Cars with license plates from across America snake south on two-lane 30th Street toward Garden of the Gods, the red rock park just over a ridge from Colorado Springs. But a few vehicles stop short of the geologic wonder, turning instead at a sign reading “Navigators/Glen Eyrie.” Ahead of them rises a hidden castle.

Driving west through a valley of tall pines and rock, motorists seem to pass from one world to another – from city traffic to something like the fantastical land of Narnia that author C.S. Lewis imagined hidden within a plain wardrobe. A space at the foot of the Rocky Mountains opens up like a wardrobe door to reveal a timeless place known as Glen Eyrie.

The centerpiece of Glen Eyrie is a stone castle. Historians might say it is not truly a castle – that, technically speaking,
it is an English Tudor Revival-style manor house with a Gothic Revival tower and castle-style stonework. It is the tower that leads visitors to think of Glen Eyrie as a castle, and the name Glen Eyrie Castle stuck.

In Colorado Springs, Glen Eyrie is best known for two things: being the former home of city founder William Jackson Palmer and for serving traditional English high tea. Historian and author Susan Fletcher is a fan of both.

Seated at a table beside a tower window, Fletcher selects her tea – a blend of dried lavender, amaranth and jasmine flowers that blossoms into a bright bouquet as it is poured into the glass teapot. Next, a three-course tray arrives, placed on a spotless white tablecloth. The bottom level is loaded with dainty shrimp and ham tea sandwiches, the second with lemon blueberry scones and cream, and the third with sweets.

The window frames an outside view filled with the color and texture of its seclusion: trim green lawns that feed brown-coated bighorn sheep, and raw red rock spires that safekeep yellow-beaked bald eagles. The inside view hints at English elegance, with wainscotting panels, muted green painted stucco and tied-back, floor-length curtains.

As Fletcher’s fragrant floral tea steeps, she explains why she’s dedicated more than two decades to studying Palmer, the man who built Glen Eyrie Castle. A Civil War hero and Medal of Honor recipient, a railroad owner who shared his wealth with his employees, a builder who preserved a peaceful place in Colorado Springs that could bring comfort to others – Palmer was a human being Fletcher could admire.

 

Palmer has figured prominently in Fletcher’s life. She graduated in 1998 from Colorado Springs’ Gen. William J. Palmer High School, which adjoins the intersection where a statue of Palmer mounted on a horse stands at the center, his eyes turned toward Pikes Peak.

As a high school senior year, Fletcher wrote a 10-page paper on Palmer. Weeks later, she put on a fancy dress to celebrate her 18th birthday with tea at Glen Eyrie. More than two decades later, Fletcher is still writing about Palmer. Her latest book, The Glen Eyrie Story, published in 2021, begins with a chapter on the remarkable life Palmer led before he built this castle.

Palmer grew up in a Pennsylvania Quaker family and followed the faith’s pacifist teachings – until the Civil War broke out.

“He wrote a letter to one of his best friends,” Fletcher said, “saying the moral wrong of slavery outweighs the moral wrong of war.”

Palmer was the colonel in charge of a Union cavalry regiment, the 15th Pennsylvania, then served as a spy behind Confederate lines, tracking and reporting the movements of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army.

Captured and imprisoned during a spy mission, Palmer guarded his identity and adopted a new one, avoiding execution and securing his release. He later received a promotion to brevet brigadier general from President Abraham Lincoln and led a Union victory at Red Hill, Alabama, that earned him a Congressional Medal of Honor.

Fletcher honors Palmer’s war service, but it is Palmer’s generosity as an employer that she finds extraordinary. Palmer built, owned and sold railroads – among them the Denver and Rio Grande Western.

“He sold the railroad for more money than he thought he would, so he took the extra money, got on a train, and divided it to every employee, from workers at the lowest level through the executives,” Fletcher said. Such kindness was rare. “Nineteenth century industrialists were not known for caring about their workers or being generous.”

Palmer invested most of all in Colorado Springs, the city he founded in 1871. He had a vision for improving the community,
building schools, parks, churches, planting trees and striving to make it one of the most beautiful places in the West.

Fletcher is director of history and archives for The Navigators, the Christian ministry that now owns Glen Eyrie, giving her access to Palmer’s correspondence about Glen Eyrie. Among the letters Fletcher found was one in which Palmer wrote to his wife, “Could one live in constant view of these grand mountains without being elevated by them into a lofty plane of thought and purpose?”

Fittingly for a railroad man, Palmer met the woman who became his wife, Mary “Queen” Lincoln Mellen, aboard a train. Queen earned her nickname during her childhood in Kentucy. Not only did her beauty capture Palmer heart, her love of art and music did as well. They exchanged letters, attended lectures and the theater together, and were soon engaged.

Palmer’s letters persuaded Queen to overcome her initial reluctance and join him in a rugged life in Colorado. She named the red rock formations on the Glen Eyrie grounds, including the most arresting formation, Major Domo, a red rock sentry standing guard over the estate.

However, Queen never saw the Glen Eyrie Castle. After a heart attack in the mountains, Queen moved with the couple’s three daughters from Colorado to lower elevation in New York in 1884, and then to England. She died there in 1894. The castle was built a decade later. Palmer never remarried; no one could replace his Queen.

 

The same year that Palmer founded Colorado Springs, he began construction of a home in Glen Eyrie above Camp Creek, northwest of Garden of the Gods. In 1904, Glen Eyrie Castle replaced the original home. Palmer loaded it with innovations of that era, such as an elevator, electricity generated by a power plant on the property, a built-in fire suppression system and a telephone.

