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Taken in Cañon City yesterday, on the way home from a portrait shoot in the beautiful country between Cañon City and Westcliffe.

Freight office

...Just an addition to yesterday's post about the Santa Fe Train Depot. This is a detail of the east side of the building in yesterday's picture. I guess it was the freight office, which makes sense because it's right up next to the tracks.

The old Santa Fe Depot

This is an auxiliary building to the old Santa Fe Train Depot in Colorado Springs, which was built in 1917 and decommissioned in 1972. You can see an old picture of the main depot here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchison,_Topeka_and_Santa_Fe_Passenger_Depot_(Colorado_Springs,_Colorado) It's just about a mile west of my house. Now it's on the National Historic Register and it retains its original charm (I read that the architectural style of the building is called "Jacobean"), even though it's now cut up into office spaces. It's a pretty big place -- there's everything from doctors' offices to a cruise line call center housed in the old Depot!

In the '80s, around the back side of the main building there used to be a joint called the Pelican Club, or "the Pel" for short. It was a great place for live music. I used to go there almost every weekend, especially after the demise of the Climax Cavern. Good times!

The building in the photo above is next to the main depot. It's been converted for some use or other. I have no idea what it houses -- probably some sort of office. I just like the way it looks in the afternoon light. I'm glad it still looks like part of a working train station.

The invisible fence

I was having lunch with my mom today and telling her about my new Daily Photo blog, and I asked her if she had any ideas of what I should photograph. I mean, there are lots of pretty sights in Colorado Springs and some obvious things that will I'm sure end up here on the blog eventually, but I wanted something unusual that even the natives might not know about. She mentioned this ironic sight that she and my dad came across while hiking a few months ago: a locked gate with no fence. It sounded so funny that we decided to go and photograph it right then and there.

So my mom and I, dressed for lunching and not hiking, took off for the Edmonson Trailhead (part of the Colorado Front Range Trail), which is just off of Woodmen Road west of the interstate. This gate is not far from the parking lot, maybe 100 yards or so. Check it out: it's chained up, strung with barbed wire and secured with what looks like a brand new combination lock, and yet there's no fence. What a hoot! We had a good laugh over that. And, as serendipity would have it, as I crouched down to take this photo a train came rumbling past, adding to the wild, wild west-ness of it all.