On the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11, El Paso, Teller, and Fremont counties marked the day the way this region often does: outside, on familiar ground, and in community.
In El Paso County the remembrance was physical. Before sunrise more than two hundred first responders and military members gathered at the base of the Manitou Incline. Many wore full turnout gear. They started at 6:46 a.m., the exact local time American Flight 11 struck the North Tower, and climbed more than 2,700 steps and roughly 2,000 vertical feet. Sirens sounded at the key moments of that morning. The Manitou Springs Fire Department organized the event because the Incline’s straight-up grade comes closest to the stairs firefighters climbed inside the towers. Three hundred forty-three FDNY members never came back down. Colorado Springs police and FBI Denver joined the climb. The trail stayed closed to the public until 9 a.m.
The same county holds another kind of memorial. Pieces of World Trade Center steel stand at Fort Carson, Peterson, Schriever, Cheyenne Mountain, the Air Force Academy, and UCCS. Colorado Springs received one of the highest ratios of that steel per capita in the country. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Don Addy helped bring six beams here. The plaque at Fort Carson’s Gate One reads that the steel once stood tall in New York and now stands here, tarnished and bent but unbroken. Most of the sites sit behind military gates; the memorials at Fort Carson and UCCS are open to the public. UCCS students designed their display to face the one at Cheyenne Mountain. Pikes Peak itself waived admission for first responders and military that day. The city held an afternoon ceremony at the Fallen Firefighter Memorial in Memorial Park.
Teller County gathered at 9 a.m. in Lions Park in Woodland Park, as it has for years. Commissioner Dan Williams issued a Patriot Day message. The park already holds its own memorial: twin towers of Pikes Peak granite, pentagonal bricks for the Pentagon, and grass for the field in Shanksville. First responders and county employees were asked to stand with the public.
In Fremont County, Cañon City’s library foundation hosted a family event at Macon Park that opened with a moment of silence and Color Guard before live music and activities for children. There was no separate county-wide memorial listed this year.
Three counties, three landscapes: a steep trail, military gates and a public campus, a small-town park with granite towers, and a city park beside a library. The region Pikes Peak Outdoors serves remembered the same day in the places people already know. The climb asks the body to remember the stairs. The steel asks the eyes to remember what remained. The parks ask a community to show up. Twenty-five years later, all of it is still here.
— Drafted with assistance from Grok
