Manitou Springs, Colorado

Long before it was a town, this pocket at the foot of Pikes Peak was known for its water. Carbonated mineral springs bubble up along Fountain Creek, and to the Ute — who wintered here — along with the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Plains tribes, the effervescing water was sacred, read as the breath of the Great Spirit and left with offerings. The place was treated as neutral ground where rival peoples could drink in peace. The name carries that meaning: "Manitou" comes from an Algonquian word for the Great Spirit. Early Anglo travelers noticed too — Dr. Edwin James, of the 1820 Long Expedition, documented the springs, and English adventurer George Frederick Ruxton wrote about drinking from them in the 1840s. When a resort was finally laid out, it was built quite deliberately around that water.

The town itself was a designed health resort. General William Jackson Palmer — the railroad man behind Colorado Springs — and his partner Dr. William Abraham Bell founded Manitou Springs in 1872 as a "scenic health resort," and it incorporated in 1876. Growth came with the railroad, after which the springs drew tuberculosis patients and well-heeled tourists chasing "water cures." By the 1890s the town boasted a string of grand hotels, and boosters were calling it the "Saratoga of the West." The mineral water was even bottled and shipped nationally. In 1891 the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway — Zalmon Simmons's cog railway, one of only a handful in the country — reached the 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak from a depot in town, cementing Manitou as the gateway to the mountain.

Today Manitou Springs is a compact home-rule city of roughly 4,800 people at about 6,300 feet, wedged into the canyon mouth below Pikes Peak. Its Victorian core is a National Register historic district, and the restored public mineral springs — cared for in recent decades by a volunteer mineral-springs foundation — still flow free for anyone who wants to taste them, each with its own fizz and flavor. The town is also the trailhead for some of the region's most famous outings: the calf-burning Manitou Incline, the Barr Trail up Pikes Peak, the Cog Railway, and nearby Garden of the Gods and Cave of the Winds. It has kept an artsy, slightly bohemian, walkable character that sets it apart from its bigger neighbor, Colorado Springs, just down the creek.

Manitou today is a small, walkable mountain town with a lot of personality packed into a few blocks. The historic main drag is lined with independent shops, galleries, arcades, and cafes, and you can wander between the free public mineral springs, filling a cup at each fountain to taste how different they are. It's an outdoor-lover's basecamp: the punishing Manitou Incline and the long Barr Trail both start in town, the Cog Railway climbs to the top of Pikes Peak, and Garden of the Gods' red-rock spires and Cave of the Winds are minutes away. The vibe is artsy and a little offbeat — think a Fruitcake Toss in winter and a coffin-race "Emma Crawford" festival at Halloween — with a creek running through the middle of it all and the peak standing over everything. It feels like a genuine town, not a resort.