Old Colorado City History Center

The story

When Quaker Civil War general William Jackson Palmer founded Colorado Springs in 1871, he envisioned a pious resort town and promptly banned alcohol, gambling, and prostitution within city limits. Unluckily for his moral vision, Old Colorado City—founded next door during the 1859 Pikes Peak Gold Rush—had zero interest in going dry. While Colorado Springs catered to wealthy health-seekers, Colorado City stayed a rowdy working-class hub for miners, smelter workers, and railroad crews. Saloons quickly packed the south side of Colorado Avenue along the 2500 and 2600 blocks, while red-light bordellos and gambling dens lined West Cucharras Street just one block south.

The proximity created a dilemma for respectable Colorado Springs figures who wanted to partake in the vice without ruining their reputations. Local saloon keepers and madams found a clever workaround by utilizing an existing subterranean network. The passageways had originally been dug in the 1860s as escape routes during frontier conflicts, but they were quickly repurposed. Prominent citizens could walk into a legitimate storefront on Colorado Avenue, step through a trapdoor into a brick-lined basement tunnel, cross beneath the street, and pop up inside a Cucharras Street brothel without ever being seen on the sidewalk.

Today, those subterranean passages are sealed shut with modern masonry, but the Old Colorado City History Center keeps the paper trail alive inside a converted 1890s Baptist church at 1 South 24th Street. Run entirely by local volunteer historians, the museum holds vintage photographs, archived police blotters, and maps detailing known tunnel routes beneath present-day watering holes like Mother Muff's. Their self-guided phone tour lets you trace the street-level footprint of the old red-light district and stand on the pavement directly above where men once crept under the avenue.