A Gazette report last month summarized the legacy of the Pikeview Quarry on the city’s northwest side with one simple yet accurate word: complicated.

For decades, the “Scar Wars” that were fought over the quarry had cast a shadow over Colorado Springs, much like the barren blight upon the mountainside visible from much of the city.

On one side were environmentalists and civic activists, who not only found the extensive excavation of the mountainside grotesque, but also pointed to the instability of a steep slope with a history of landslides.

On the other side, mine operators and home builders, among others, held the belief the quarry, dating back to 1903, was worth its incalculable weight in rock. Raw material from the mountainside quite literally built much of the city, as well as the Air Force Academy at its feet.

Such is the balance of building a civilization. 

The good news all these decades later, and eight years after the quarry closed, is a reclamation project has achieved the closest thing to a dynamic equilibrium reasonable Springs citizens could hope for.  They respect the quarry’s past and the role it played in building the community, and now they finally can look beyond it.

As noted in The Gazette’s report, the state’s Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety has released the slope’s miner of the past half-century, Castle Aggregates, from its permit and bond to reshape and revegetate the slope. It’s a major milestone.

What not so long ago was a barren mountainside at risk of collapsing on itself is now a more gentle slope with knee-deep grass blowing in the wind. In other words, mission accomplished.

A literal mountain-moving project like this, one deemed by experts to be one of the three most challenging geotechnical sites in the state’s history, doesn’t come without a substantial cost. We’re talking 3.4 million cubic yards to grade a gentler, 100-acre slope, nearly 32,000 trees and shrubs, and bushel upon bushel of seed and special matting. The project’s bond rose to near $18 million.

The compromise underscores how reclamation went from idea to reality, in a testament to what is possible politically in a day and age where accord is said to be ever absent. Yes, the process wasn’t as perfect as presented by the city in public-relations messaging, where the idea of turning the quarry into a scenic “world-class” bike park seemed easy. Sure, Castle Aggregates would walk away with millions of dollars after selling its land to the city. And some of the land may have been above appraised value. But as the old adage goes, the sign of a true compromise is one neither side is completely happy with.

And now a ravaged Rocky Mountainside has turned into a landscape of redemption. 

The reclamation even has garnered the state mining division’s Jack Starner Memorial Reclamation Award.

“When you’re standing out there and you’re knee-deep in grass in what was a huge, visible detriment,” a division officials told The Gazette, “…it was well deserved.”