Rich Tosches:
Real men built this city -- and that is no bull

Later that day -- after getting the newspapers down off their roofs -- angry villagers with torches storm the tiny newspaper office, their seething anger defused at the final moment by the calm, soothing words of a young Bob Isaac.

The very next day, spurred by Bob's urging to direct their energy toward creating something useful for the tiny village, 12 men sling shovels over their shoulders, walk to Cheyenne Mountain and build NORAD.

Most of that is not true, of course. NORAD, for example, obviously was not built by ``12 men with shovels.'' It was 14 men, and six of them had only garden trowels.

But here is some real information about the years 1872-1899, an era I am writing about because I believe it reflects the spirit that became the soul of our great town and, of course, because all the other eras had already been picked by my colleagues.

``In 1872,'' according to historian Marshall Sprague, ``the three-story Colorado Springs Hotel at the corner of Pikes Peak Avenue and Cascade was described as `The most elegant hostelry between Chicago and San Francisco.' ''

And that was true.

(Finishing a close second in this 1872 hotel contest was a sod hut in Platte, Neb., where maids entered the guests' rooms at bedtime and fluffed up the dirt pillows.)

``There was another surprising feature of Colorado Springs at that time,'' according to Sprague. ``It swarmed with so many Englishmen that it became known as `Little London.' ''

Today, 125 years later, traces of that legacy still linger in our marvelous village. I am talking, of course, about the way people often drive on the left side of our streets as police sit by and watch, sipping tea and nibbling on their crumpets.

``Cara Bell saw to it that English ways became the rule,'' we are told. ``She arrived in the summer of 1872 and within weeks had influenced Americans up and down Tejon Street to call their suspenders `braces.' ''

I learned of that wonderful bit of English culture just two years ago, when it was time to have my teeth straightened. I am not sure what my dentist -- a distinguished man of English heritage -- calls the contraption that he hooked onto my upper teeth.

But I do know this: When I yawn, my pants ride up on me.

By 1881, Colorado Springs became a town of great culture when Irving Howbert's elegant Opera House opened.

In the mountains above the town, men began working grueling 20-hour days in the gold mines, tending sheep, building roads, clearing land with their bare teeth and doing anything else they could possibly think of so they ``wouldn't have to go to the opera.''

For Colorado Springs, the end of the 1880s brought the beginning of the 1890s. This was true in many other parts of the country as well. And it also brought Spencer Penrose to the Pikes Peak region.

From historian Sprague: ``Spencer Penrose was a big bull of a man.''

From that description I think you know how the young Penrose spent most of his days and nights:

That's right, he looked for people wearing red clothes and chased them up and down Cascade Avenue with his head lowered.

(This sort of behavior ceased in Penrose's later years, partly because of the maturity factor but mostly because someone finally loosened the big scratchy rope around his hindquarters.)

Meanwhile, The Gazette continued to grow. Circulation hit 2,000, with half of those readers writing weekly letters to the paper's first columnist -- my great-great-grandfather, I.M. Kidding Tosches.

Sadly, the paper's very first editor, Englishman J.E. Liller, had died in 1875, just two years after he launched the newspaper.

Sprague and other historians indicate in their writings that Liller died of an overdose of laudanum, an opium-based drug.

Although my sources tell me Liller passed away because people kept snapping his suspenders against his teeth.