Historical career beckoned/ Feitz fell into life's work after

When young Leland Feitz moved from the rural San Luis Valley to urban Colorado Springs, it was a city perched on the edge of growth.

It was 1942 and Union Boulevard was the eastern edge of the city and Academy Boulevard wasn't even a gleam in the eye of some developer. Camp Carson was upgraded to Fort Carson, The Broadmoor was way out in the country, and there were all the cultural amenities missing in little La Jara, his home town. It was a pretty exciting place for a young man.

After two years at Colorado College, Feitz went to work for the Alexander Film Co. It started out as a summer job and became a career. For 18 years, he did everything from sales to public relations.

After he moved here, Feitz became fascinated by Cripple Creek. He went up to the still-operating gold camp often, and in the 1950s, bought a house there, where he spent weekends whenever possible. He met and talked with many old-timers who had lived in the town during its heyday, and who still worked the mines.

"They told me all kinds of stories," he recalls.

As a salesman for Alexander Film, one of his jobs was to show the local sights to visiting clients.

"One time, I took this fellow from New York up there (to Cripple Creek) and told him all the stories and showed him my photos, and he says to me, 'You ought to write a book about this place.'"

The visitor thought the town had potential as a tourist attraction and told Feitz that a book could spark interest in it.

After Feitz went to work for the Out West Printing Company in the 1960s, he found he wanted to write just such a book. He'd learned a bit about printing, so he knew what work was involved. He culled his best stories and photos and wrote "Cripple Creek," his first book. He had it printed in Denver and was so unhappy with the first 500 copies, he decided to self-publish the next printing.

"It was a terrible book, with terrible reproduction on the wrong kind of paper, but it did well," he says. "Cripple Creek" still is in print and has sold more than 125,000 copies. Its publication marked the beginning of Feitz's own publishing company, Little London Press, in 1962.

Since then, Feitz has produced 18 books of his own - including "Ghost Towns of the Cripple Creek District," "A Pictorial History of Cripple Creek," "The Antlers," "Victor," "Cripple Creek Railroads," "A Pictorial History of the San Luis Valley," and others on various areas of the state. He's also published dozens of books by other authors on places such as Telluride, Glenwood Springs, and Lake City. Most still are in print.

"After I had some success with the Cripple Creek book, I had other people coming to me with manuscripts of their own," he says. But, at this point in his life, at 76, he says he thought he was done producing books, till he found the treasure of photos at the Old Colorado City History Center on the west side.

"I realized I wanted to do a book on my home town," he says. What intrigued him was that most of the photos had not been published or widely seen before.

He just published "A Pictorial History of Colorado Springs," on sale for $6.95 at local bookstores and at the history center, and proceeds from its sale will benefit the center.

And, of course, he'll talk about local history to just about anyone who will listen.

"I'm afraid I've become one of those people I used to love to talk to when I was young," he says.

Feitz claims this is his last book, but he hedges: "Unless somebody can come up with something that really gets me excited."

Copyright 2000
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