Palmer was a frequent traveler to Europe, where he explored less smoky forms of coal for his train engines. According to Palmer’s valet, Johnny Mathys, the Tudor manor house at Loseley Park in Great Britain inspired Palmer’s vision for Glen Eyrie. His castle’s stones were mined from what is now Red Rocks Open Space along U.S. Highway 24, just east of Manitou Springs.

He sent back from Europe fixtures for his castle that he found fascinating: a monastery fireplace mantel built around 1400, red roof tiles and more. So much was delivered so frequently that the sources often were not cataloged.

Glen Eyrie is Scottish for “valley of the eagle’s nest,” so named because a Scottish landscape architect Palmer hired spotted eagles and their nest on Palmer’s property. An eagle’s nest is still there more than 150 years later, surviving fire, ice and wind.

 

Eagles, bighorn sheep and weary travelers alike find a haven at Glen Eyrie. Building the castle and preserving the grounds brought peace to a grieving Palmer, who had hoped that he and his bride would delight in the glen forever.

Palmer died in 1909 after falling from a horse on a ride to Garden of the Gods. After their father’s death, Palmer’s three daughters tried selling Glen Eyrie to the city of Colorado Springs, but the city didn’t want to bear the burden of maintenance costs. Tumult followed.

Oklahoma investors hoped to subdivide the property into luxury estates, but World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic sank their plans. An auction that divided the property into two parcels failed when the winners didn’t pay up. A wealthy bachelor with tuberculosis bought the Glen in part for his health, but his heart followed a wayward opera star, leading him away from Colorado and to an early grave. A Texas oilman bought the Glen for his young family, but when his children grew up and moved away, he lost interest.

Meanwhile, as that drama was unfolding in Colorado, Christian missionary Dawson Trotman was in California, working to start a ministry. In 1933, he founded The Navigators, so named because Trotman’s first converts were U.S. Navy sailors. By the 1940s, he had befriended up-and-coming evangelist Billy Graham, who sought Trotman’s help ministering to people who converted at Graham’s big tent and stadium events.

Graham and Trotman visited Glen Eyrie as a possible site for a retreat center for Graham’s organization. Graham backed out of the deal, but he encouraged Trotman to buy it for The Navigators. Trotman made an offer at a price that seemed beyond his group’s means. The Navigators raised the money by the final day, at the last minute, after great sacrifices by staff and donors alike, with Trotman flying to the closing before the final donation that put him over the top had been secured.

 

The Navigators operate Glen Eyrie as a lodge and conference center. In total, Glen Eyrie books 95 guest rooms in seven buildings, including 17 rooms within the castle.

It is not in the castle but in a secret nook above Major Domo that Dace Starkweather, Glen Eyrie’s current general manager, finds the solitude he sometimes needs in the round-the-clock job of serving guests. From his perch, he gazes at the pink rock formations of Echo Rock Canyon. It is a place, he said, “where I can be high enough above everything else and above my other thoughts.”

To Starkweather, excellence in hospitality means it must be personal, whether leading guests on hikes, or joining them for tea. Guests become friends, and friends become family. People tell him their stories and talk about what Glen Eyrie means to them.

A Manitou Springs High School teacher who needed a break from the classroom told Starkweather how “this peace came over me” on her visit to Glen Eyrie. She came back three days later, “and it happened again.”

A Gold Star mom who grieved over the death of her son in battle had considered giving up on life, but after a visit to Glen Eyrie she began attending church, “opening the door of relationship with other moms going through the same thing,” Starkweather said.

Guests also experience peace as they observe wildlife taking refuge at Glen Eyrie. More than 80 bighorn sheep graze the lawns, especially in October, when mountain foliage dies off and Glen Eyrie is still watering its grass. Forty wild turkeys run throughout the 723 acres.

 

For a time in 2012, it seemed that wildfire might consume Glen Eyrie – its castle, forest and wildlife.

Glen Eyrie’s director of operations, Derek Strickland, received a call while traveling through Kansas that smoke had been spotted above Glen Eyrie. With the surrounding forest exceedingly dry from severe drought and record high temperatures, the fire in nearby Waldo Canyon raised alarm. Strickland’s wife drove their car back to Colorado as he held a phone to each ear, receiving updates and giving directions.

At the first sign of smoke, staff evacuated the few children campers remaining at The Navigators’ Eagle Lake Camp above Glen Eyrie on Saturday, June 23, to First Presbyterian Church downtown. Camp attendance was as low as it gets, Strickland said, the only blessing on that terrible day.

On Saturday afternoon, the fire began creating its own weather pattern. “Instead of the fire moving uphill, as fires do,” Strickland said, “a thunderstorm pushed it all downhill, which is pretty rare.” Within two hours, trees were burning immediately west of Glen Eyrie.

By Tuesday, June 26, at 4:30 p.m., only Strickland and one other staff member remained on the property. Strickland could see the fire coming down the ridge toward the castle. “The trees were so dry, they were exploding,” he said. “It sounded like firecrackers. I told our longtime facilities guy, ‘We’ve got to go. Go, go, go, get out, get out. We’ll leave it in the firemen’s hands.’ ”

The next morning, Strickland arose at 5 a.m. and rode a bicycle to the property. A log in the castle parking lot had burned, but nothing else. Bighorn sheep had gathered on the walkway up to the castle’s front door, as if they knew they would be safe there.

As they have for more than a century, wildlife and people alike continue to find peace at Glen Eyrie. And the castle that has stood as a symbol for many things – Palmer’s love for queen, God’s love for humankind – is still standing in the valley of the eagle’s nest.