After I left the Fine Arts Center, I headed over to the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, which is located in the former El Paso County Courthouse.

One of the things I loathe about this city is that everything has memories for me, and most of them aren’t great. For example, my high school presented Witness for the Prosecution, an Agatha Christie play, in one of the courtrooms at the museum. And although I always enjoyed acting, my school was so small that being in drama (as well as writing for the newspaper, joining the debate club, doing anything musical, and writing for the yearbook) entailed working with a teacher who was possibly brilliant, certainly erratic, and verbally abusive. After a few too many of her scathing comments, I chose not to participate in any activities she led, which sucked, because she led almost all the activities I would have enjoyed. So seeing the classroom reminded me of seeing the play, feeling unable to do something I would have loved, feeling excluded, which was pretty constant for me in high school.

In a nutshell, Colorado Springs reminds me of a time when I didn’t have options and didn’t know how to find or create any.

A better memory was evoked by a statue outside the courthouse: a tribute to Mr. Venetucci, who opened his pumpkin farm to generations of elementary-school children. Every October, we’d take a field trip to the Venetucci farm and each select a pumpkin.

I walked into the museum and was pleasantly surprised to find that there’s no admission fee. However, the front desk was staffed by very friendly and helpful security guards, who greeted every visitor and offered information about the various exhibits. Pretty impressive, especially after the stiff and unhelpful staff at the Fine Arts Center.

I started with an exhibit about geological history and fossils in this area. The display case featured fossilized shells, shark teeth, fish cartilage (below), and invertebrate trails.

Then I headed upstairs, although I stopped to take a picture of the exquisite railings first. This was enough to convince the security guard on duty that I was an architecture student. Even though I told him I’m not, he continued to refer to me, every time he saw me for the rest of my visit, as “that girl who’s into architecture.”

Upstairs, visitors can see exhibits of guns and a few carriages on the landing.

One courtroom has been restored to its original form and is open to visitors.

Other rooms upstairs are devoted to the architecture and construction of the building; Colorado Springs’ history as a health resort (which is an odd family connection for me: my great-grandfather traveled here from Minnesota for tuberculosis treatment and died in the eastern part of the state; years later, his grandson–my dad–relocated here after growing up in Montana);

artifacts from the Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne tribes;

and exhibits about early settlers, from the Spanish to miners, explorers and surveyors, trappers, cowboys, and pioneers.

There’s also a reproduction of several rooms from author Helen Hunt Jackson’s house. Jackson, a 19th-century advocate for native tribes, wrote the nonfiction A Century of Dishonor and the romance Ramona.

Back on the first floor, I visited a couple of rooms that feature artifacts from Colorado Springs and information about historical trips up Pikes Peak–one of which inspired Katherine Lee Bates to write the lyrics to “America the Beautiful.”

Highly recommend this museum!