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I moved to The Springs last February from TX...and have never looked back. I'm considering buying a place in Manitou Springs...or one of the other nearby mountain towns...but am leaning towards Manitou. I love the the older homes and it seems to be an open-minded, charming, art-sie type community. Can anyone give me feedback about Manitou Springs...like what it's like to live there, the "vibe" or reputation of the town...any positive or negative input will be greatly appreciated.
BTW...thank you to everyone over the past year who gave me great advice and insight which inspired me to move here. My four kitties and I moved here without knowing a soul and we feel blessed that we are making Colorado my home.
Well in our schools In Asheville, NC the gays and lesbians are all over and downtown too. We are looking to move to Colorado Springs/Manitou Springs to be in a more conservative town. Any suggestions?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ilovemychacos
hmmm I'm a right winger and live in Manitou...but I don't think political view has anything to do with having great neighbors! I love manitou and don't care what side of the political spectrum people there are on.... Manitou is gorgeous, the people are delightful, it's really like a little mountain dream town!
Well in our schools In Asheville, NC the gays and lesbians are all over and downtown too. We are looking to move to Colorado Springs/Manitou Springs to be in a more conservative town. Any suggestions?
Well in our schools In Asheville, NC the gays and lesbians are all over and downtown too. We are looking to move to Colorado Springs/Manitou Springs to be in a more conservative town. Any suggestions?
Wow.
Watch out for them durn gays.....
No, I would say Manitou Springs would maybe not be such a good fit for you.
Well in our schools In Asheville, NC the gays and lesbians are all over and downtown too. We are looking to move to Colorado Springs/Manitou Springs to be in a more conservative town. Any suggestions?
I lived in Colorado Springs 25 years ago, then moved around from Germany to Louisiana to Texas and back to Michigan, my original birthstate. Could not wait to come back out to Colorado, Manitou Springs specifically, where I have lived for the past six years or so. Definitely the spirit in Manitou is one of general acceptance, openess, eclectic and the art scene. Whenever you get to move there, don't miss the Manitou Springs Mountain Music Festival in August! Three days of diverse great performers! Keep in mind the Drum Circle on Thursday evenings during the summer! And don't forget to just sit in the sun at one of the outdoor coffee shops, yes, even in the middle of November, like today when it was 62 degrees! Do you get the idea I like it?!
I live in Minnesota BUT I miss Manitou. I use to live in Colo Spgs, for 18.5 yrs, my mother lived in Manitou a few yrs and over 20 yrs around Colo Spgs. I spent most of my weekends with friends at the arcade in the middle of town to stay out of trouble, 'Fun and Peaceful'. Oh, If you can find one of the 'Water Springs' in town Fill A Jug & Mix it with Frozen Juice, Orange or Lemonade preferably 'YUMMY'. You also have to see the waterfall at the west end 'out' of town, just listen for the water, enjoy... Later.
I found the informational history very fascinating. My family and I vacationed in Manitou and Colo. Springs almost every summer during my childhood. My husband and I visited there last week. I was looking for the old motel where we always stayed. It was the Shell Motel in Manitou Springs. As we drove around looking for it, not knowing whether or not the bypass may have gone through that section, I found a place that I believe is indeed the same spot. It is now the Mountainscape Inn at 3445 W. Colorado Ave. Now that we are home, I wished I would have talked to the manager or walked around the backside to see the creek. We encountered two residents drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon at 10:00 am. They were cordial, but I didn't feel as though I should stroll around. Since you are so knowledgable about this region, do you have any info. to confirm or deny my suspicions? Anything would be appreciated as my parents are now both deceased. Thanks for your time! KCquote=Vertigo7;5732107]Someone mentioned the vibe in Manitou. Not only does Manitou have a special vibe, the New Age people believe the convergence in Manitou is a vortex, that is, a center of spiritual power. Sedona, AZ, has a few. The convergence is the mountain pass, that begins with Ruxton Ave., (left off Manitou Avenue), up to where the cog railway is.
New Age things aside, before the white man arrived, Manitou and Garden of the Gods were considered sacred places, for the Ute, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Kiowa tribes. I felt the vibe just driving down Manitou Avenue for very first time. Let me tell you a little about the history of Manitou, mixing in my personal experiences.
The Native Americans bathed in the naturally effervescent waters, in small natural pools in downtown Manitou. If I remember correctly, they were in the park to the left of the Spa Building. They no longer exist although Fountain Creek (“Fountaine qui Bouille”) is still there, along with a few dozen springs producing the same highly mineralized water. It is safe to drink from the Springs, but I wouldn’t drink quarts of it. It is three times as mineralized as most mineral water in places like Baden-Baden. When I lived there, one Spring was closed off because it was also producing a gas teens were huffing.
After the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike first explored the area. I climbed Pike’s Peak around 1992, something Lt. Pike failed to do incidentally. Not only did I climb it, I climbed the top half of it in a snow storm, in June, wearing shorts!
By 1858. when gold was discovered in Ute Pass (mostly in Cripple Creek and Victor although there are a few abandoned mines just outside of Manitou), the whole dynamic of the area changed. Natives were bribed, cheated, attacked, forced to relocate to reservations, pushed out by white men with gold fever. (It’s the American way.)
Today, at the Cliff Dwellings attraction, a really nice fake mini Mesa Verde right near Manitou that operates during the warmer months I think, they get their Indians from Oklahoma. Still, it is worth a few visits, especially with out-of-towners who have never seen cliff dwellings.
By 1872, Manitou began taking civilized form, modeled as a European Spa Town, with a hotel and villa lots in town and on the hillside, where wealthy people built their estates.
