothole, the new sign, the argument about the lanes), text a screenshot to 719-201-5462. We retell it for the people who aren't on there, and we never name a poster without asking first.
Who we're looking for
I want to know everyone who cares even a little.
I'm one pen. Here's who I'm hoping picks up another, and the one small thing I'd ask of each of you.
If you run a shop on the avenue: tell us what's opening, moving, or closing, and the block. We say it came from you, or we don't. Your call.
If you remember 1968: the Address Book needs one photo of one storefront and what was inside. Talk instead of type: call 719-201-5462 and we write it down.
If you teach at Howbert, West, or Coronado: send the class. Under 18 means we check with a parent first.
If you go to Council anyway: take the one-page sheet, write down what happened, and we print it.
If your church cooks: the Table runs who's serving and when, in your words. Say the day and the door.
If you lost someone over here: the Bulletin Board runs it free and unedited, in your words. Send it by Tuesday.
Si usted habla español: la vecina necesita a alguien que la lea una vez y que conteste los textos en español. Un café, nada más.
If you're nine, or you know one: the box has a word find, a quiz, and a dare. Send the picture and it runs.
If you're new here: come to the Listening Room. Half the point is meeting the people who remember.
Any of these is a desk if you want it for keeps: how to take one.
Also from the editor
- Four lanes to three, for a year Three lanes for a year, and one question this desk asks every week: will it still be here in 2126, and do we want it to be?
- Load up for winter, survive the summer Not just another old west town. First freeze October 2, plows at six inches, twice the water, two elk, and the tunnels. We love it here anyway.
- Getting to know them is the point Twenty years over here and I don't know anyone yet. Getting to know them is the point. Starting with you.
- What was in this storefront in 1968? One storefront, one photo, what was inside.