If you travel east on Marksheffel Road and then turn onto Highway 94 headed for the eastern plains, you may notice an outcropping of sandstone rocks and a stand of pines to the west. Nestled in a little valley, protected from the prairie winds, is an area with a long and colorful history: Jimmy Camp.It’s not hard to see how travelers on the plains would welcome the sight of a refuge in the pine trees, with several springs and abundant game and grazing. The various Indian tribes in the Pikes Peak area were frequent visitors; a well-used Indian trail ran from present-day Black Forest past Jimmy Camp down to the north side of Fountain Creek. Archaeological digs of the Jimmy Camp area have uncovered prehistoric ceramics, stone artifacts and buried fire pit features.Research conducted by Richard Behling (and posted on the Web at www.geocities.com/SoHo/Den/4707/index.html) revealed that the area was visited by Spanish explorers who led expeditions in the early 1700s. One Spanish party, stumbling upon the area after being lost on the prairie for four days, called the springs “Ojo de Nuestra Senora de Buen Suceso (Spring of Our Lady of Good Luck).”Traders passed through frequently in the early part of the 19th century, traveling the Taos (or Trappers) Trail from Fort Laramie in Wyoming to Taos in the Mexican settlements. It was in the 1830s that the area got its name, but no one is sure who “Jimmy” actually was. Two stories can be found in various journals and historical accounts. In one version, a trader named Jimmy Boyer made a yearly trip to the area to trade with the Indians. He would build a signal fire on the bluffs to let his customers know he had arrived. But his last signal fire was spotted by a group of Mexican bandits, who killed him and stole his goods. They in turn were tracked down by the Indians and hanged by their toes from tree limbs.In the second (most popular) account, a trapper named Jimmy Daugherty was traveling with a Mexican guide and a mountaineer named John Brown, who was often visited in his dreams by a “spirit guide” that foretold the future. As they prepared to leave Fort Lancaster on the South Platte River and travel south, Brown dreamed they would die if they continued their journey. Brown stayed behind, but Jimmy and the guide continued on, and the Mexican murdered Jimmy “near a cold spring some 20 miles east of Pikes Peak.” This story was included in a Christmas greeting sent by the Banning-Lewis Ranch well over 100 years later.The first American account of Jimmy Creek is found in the journal of Rufus B. Sage, an adventurer on his way to Taos in September 1842. He wrote, “Our place of stay was in a sweet little valley enclosed by piney ridges. … An abundance of green grass greets the eye, arrayed in the loveliness of summer’s verdancy, and blooming wildflowers nod to the breeze.”By 1858, the gold rush was on, and several accounts by gold seekers mention visiting Jimmy Camp. The first land claim was placed on the area in 1860, and in 1863, a man named Marmaduke Green laid claim to the land and built a cabin – the cabin foundations can still be seen.As reported by Walter Dennis (who is profiled in this issue of the New Falcon Herald), well-known Texas ranchers Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, who drove large herds of cattle to market in the mid-1800s, often watered their cattle and bedded them down for the night along Jimmy Camp Creek. One popular bed ground for the herds was in Corral Valley, on the north side of Highway 94, adjacent to Jimmy Camp.In the late 1800s, the area was bought and sold several times. In 1870, owner Matt France began to mine coal about five miles southeast of Jimmy Camp. Behling says in his history of the area that “by 1885 the mines at Franceville were producing 20 carloads of coal a day.” Another mining town, McFerran, was built in 1886, and both towns produced coal until the late 1890s.By this time, the eastern plains were home to many large ranches. The old trail passing through Jimmy Camp became known as Jimmy Camp Road. Part of that road still exists in Fountain, running north to south between Ohio Avenue and Link Road. Matt France sold the property around 1882, and the ranch and springs subsequently passed through a series of ranching owners. One owner, J. L. McMahon, converted the springs into a health resort called Richland. In 1912, Colorado Springs merchants convinced McMahon to allow the construction of several roadhouses along Old Farmer’s Highway (now Highway 94), where farmers could stay on their way to Colorado Springs.Then in 1921, a rancher named Raymond (“Pinky”) Lewis married Ruth Banning, whose family owned a large ranch south of Colorado Springs. The couple began to acquire land east of town and soon owned 30,000 acres, including the Jimmy Camp. They ran prize Herefords on the land and, in 1950, created a home by moving two Victorian houses from North Nevada Avenue and joining them together. Banning died before the house was completed, but Lewis lived there with his second wife, Carla Dines. Lewis died in 1978, and when Dines died in 1994, the house was put up for sale. The ranch and the 35 acres surrounding it are now owned by Alberta Drake, widow of Walter Drake.The old Jimmy Camp itself, tucked into the trees to the northeast of the ranch, was part of the 22,000 acres bought by the Saudi-owned company, Capital Pacific Holdings Inc. in 1993. The ranch was annexed into the city of Colorado Springs in 1988, and a portion of that land was designated as a city park. This park is slated to surround the Jimmy Camp Creek Reservoir, part of the controversial Southern Delivery System proposed by Colorado Springs Utilities to bring water up from the Pueblo Reservoir. It is not clear what the fate the old site of the original camp and springs will be.
