Garden of the Gods is a 1,341-acre public park featuring dramatic red sandstone formations that were pushed vertical when the Rocky Mountains rose 65 million years ago. The Ute people considered it a sacred place; white explorers called it a garden fit for the gods. The formations have fanciful names: Kissing Camels, Cathedral Spires, Balanced Rock, Tower of Babel. Pikes Peak provides the backdrop. The park is free to enter - has been since 1909 - and draws over two million visitors annually. The geology is the attraction: red Lyons sandstone, pink and white Lyons Formation, ancient Fountain Formation. It's a textbook of sedimentary deposition tilted on edge.

The trading post was built in 1929 by Charles E. Strausenback, a Colorado Springs businessman who had been selling hand-carved gypsum figures to tourists since he was ten years old in 1900. The building was designed to evoke Southwestern pueblo architecture - adobe walls, wooden beams, covered patios - though this is Colorado, not New Mexico. T.A.T. Enterprises purchased the trading post in 1979 and has operated it ever since. The store sells Native American jewelry, pottery, kachina dolls, and Southwestern art, alongside the inevitable t-shirts and refrigerator magnets. The restaurant serves buffalo burgers and green chile. The ice cream stand has been there since the beginning.

Charles Elliott Perkins was president of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad when he began buying land around the red rocks in 1879. He built a summer home nearby and spent decades quietly acquiring the Garden of the Gods, 480 acres in total. Perkins never developed it commercially. When friends suggested charging admission, he reportedly replied that the garden should remain free. Upon his death in 1907, his heirs honored this wish, donating the land to Colorado Springs with the stipulation that it remain free forever. The city agreed. The park has never charged admission - a remarkable legacy from a railroad baron in an era not known for philanthropy.

The rocks at Garden of the Gods tell 300 million years of Earth's history. The oldest visible formations are the Fountain Formation - red sandstone deposited when ancestral Rocky Mountains eroded into an inland sea. The Lyons sandstone came later, dunes from an ancient desert. The rocks were deposited horizontally, then tilted to near-vertical when the current Rocky Mountains rose during the Laramide orogeny, 65 million years ago. Erosion did the rest, sculpting balanced rocks and narrow fins from differential weathering. The red color comes from iron oxide - rust. The white bands are cleaner sand. Every formation is a chapter in geological time.

Garden of the Gods is located at 1805 North 30th Street in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The park is free and open year-round. The Trading Post is at the park's main entrance, open daily with a restaurant, gift shop, and observation deck. The Visitor and Nature Center offers exhibits on the geology and history. Paved roads wind through the park; several trails allow closer access to the formations. Rock climbing is permitted with registration. Balanced Rock and Kissing Camels are the most photographed formations. The park is accessible from I-25; Colorado Springs Airport has commercial service, and Denver International is 90 minutes north. Best photography is early morning or late afternoon when the rocks glow crimson.