A new walking tour program from the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum is inviting residents to take a closer look at the familiar streets they pass through every day — and discover the history hidden in plain sight.
The program, titled "America 250/Colorado 150: Seeing History in Place," is a walking tour through the heart of Colorado Springs that asks locals to look at familiar places through a historical lens. Across the city, places that seem ordinary today have played host to state celebrations, community traditions, concerts, and moments of tragedy.
The museum is offering two opportunities this month for residents to participate, with the chance to sign up online at www.cspm.org/events. The first tour is scheduled from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Saturday for $10 per person, while the second takes place from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Sept. 26 for $15. Both tours begin and end at The Mining Exchange Hotel and cover about one mile over 90 minutes, with the Sept. 26 tour offering an additional 30 minutes for a complimentary themed cocktail at the hotel's bar.
The strolls are part of the museum's commemoration of two major anniversaries in 2026: 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence and 150 years of Colorado statehood. Rather than simply recounting dates and names, the tour uses the city itself as a history book.
Program administrator Meg Yevara said the tours reveal stories that even long-time residents may not know. "I've lived here my whole life, and the first time I led one of these tours downtown I was amazed by all the things I had overlooked," Yevara said. "We're so often in cars that we don't really stop to look at these buildings and consider the stories behind these different landscapes. So it's just an opportunity for folks to get out, slow down and hear some interesting stories."
Among the historical sites highlighted is one of downtown's most prominent landmarks. In 1901, The Antlers hotel became the center of Colorado's 25th anniversary celebration, hosting speeches, parades, and a women's congress as the state marked a quarter-century of statehood. The tour also points out the location where the first stake was placed in the founding of Colorado Springs, near what is now Pikes Peak Avenue, marking the spot where the settlement was first established as Fountain Colony before eventually becoming Colorado Springs.
Yevara said much of the research comes from sitting down with historians Leah Davis Witherow and Matt Mayberry, while also using the museum's Story of Us, a mapping tool that connects locations throughout the Pikes Peak region with historical stories and photographs. "We get a ton of new folks" to the area, Yevara noted, adding that the tours are "helpful to sort of take a different look and get a different perspective of a city you know well or may have never seen before."
For those who miss the September strolls, the museum also offers private History Strolls for groups that can be scheduled online. Registration details and future tour dates are expected to be posted at www.cspm.org/events as the museum's anniversary programming continues into 2026.