Colorado City Photos

John Bock, the once-cowboy and WWI Vet who built up the 800 acre Red Rock Canyon bought the Colorado City Hall building after the town was dissolved in 1917 and annexed into Colorado Springs, and there was no more need for a city hall. He turned it into a museum of old west artifacts, some from Colorado City but also much given to him by ranchers in southeastern Colorado where he once ranched and from where he got his horses for his westside riding stables.

In one line in his self-published book about Red Rock Canyon, he said the #$%@ City of Colorado Springs put his Museum 'out of business.' He had to charge a small admission. So he closed it by 1923. He was referring to the free, government funded (still today) 'Pioneer's Museum' (whom some Westsiders don't think was the real 'pioneers' museum, but the museum for the fancy folk of Colorado Springs.) Dave Hughes, during the 1976 revitalization of the original Colorado City, discovered that the entire contents of the 1920's museum was still on Bock's sons' Red Rock property. Long after Bock senior was deceased. They wanted too much for it, but Dave was able to buy, at auction, nearly $10,000 worth of items in it, from oxen yoke, beer barrel branding irons, muzzle-loading rifles, to hand carved mixing bowls, railroad lanterns, gambling dominos, brass spitoons, and other irrepaceable western items.

Hughes gave those items to the Old Colorado City Historical Society's Museum, in 1992 where they constitute at least 25% of the artifacts in the museum.

The rare picture, above is the only known one of the old City Hall as Bock's Museum.