It was a time to celebrate “A Landscape to Love” for the Garden of the Gods Foundation’s charitable support “to preserve and protect the Garden of the Gods Park” by providing funds toward projects and programs benefiting the city’s most popular park.

Gathering at Garden of the Gods Visitor & Nature Center overlooking the park and the mountains on June 26, the foundation’s members and friends heard an annual update about the group’s work that since 1994 has raised more than $7.6 million “for maintenance, preservation and education programs for the park.” In 2025 that was $803,451.

Each year the Colorado Springs Park, Recreation and Cultural Services Department prepares a list of prioritized proposed projects that is reviewed by the foundation’s volunteer board of trustees, which allocates toward projects for which there is immediate available funding. Parks epartment projects are added as funding becomes available.

Jan Martin, foundation president, said that in 2025, Garden of the Gods Park was visited by more than 5.5 million people and projects helped “restore trails, strengthen education programs and care for the park’s extraordinary natural resources.”

Private grants provided for tripling the restrooms in the Visitor & Nature Center, expansion of its exhibits and improved accessibility, Martin reported.

A Garden of the Gods Foundation Membership Program, Project Forever, has been established at gardenofgods.com/support.

Christina Haywood, Garden of the Gods Foundation executive director, noted that Gateway Guardian programs have been expanded, offering members behind-the-scenes tours, educational hikes and experiences centered on history.

The entire park area has a unique history. Railroad magnate Charles Elliott Perkins came from the East with the city founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer and bought acres of land in Garden of the Gods. After he died in 1907, his children gave all 480 acres to the city for the park that would always be free for everyone, liquor-free, and no buildings or structures would be allowed except for those necessary for a public park.

In the 1990s, longtime City Parks Director Nancy Lewis was searching for ways for the city to maintain the free and heavily overused park while granting some of the requests from the public in a master plan for the future. In its Garden of the Gods history, the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum recounts Lewis and philanthropist Lyda Hill meeting during a chance hike in the park.

Decades before, Hill’s father, oil millionaire Al Hill, had stood atop the majestic empty natural mesa above the park. He had gloried at the view to the West, his daughter told the Foundation evening attendees. He created the private Garden of the Gods Club on the extensive land that runs clear down over the mesa to the street below, with the park just beyond. The resort, now open to the public years later, celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.

Lyda Hill, now owner of the Hill land, and Lewis had chatted about much-needed plans for new and better trails, better park maintenance, increasing overuse and so much more. The city’s parks budget simply could not cover all the needs and dreams, the women understood.

Together, in 1994, the two women created an unheard-of partnership, public and private, for the Visitor & Nature Center on Lyda’s private property and a 501 (c)(3) Foundation to help maintain the beloved park with money generated by the center’s gift shop, restaurant, exhibits and programs. This would keep intact the requirement for a free public park with no outside buildings and allow for help with future plans and needs.

Foundation guests learned that since 1995 the Visitor & Nature Center has opened its doors to an estimated 17 million visitors.

Among the most recent funded upgrades in the park itself, said manager Anna Cordova, are an all-hazard evacuation plan, flood mitigation, a completed archaeological history of the park, more nature walks with contacts with staff and more fully plumbed restroom facilities at parking areas throughout the park.

Matt Mayberry, director of Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, and Skyler Rorabaugh, newly named director of the City Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services, told the Foundation that through their gifts “we are able to maintain this beautiful park.”

Foundation officers and trustees are: Jan Martin, Susan Pattee, Dave Kast, Ann Fetsch, Mina Liebert, Jax Hitaire, David Kunstle, Patrick Stephens, David Siegel and Sarah Bryarty.