Glenwood Springs

Glenwood Springs, city, seat (1889) of Garfield county, west-central Colorado, U.S., at the confluence of Roaring Fork and Colorado rivers. It lies in a canyon at an elevation of 5,758 feet (1,755 metres) and is surrounded by the White River National Forest, of which it is the headquarters. The curative value of the local hot springs and vapour caves was known to the Ute, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians. In 1882 Isaac Cooper laid out the town site, which he named after Glenwood, Iowa. With the arrival of the Colorado Midland Railway in 1885, Glenwood Springs developed as a health spa and year-round resort; it also became a distribution point for local mineral and farm products. A nearby dam diverts water from the Colorado River through a 2.7-mile (4.3-km) tunnel and supplies power, via the Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant (7 miles [11 km] above the city), to Denver (159 miles [256 km] east). Roaring Fork Campus–Spring Valley was founded in Glenwood Springs in 1965. The Old West gunfighter Doc Holliday, who died of tuberculosis in 1887, is buried in the city’s Pioneer Cemetery. The Hotel Colorado (1893), now on the National Register of Historic Places, was a favourite hunting retreat of President Theodore Roosevelt and is famed as the birthplace of the “Teddy bear.” Inc. 1885. Pop. (2000) 7,736; (2010) 9,614.