Colorado Springs, CO Photo - Formation in The Garden of The Gods, a Public Park

Formation in the Garden of the Gods, a public park -- but also an international tourist attraction -- packed with red-rock formations (created during a geological upheaval along a natural fault line millions of years ago) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The area was first called Red Rock Corral. Then, in August 1859, two surveyors who helped to set up Colorado City (the original name for what is now Colorado Springs) explored the site. One of the surveyors, M. S. Beach, suggested that it would be a "capital place for a beer garden". His companion, the young Rufus Cable, awestruck by the impressive rock formations, exclaimed, "Beer Garden! Why it is a fit place for the gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.