It is the 150th anniversary of Colorado College. The college was founded in 1874 and located in Colorado Springs because of a generous gift of land for a campus from Colorado Springs founder William Jackson Palmer.

The first order of business at Colorado College in 1876 was to find a president. The Board of Trustees turned to New England and the Congregational Church ministry to find a new leader. The man selected was Edward Payson Tenney, pastor at the First Congregational Church in Ashland, Mass., a small town west of Boston.

Tenney was born in 1835 on a farm in Concord, N. H. His education included Dartmouth College, then Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Mass. When Tenney was offered the presidency of Colorado College, he first discussed the matter with Henry Cutler, a Massachusetts philanthropist. Cutler and a group of other Massachusetts men, members of the Congregational church, agreed to provide the money to get Colorado College operating effectively under Tenney’s leadership.

To promote both Colorado College and the newly developing region it served, Tenney wrote and published a small book entitled The New West. Tenney defined the “New West” as the general Rocky Mountain region. It included Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming on the north, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado in the center, and Arizona and New Mexico to the south.

Tenney saw the mission of Colorado College as providing well-educated citizens for his New West. Religion was a motivating force, Tenney argued, but the College should not be a sectarian institution. “It must be free from ecclesiastical control,” he noted. “If it becomes the mere tool of a sect, it will never rise to the highest rank.”

Tenney took an inclusive view of those who would be served by Colorado College. It was to be for “Mormons, Mexicans, Indians, and the heterogeneous border population.”

And Tenney saw the influence of the college as permanent and enduring. “Although individual teachers and graduates fall like leaves,” he opined, “the College will endure and prove a perpetual power.”

Edward Tenney’s The New West was a significant literary effort. It clearly revealed the religious fervor of the founders of Colorado College. It identified their origins in the Congregational church, but it made clear the determination of the college’s founders to create a non religious institution.

Edward Tenney’s greatest contribution to Colorado College was to raise the funds and see to the construction of the College’s first permanent building on the designated campus area at the north end of Colorado Springs. It was named Cutler Hall, for Henry Cutler, the generous New England benefactor of Colorado College.

General William Palmer selected the site for the building, choosing a spot on the west side of Cascade Avenue where the ground began to slope downward toward Monument Creek. The front of the building faced to the east, but the many western windows had beautiful views of Pike’s Peak and the surrounding foothills. The building was constructed of trachyte stone, gray in color, mined near Castle Rock. Cutler Hall began an early tradition of building major Colorado College structures with stone rather than brick.

The central part of the building was completed in 1877. The major windows were slightly pointed at the top, giving the building a Gothic flair. An ornate tower with a belfry was a distinguishing feature of the structure.

A ceremony was held on May 31, 1882. The new building was dedicated, and Parker Halleck and Frederick Tuckerman received their degrees as the first two graduates of the college.

But President Tenney’s most daring venture was to buy extensive landholdings in Colorado Springs as future investments for the college. Tenney believed that General Palmer’s little city would continue to grow, and that the college would benefit greatly from the increase in the value of the lands he was purchasing. One tract was located north of the college campus and comprised much of what later became the Old North End residential area.

To finance his land investments for the college, Tenney borrowed money in Boston, with Henry Cutler’s help, at 12 percent interest. Unfortunately, land in Colorado Springs did not sell as rapidly in the early 1880s as Tenney had hoped. He jeopardized his health as he worked harder and harder trying to keep his various land schemes adequately financed. In the spring of 1884 the entire speculation collapsed, and Tenney was asked to resign as president of Colorado College. He refused, so the Board of Trustees declared the president’s office “vacated.”

Tenney returned to New England, dejected over the bad fortune that ended his presidency and made uncertain his grandiose plans for Colorado College. He carried on ministerial and literary work in New England. He passed away in 1916, but Tenney lived long enough to see the college he helped to start becoming, as he had faith it would, one of the premier educational institutions of his beloved New West.

Tenney did get things started for Colorado College. He built the college’s first permanent building, Cutler Hall, and created a structure of grace and beauty that has become one of the symbols of Colorado College. He hired a strong faculty and recruited students. In one year during Tenney’s eight years as president, enrollment in the College reached a high of 132 students. Cutler Hall incidentally is where Colorado College’s admission office has been located for several years.

From 1884 to 1888, Colorado College lacked a president and was governed by the faculty that Tenney had hired. Professor George N. Marden became the financial agent and took on the task of keeping eastern contributors, so carefully recruited by Tenney, financially supporting the college. Professor William Strieby directed the instructional program and attended to a variety of administrative tasks, such as collecting tuition and paying small bills.

Progress was made at the college. A student speech and debating team, known as the Oratorical Society, traveled to Boulder, and engaged a University of Colorado team in an oratorical contest. The campus was wired for electrical service, and an electric bell system soon was calling students to and from their classes. The Colorado Springs Water Company laid a pipeline to the main college building and soon a “faucet” and a “water closet” were functioning there.

The men’s football team played and defeated a University of Denver team by a score of 12 to 0. The game took place in Colorado Springs on April 12, 1885. It was the first intercollegiate football game played west of the Mississippi River. Some of the luster of this great athletic victory was lost, however, when it was revealed that five non-students had played as “ringers” for the Colorado College team.

Meanwhile, a ne’er do well cowboy walked across a meadow near a mountain town south of Pike’s Peak known as Cripple Creek. His name was Bob Womack. His gold strike at Cripple Creek would greatly alter the fortunes of both Colorado Springs and Colorado College.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy write about Colorado and national politics. This article is adapted from Bob Loevy’s book “Colorado College – 1874 to 1999 – A Place of Learning.”

Edward Payson Tenney was the first president of Colorado College to get the college operating properly. He recruited a strong faculty and raised student enrollment to over 100 students. He built the college’s first academic building, Cutler Hall, on the land given to the college by Colorado Springs founder William Palmer. (Photos from Special Collections,

Tutt Library, Colorado College.)