Close to 1,600 people attended the annual Holiday Evenings event Nov. 15 and 16, but a big upside especially exists for the Holiday Tea and Tours - all its tours were sold out in its second year as an annual December event.
With reservations required in advance, the tours gave people extended guided sojourns through the ranch's two historic houses - the homesteading Chambers family's 1874 Rock Ledge House and Colorado Springs founder William Palmer's 1907 Orchard House - plus the kind of “Little London” tea and goodies that visitors in Palmer's era might have enjoyed.
“Next year we'll have more days of teas,” Morris said. “The demand is there.”
A side benefit of the tours is greater reward for decorating the 230-acre ranch for Christmas. Until last year, the ranch would be fixed up for the season, but the only public event was the two-day Holiday Evenings, which includes tours, hayrides, bonfires and luminaria-lit walks. “Now we can use the decorations throughout the month of December,” Morris said.
Holiday Evenings itself was expanded this year, with the addition of a Confederate Civil War encampment, where reenactors discussed what it was like being at war and away from family. Morris said this historical vignette had contemporary application, especially for families who have soldiers overseas in the Iraq War.
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