Beginning around 1880, during rising cases of tuberculosis in the U.S., Manitou gained a reputation as a place to come for “the cure,” just as in Europe, people went to sanatoriums in Switzerland. Clean air, high altitude, and drinking the healing waters of Manitou’s springs in town, caused people to flock to Manitou. They lived in tents, built shacks or small cottages, slept in the open air on sleeping porches even during winter. (They thought that cold fresh air sleeping was helpful.) They also went into Manitou, from spring to spring, in a prescribed order, sipping the “healing” waters. By spring, as in Manitou Springs, I mean a spigot with water coming up out of it. Today, people in the area seek healing at the NEW LIFE CHURCH, in Colorado Springs, presumably under new leadership after its founder, Ted Haggard, was discovered to be seeking his healing with crystal meth and a male prostitute. Such is life in Colorado Springs. Don’t go near it!
But if you must, there’s a cool museum near the center of Colorado Springs, where they show old medical instruments, including the long aspiration pick used to collapse a person’s lung, to give it rest. As it turned out, this was just for the placebo effect. However, before the antibiotic for TB was discovered, high altitude was good at slowing the spread of the TB bacillus, and helped some people recover.
By 1920, tuberculosis was pretty much over and Manitou continued on as a spa and vacation town, with cottages and homes dotting the hillsides.
In 1960, Hwy 24 was built, bypassing Manitou, and Manitou went into a decline which created a more affordable environment for hippies and artists.
By 1980’s an economic revival began and in 1987 an organization was formed to reopen many of the springs that had been closed. They also restored parks, and began a lot of renovation to restore the charm of historic buildings on Manitou Avenue, while setting standards for new construction.
I had neighbors who rented in Manitou, liked Manitou, but when it came to buying, just couldn’t reconcile living in a dilapidated house in Manitou, with virtually no yard, when for similar money they could buy a nice small home in Colorado Springs, with a big yard and room to build their two car garage and workshop. In Colorado Springs, they had views of Pike’s Peak and were not near street noise. Such things in Manitou would cost you. The selection of homes for sale in Manitou, a town of 5000 people, is tiny compared to Colorado Springs.
Again, unless you are loaded, probably makes a lot of sense to rent in Colorado Springs, and wait for just the right house for you, to come up in Manitou. It took me six months. I was torn between two, and in retrospect, should have chosen the more expensive one that needed less fixing up.
Don’t believe a thing people in Colorado Springs say about living in Manitou. The only ones who know about Manitou are the people who live(d) there. It is special living in Manitou and most of the people who live there, think the trade-offs are well worth it. It is the small-town living environment without the small town isolation. The tourists are fun. People from all over come for the Pike’s Peak marathon, a run up and down Pike’s Peak. I told visitors “I live here,” and people always envied that.
What is difficult in Manitou, unless you have a million dollars, is trying to have everything, if you are a person who can’t make sacrifices: great views, privacy, yard, charm, quiet, and a well constructed house in excellent condition, with an easily accessible road. Maybe there are a few houses like that in Manitou at a lower price range and they just aren’t for sale. When people live in one of those dreamy view spots, like some houses on Sutherland, they live there forever.
Some things you might have to put up with in a house in Manitou: needs work, low ceilings, one bathroom, tiny yard or no yard, ten feet from neighbor’s house, traffic noise, shady side of the street (that would have been terrible to me), not the best insulation, things not done to code. I did a few of those myself,
When I was looking for a house in Manitou in 1991, which was during a sort of local real estate crisis brought on by cancellation of Reagan’s Star Wars missile defense program and the collapse of several other businesses, I could have bought a cute, newer house that was a foreclosure by the VA, for $42,000, in a nice, quiet, but non-descript neighborhood of Colorado Springs. It had a nicely fenced back yard, two bedrooms and two bathrooms, 1050 sq. ft., fireplace, cathedral ceilings, all cute as a bug-in-a-rug, with garage. In Manitou, the same house on a lot with practically no yard would have cost $85,000.
And now, as another poster noted, many of those old Victorian houses, they want $300,000 or whatever for, don’t even have a garage.
Before I bought my home in Manitou, I rented in Colorado Springs for six months, in a pleasant, but non-descript neighborhood. It was in easy biking distance of the Broadmoor and Seven Falls, and I regularly biked up to Helen Hunt Falls and Goldcamp Road, even over to Manitou. Still, when I moved to Manitou, there was nothing so nice as being able to live right there. Much nicer than visiting. I’d prefer to visit the mall, than live next to one, thank you.
If you like taking walks, Manitou is a town you can walk around in, and up and around the hilly streets, and just enjoy looking at the scenery, and marveling at the variety of houses, some very small and cute, and others that are just plain interesting. All the houses do not look the same. There is no other place like it. Manitou is one of a kind.
Or walk up into the trails in the mountains. Some of the trails are hard to find but you can ask around.
When biking into Colorado Springs, I never went on Manitou Avenue which turns into Colorado Avenue. Instead, go on the back street that runs parallel. Lover’s Lane turns into El Paso Blvd, turns into Pike’s Peak Avenue.
Lastly, if you can’t find anything in Manitou, another area I like, were the few streets off El Paso, that go up toward the edge of Garden of the Gods. Of course, that’s all pretty expensive too now.
If we go into a deep recession, it may be a golden opportunity to find a house in Manitou, for a person with savings that doesn’t need to sell their house.[/quote]
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Manitou Springs vs Colorado Springs
Seeking more information about Manitou
