Royal Gorge

You know, I think Patty referenced it or someone did about everybody loves railroads.

I mean, I've been on the Winter Park train, the Royal Gorge train, the Cumbres and Toltec, ridden on Amtrak around the country and high-speed rail in Europe.

Love it.

It's one of the best ways to travel.

So still along what they consider their front range in Colorado, but is nestled right up against the mountains.

So literally I can jump in my house from the golf course and I can be up at the Royal Gorge in about 15 minutes.

I can be in Salida in about 45 minutes.

and over to the western slope of Colorado in a couple hours.

And for the commercial stuff that we want to come in, we wanna be very intentional about the amenities that are being provided are beneficial to the current residents But where we're building is kind of a hot spot for outdoor activities.

We've got fly fishing, whitewater rafting, zip lining.

We're right by the Royal Gorge.

We've got the golf course.

But I wanted to show a different side and capture the full breadth of Colorado.

And so hitting areas like Grape Creek, the Royal Gorge, Phantom Canyon, Pikes Peak, including the Manitou Incline, which is such a famous and like Sufferfest here in Colorado, a staircase that goes straight up the mountain.

up and over pikes and over to Lost Creek Wilderness.

I just wanted to capture that part of Colorado.

Go to Facebook, look up Alan J. Cook, A-L-A-N, middle initial J, last name Cook, C-O-O-K.

And on the background photo that you'll see on my Facebook page, that is me, uh, doing a zip line across the deepest gorge in North America, which is Royal Gorge in Royal Gorge, Colorado.

That shot was taken a few years ago.

I had just been fascinated by that place.

I did a job out in Denver, had some extra time after the job to run down to the-- towards the Colorado Springs area.

It's about an hour and a half south of Denver, 'cause I was just fascinated to go see Royal Gorge, Colorado.

The Arkansas River runs through the bottom of that gorge.

It is almost 1,100 feet straight down, and I had to put that shot of me coming across there on a zip line, um, just for the heck of it because, you know, that, that's kind of the way I do life.

In different versions of the story, Wagner escaped the altercation unharmed, but once Bat found out what he'd done, he tracked down his brother's killer and gunned him down himself.

The third incident that marked Masterson's tenure as Sheriff of Ford County was known as the Royal Gorge War, which was in reality a dispute between two railroads over who had the right to lay track through the Royal Gorge.

These sort of conflicts were common back then, and were known as the railroad wars as numerous different companies vied for supremacy.

In this particular case, it was a dispute between the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and the adjacent Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.

This time, it was the Santa Fe Railroad that hired Bat Masterson to look after their interests, which involved him assembling a group of 60 or so men and even obtaining a cannon should the need for one arise.

The gunslingers in Masterson's employ were a who's who of the Wild West, including Doc Holliday, Ben Thompson, mysterious Dave Mather, and even the man he once arrested, Dirty Dave Rudabaugh.

For something that had the word war in it and took place during the Wild West and involved some of that period's most dangerous shooters, the Royal Gorge War was surprisingly tame.

Most of it was fought in courtrooms while the hired men kept their guns holstered and mainly relied on threats and intimidations.

And for me, it was just there's already so much coverage of that particular range.

I wanted to highlight some other stuff in Colorado, hitting things like Grape Creek, the Royal Gorge, Phantom Canyon, Pikes Peak, Lost Creek Wilderness.

And so, uh, that's one of the challenges with making a, a through route is you can't just get there.

You have to keep going once you're there.