Old stage stop

This crumbling old building is across the water from yesterday's photo of Monument Creek. What is it? It's an old stage stop! Fascinating! For those of you who don't know what a stage stop is, it has to do with olden days transportation, when people traveled in horse-drawn stagecoaches. Every few miles along the stage roads, stage stops were placed where you could rest and water your horses, or in the case of commercial stagecoach lines, the tired horses would be swapped out for fresh ones. As you know, the migration of people to the American west, Colorado Springs included, burgeoned during the stagecoach era. Eventually locomotives made their way across the land and replaced stagecoaches (much to the relief of many a horse, I'm sure).

Most Colorado Springs residents probably don't know that the area just north of Rockrimmon and encompassing much of the Air Force Academy was actually a pioneer settlement and village called Edgerton over 140 years ago (follow the link for tons of interesting info). At its peak, Edgerton was home to about 350 residents, many of them ranchers. The land pictured here was owned by the Lydia Teachout family, some of the earliest settlers of this area, and this stage stop was apparently owned and operated by the Teachouts. By the way, there's a Teachout Road in Black Forest, a few miles east of this spot -- no doubt named after Lydia herself.

For a very interesting account taken from the diary of another early Edgerton settler, Mary Eliza Bangs, read this short article published in 1974 by her granddaughter:  http://mdmcc.tripod.com/history.htm

Here's a closer shot of the old Teachout stage stop. The next chance I get, I'm going to cross the creek and explore it.