The 116-acre ranch owned by Church for All Nations rises from Highway 115 at the base of Cheyenne Mountain. It has been the target of teens who drink, smoke dope and set buildings ablaze.
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Vandals seemingly covered every inch they could reach with graffiti.
A few weeks ago, emergency crews conducted a mock disaster drill on the premise a wildfire was ravaging Cheyenne Mountain in the Broadmoor Bluffs neighborhood near NORAD.
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Sadly, the next chaotic evacuation may be authentic if kids keep trespassing on a century-old ranch in the neighborhood, getting drunk and stoned and setting fires.
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That’s right.
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Idiot teens — yes, I know “idiot teens” is redundant — repeatedly have set fires amid parched scrub oak and crispy underbrush at the bottom of a hillside rimmed by their parents’ mini-mansions.
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An inferno capable to sweeping through all the Broadmoors — Glen, Oaks, Bluffs, Spires and Hills — seems inevitable, if someone doesn’t stop the kids.
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Trying his hardest is Stan Horton, who manages the 116-acre ranch on behalf of its owner, Church of All Nationson Templeton Gap Road.
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In recent weeks, Stan has caught 16 kids, many from Cheyenne Mountain High School, trespassing, partying and vandalizing the dozen or so old buildings, including the historic concrete house built around 1935 as a water tower but converted to a home.
Property manager Stan Horton put teens caught vandalizing the concrete house to work painting it. Today it looks much differently than just a few weeks ago.
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Already, two buildings have burned to the ground. Luckily the flames didn’t spread to the pump house or the dozens of surrounding homes.
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But Stan fears a tragedy.
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“It’s frustrating as can be,” Stan said as we toured the property. “We have fences. We’ve put up signs. But they keep coming in. They tag everything with spray paint. They destroy things.
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“I’m fed up.”
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Stan said the church was reluctant to press criminal charges as first. But as the vandalism and danger has escalated, Colorado Springs Police became involved.
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“We call the parents and they want to make excuses for their kids,” Stan said, shaking his head. “They just keep coming, no matter what we do.”
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The parents’ reaction is a mystery to Stan, a retired field artillery gunnery sergeant from Fort Carson.
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This building is one of two burned to the ground by vandals.
He can understand that kids are going to make poor choices. But parents’ shouldn’t reinforce those choices, he said.
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Sadly, the arson and vandalism has been going on for decades, according to Don Failing, who has pastured horses on the property since 1980 or so. He said kids from Fort Carson used to come and play on the property, before the Broadmoor Bluffs neighborhood existed.
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But in 1981, he said kids burned down a hay shed he had built for his horses. And then another small structure was burned repeatedly until it was destroyed.
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“The kids from Broadmoor Bluffs started running wild on the place,” Don told me. “It’s been horrible the past 10 years.”
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He described how the kids will cut entire sections of fence from a horse pasture, allowing the animals to run free in the neighborhood.
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“They have a mean streak,” Don said. “That bunch from Broadmoor Bluffs is totally destructive.”
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If the church can ever get the vandalism under control, it has big plans for the property.
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“We want to developer a Christian retreat center here,” Stan said. “Kind of like ‘Praise Mountain’ where people can come.”
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Already, the property hosts paintball tournaments for its youth ministry. Stan had hung a movie screen from one of the pump house balconies and hosted nearly 70 people for a “flashlight theater” movie night. He has plans for winter sledding, maybe motocross and horseback riding and more.
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That is if the place isn’t burned to the ground by neighbors’ kids first.
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Charred earth is all that remains of the building.Stan Horton, manager of the property, describes the damage done by vandals to the pump house as he stands inside the main level.
The ranch was owned from 1920 to 2005 by the Bensberg family.
Jim Bensberg, former El Paso County Commissioner, tells me the concrete building was built by his father and uncle in 1935. He said it was called “the Tower” and though it was designed for water storage, it was never used to hold water.
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Bensberg told me a river running through the property was dammed above the Tower to provide water to the two residences, one of which to the north burned in a well-documented fire in 1950.
Stan Horton, property manager for Church for All Nations, scrambles below a small dam that provided water to homes on the ranch.
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Stan Horton, church property manager, describes the damage done by vandals to buildings on the ranch.
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Nothing is safe from taggers, not even the water trough used for baptisims!
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The view out of the concrete house.
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Despite fences, chained gates and multiple signs, teens continue to trespass and vandalize the property.
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