Episode
Unpacking the Colorado Springs Lore of Spencer and Julie Penrose
- Published
- May 26, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2528
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/bae4a0ef
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/springs-and-things-7088548/episodes/unpacking-the-colorado-springs-lore-of-spencer-and-julie-penrose/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/springs-and-things-7088548/unpacking-the-colorado-springs-lore-of-spencer-and-julie-penrose.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Did a monkey bite really launch the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo? Did Spencer Penrose actually ride his horse into the Antlers Hotel lobby? And why is the Shrine of the Sun named after Will Rogers instead of the man who built it? In this episode of Springs and Things, host Carly Ries sits down with Sarah Woods, Vice President of Collections for El Pomar Foundation, to dig into the archives and separate Colorado Springs legend from fact. As the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo celebrates its 100th anniversary, Sarah pulls back the curtain on some of the wildest, most fascinating stories in our city's history and reveals what the primary source records actually say. This is one of our most information-packed episodes to date, covering everything from a mysterious box of 1940s newspaper-wrapped clothing to a crash car sitting in a museum exactly how it landed on Pikes Peak. In this episode, you'll learn: → The real reason Spencer Penrose's exotic animals were moved off the Broadmoor Golf Course, and yes, the monkey bite was real → How a 21-year-old Spencer Penrose wrote a Harvard thesis that still guides El Pomar Foundation's mission today → The story behind the Heritage Gallery's never-before-seen photographs, hats, and personal artifacts of Spencer and Julie Penrose → How Michèle Mouton became the only woman to earn the title King of the Mountain, and why she insists on keeping that title → The harrowing 2012 crash on Pikes Peak and what the wreckage reveals about safety, thin air, and the psychological demands of the race → Why Julie Penrose created the original El Pomar Carriage Museum in 1941, and how a newspaper clipping from the 1920s changed everything we thought we knew about its origins → The connection between Spencer Penrose's cancer diagnosis and the founding of the Penrose Ca…