CENTRAL SPRINGS, Colo. (KOAA) — In the Middle Shooks Run neighborhood of Colorado Springs, some homes and businesses have stood for more than a century — and the neighbors who live there are working to make sure those stories are not forgotten.
Residents are documenting the history of their homes through an interactive online map where anyone in the neighborhood can contribute what they have learned about their own property.
"People, when they learn something about their house, they can go to that map and put in the information. Then other people can go and look around their own neighborhood and see what people have found out about their houses," secretary of the Middle Shooks Run Neighborhood Association Robin Walters said.
Walters and others are on the Middle Shooks Run Neighborhood Association historic education committee. Walters said the goal is to make that history accessible to anyone who wants to explore it.
"To help people who want to learn about the history of their house to be able to do that because there's lots of resources, but if you don't know where to start, it's pretty overwhelming," Walters said.
The neighborhood itself spans decades of architectural history.
"This has got such an interesting mix of architecture, we span the 1880s through I'd say about 1940s with very iconic styles," vice president of the Middle Shooks Run Neighborhood Association Robin Walters Samantha Meigs said.
Meigs has a personal connection to the neighborhood that runs deep. She grew up in her home, with her parents moving there in the late 1950s. She moved back a few years ago and has been renovating the house — built in 1903 — ever since.
"My life has gone full circle here," Meigs said.
Every renovation she makes is a deliberate nod to the home's past and her own memories of growing up there.
"Giving a nod to my nostalgic memory of how things would have been in the 60s and 70s, which is actually kind of hard when you're talking about decor things of how you kind of try to blend those two things," Meigs said.
Some of her discoveries have been remarkably specific. While working on the home, she traced one fixture back more than a century.
"I actually dated the toilet to being a model that was made in 1908, and I had to replace the tank part of it, but I found a matching one, so it has been as close as I can get," Meigs said.
Digging into the history of the neighborhood has also revealed the lives of the people who came before. Meigs, a historian herself, said she has enjoyed learning more about previous owners.
"The man who owned the house in the 1920s was a landscape designer. There was a dance master and a musician. There are people that do those kind of jobs and so that also makes the neighborhood really interesting as people do their house history and find out about that," Meigs said.
The neighborhood's history extends beyond its homes. Stellina Pizza Cafe, for example, was once a grocery store called McNabb Market — the original building constructed in 1902.
The historic committee has even shared fun facts about their neighborhood on walking tours, history workshops, and events to help others learn more about their own homes.
For Meigs, Walters, and their neighbors, the interactive map is about more than data. It is about keeping the character of Middle Shooks Run alive for the people who live there now and those who will come after them.
